In a recent article, I mentioned a set of coins offered by PCS Stamps and Coins, and showed how much of a markup these people were getting.
Since their ads keep popping up on my mobile phone, I thought I’d add just one more example of how putting lipstick on a pig can bamboozle the ill-informed.
Today’s offering: A complete date set of the Peace Dollar, in protective plastic capsules and a handsome cabinet. Price: $848.00
Complete 10-coin set, with cabinet
United States Peace Dollar
No question, the set is very pretty. But:
Per the advertisement, these coins are offered in “gently circulated condition.” This is essentially a meaningless statement for collectors; let’s look at the average dealer asking price for a similar set as presented by the Professional Coin Grading Service:
Note that these are average dealer asking prices for PCGS-graded coins; buyers of this set have no guarantee that these coins have been graded by anyone.
The price for a set of coins in 40-grade (Extra Fine) is $442, and the odds that you’ll get a set of coins in this condition are vanishingly small. So you’re paying at least twice the price of these items for the bonus of a cheap cabinet from China and a few plastic capsules.
If you’re thinking this is a good investment, it’s not. You could assemble the same set for much, much less by visiting different coin stores online or in person, armed with the PCGS grading and pricing information.
Be careful out there, and don’t be taken in by the bells and whistles of slick advertising promotions.
West Sunset Boulevard & Vine Street, Los Angeles, California.
(Click image for full-size version. Just look at those prices…)
A wonderful memory of early Los Angeles – before my time, certainly, but along the same lines as some other unusual LA restaurants that I do remember.
I’ve mentioned Hoot Hoot I Scream before; another great collection of ephemera from Los Angeles can be found at Shelter From the Storm, including the coffee pot restaurant seen below.
Most of these unusual eateries are gone, replaced by restaurants whose gimmick is found inside rather than outside. As for me, I miss places like this. I still grin when I drive along the freeway on a road trip and see a huge Sapp Bros. water tank decked out to look like a coffee pot.
I learned this lesson the hard way as a kid, as I sank endless amounts of allowance and paychecks and tips into a coin collection and various and sundry offerings from the Franklin Mint, touted as “brilliant investments” and “guaranteed to be coveted”. Yes, some of the things I gathered were very pretty, but 50 years later when it came time to divest myself of the items for this reason and that, I found out that most of the stuff was worth: melt value. That’s just the sad reality of the collecting world.
The same holds true for stamps: the mint sheets of things like the Mercury mission
Face value: $4.00. Dealer price today: $18.40. Hardly a brilliant investment over time, and that’s for a mint sheet. Certainly not what my father envisioned as he gathered sheets like this which I ended up inheriting. Individual cancelled stamps collected from envelopes will fetch you… well, kindling, really. With the exception of a few very rare beauties, stamp collecting is a hobby for amateurs (in the original sense, meaning “those who love”) rather than investors.
Not that dealers out there are not still trying to flummox the unwise and the uninformed. Look at this beautiful collection of Liberty Seated coins from PCS stamps and coins, offered for only two payments of $295.00:
Yes, it’s very attractive. Here’s the potential breakdown of value, taken from the PCGS website – you can be sure that the coins you get will be the commonest (hence cheapest) varieties out there, and all in “Very Good” condition, or between grade 8 and 10.
1877 CC Liberty Seated Half Dollar – grade 8 – $59.00
1876 CC Liberty Seated Quarter – Grade 8 – $60.00
1876 CC Liberty Seated Dime – Grade 8 – $29.00
Total $148.00
That pretty little case probably costs about 30.00 or less from a dealer in China – so for a premium of $400.00 you can have someone put together a set of coins that you could own for 1/3 the price. Even 50 years down the road, don’t expect your investment to appreciate anywhere near that much.
Old US coinage can be beautiful, and top specimens command insane prices from the wealthy bidders who buy them at auction – but if you want to make money from collecting coins… become a dealer.
Reuters recently reported that an Egyptian Judoka refused to shake hands with his Israeli opponent after a match at the Olympics in Rio.
It’s all the more sad because there were so many supporters on El Shehaby who encouraged him not to participate, because it would “shame Islam;” this is the pinnacle of resistance, resentment, and revenge, the zenith (or nadir, looked at another way) of stupidity. The Olympics is about building bridges, not about being a pettish douche. And this goes for anyone who does such things – El Shahaby is only the teacher in the moment.
In 1969, Bobby Darin wrote:
Now no doubt some folks enjoy doin’ battle Like presidents and ministers and kings But let us build them shelves where they can fight among themselves and leave the people be who like to sing! (Simple Song of Freedom)
I invite all who would perpetuate this psychopathic, internecine conflict of the ages to toddle off into the desert somewhere, far, far away, and blow each other up until there is no one left – a sort of Middle East Hunger Games, if you will – and leave decent people, Arab and Jew alike, to dwell together in the land in harmony as they have at many points in history. Knock down the borders. Don’t call the land Israel. Don’t call it Falastina. Call it “Rainë,” the Quenya word for Peace.
I don’t care who your God is. I don’t care if it’s יְהֹוָה or الله. I’m neither Jewish nor Muslim, but I can tell you this – whoever God may be, he’s probably mighty pissed with both sides of this millennia-long conflict. Stop it. If you don’t, this will be the inevitable result:
This is my opinion, and my opinion only. If you think otherwise, I volunteer you as tribute.
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I wrote a few years ago about stealth installs, but the practice continues; I thought I’d give another example of what to watch out for.
Today I updated a couple of modules of Free Studio from DVD Video Soft; notice I link to them because they provide a really useful suite of products that work well, for free. I get that they don’t do this as a labor of love – they need to monetize this somehow, and I suspect the foistware issue continues because it helps the bottom line. So be it – but the consumer should be aware of the rules of the game, because what you get is often not what you want or need.
During the install, you get this dialog box. It tells you exactly what you’re going to do to your computer, so nothing is really hidden there.
If you just go ahead and click the “next” button, you’ll be installing bytefence, Chromium (an open-source version of Chrome that doesn’t really work that well in the Windows environment), and YahooEverywhere, which will be difficult to remove if you don’t know what you’re doing. It’s not until you click the “Click here to customize the installation” link that you see exactly what’s going to happen, and get to uncheck the boxes.
Far too many people, when installing software, just go NextNextNextNext, without reading what the boxes say. After all, who really reads the EULAs or is telling the truth when they click the “I have read and agree” button? We’d spend half our lives plowing through byzantine legalese if we did, and I’m still not convinced any of these agreements would hold up in court.
“Set Yahoo as my default search, homepage and new tab on all my compatible browsers.” Uh, no.
From where I sit this is just not an ethical business model, because it takes advantage of consumer unawareness. In my previous article I mentioned Oracle, who for the longest time tried to cram the “Ask” toolbar and search engine down people’s throats when they installed or updated Java. I don’t know if they are still doing that or not, but I always thought it was supremely douchey because Ask is a supremely intrusive and essentially worthless software package.
Just be careful. When you install software, read each menu and see what’s being installed/offered. Deselect things you don’t want, and you’ll avoid a host of problems down the road. Unless you want your browser to look like this:
In times gone by, amidst widespread poverty, the Flour Mills realized that some women were using sacks to make clothes for their children. In response, the Flour Mills started using flowered fabric…
With the introduction of this new cloth into the home, thrifty women everywhere began to reuse the cloth for a variety of home uses – dish towels, diapers, and more. The bags began to become very popular for clothing items.
As the recycling trend looked like it was going to stay, the manufacturers began to print their cloth bags – or feedsacks – in an ever wider variety of patterns and colors.
Some of the patterns they started using are shown below
Over time, the popularity of the feedsack as clothing fabric increased beyond anyone’s wildest expectations, fueled by both ingenuity and scarcity.
By the time WWII dominated the lives of Americans, and cloth for fabric was in…
I’ve written about this gambit before, but today I encountered an especially egregious example of one.
While perusing an article found at reddit, one of the pages I visited popped up with this:
My phone started buzzing like crazy, the progress bar went all the way to the right, and i was told that I had a myriad of viruses. All I had to do was download “Psafe” to get my phone clean again.
As I tried to back out of this steaming pile of moose droppings, I was presented with the following sequence of screens, with concomitant “Urgent!” vibrations – in other words, there was no way out:
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
If these popups are to be believed, my poor Android had become virus central, and I might as well just throw it away and buy a new one.
But by now you should know that this is all nonsense, designed to trick the unwary and the gullible into downloading Psafe, a supposed protection application from the Play Store. How a legitimate application, if that’s what it is, can resort to such scummy promotion techniques is beyond me – unless it’s the typical drivel put out by affiliate marketers. Be that as it may, tactics like this are enough to sour me on a piece of software forever – and tell others to stay away from it as well.
Another example.
I really work hard to keep the content of this blog family-friendly. This kind of stuff makes me want to send vulgar open letters to the people who do this, but I’ll have to content myself with putting it out there so other people might also be warned.
If you get junk like this on your Android, it’s not infected. Restart your phone you can’t get out of the loop, and if it’s really bad, reinstall your browser.
And never, ever, use Psafe for anything – a company that stoops to these methods of despicably dishonest advertising does not deserve your business.
One of my Facebook friends just posted the following question:
“Just a thought….who does the Muslim world and ISIS support for president?”
The obvious answer is “Clinton” – the implication being that Trump would unleash Hell on Islamic terrorists and nuke them back to the stone age, or something similar.
In reality, Daesh does not support anyone for president, because Daesh does not believe in Democracy – but rather in Shari’a law under theocratic rule. If the extremists had their way, New York City might look like the image below, which appeared shortly after 9/11:
The problem with jingoism and xenophobia is that they know no bounds and do not require facts… just a gut-level fear of the unknown, of the different. Hence Donald Trump’s calls for the exclusion of all Muslim immigrants to the US, deportation of Muslims, issuance of identity cards to Muslims – all these have resonated with a segment of American society who have been terrorized by the terrorists.
A digression:
In the episode of Star Trek, the Next Generation entitled “The Survivors,” Kevin Uxbridge (brilliantly played by John Anderson) portrays a Douwd, an immortal being with godlike powers who fell in love with a human woman. When his wife was killed by a consummately evil race of beings known as the Husnock, Uxbridge explained:
I saw her broken body. I went insane. My hatred exploded. And in an instant of grief… I destroyed the Husnock… You don’t understand the scope of my crime. I didn’t kill just one Husnock, or a hundred, or a thousand. I killed them all. All Husnock, everywhere. – Are 11,000 people worth… 50 billion? Is the love of a woman worth the destruction of an entire species?
This theme was echoed in Attack of the Clones, in which Anakin Skywalker tells Padmé Amidala about the Tuskens who kidnapped and killed his mother, “I killed them. I killed them all. They’re dead, every single one of them. And not just the men, but the women and the children too.”
The desire for ultimate vengeance upon those who have harmed us or our loved ones seems to run deep in the human heart, witness the Hatfields and the McCoys, the internecine conflicts of the Balkans, the Middle East conflicts, the Tutsis and the Hutus, and so many others.
And as I experienced that day of infamy in 2001 when our nation was stabbed to the heart by unspeakably evil men, my soul went to that darkest of places. On that day, had you offered me the Elder Wand and told me that by simply waving it, all Muslims everywhere would simply cease to exist, and every one of their holy sites would be reduced to a glowing lake of slag, I probably would have waved it without a second’s hesitation. Such was the depth of my anguish at the emotional insult of that day.
It has taken a long time, but I was obliged to take those sentiments and wall them up behind the barricade of reason.
I admit that every time I see images of 9/11, or hear of a new atrocity committed in the name of Islam, I can still hear Fortunato’s bells jingling behind that wall. That day scarred my psyche for all time. I doubt I will ever fully heal, but I refuse to give in to the bestial urges.
With all of that in mind, I cannot support as president of this nation a man who would demonize fully one fourth of this world’s population for the actions of a few deranged and deluded madmen. Yes, those few are dangerous, and a threat to global security. But this is not Riyadh, or Tehran, or Darfur – this is America, and Muslims are as much a part of our country as the Catholic immigrants from Italy and Ireland, or the Jewish immigrants from the global diaspora. The enemy is ignorance, the enemy is extremism. We must be vigilant, but we must also be human.
Edit: We are now one year into a second Trump term, and it’s orders of magnitude worse than the most pessimistic among us could have imagined. God help us all; the damage to our nation and the world at large has been legendary, and it will take generations to repair the destruction… if at all.
For a long time I’ve been complaining to myself, about every four years or so, of having to choose between the evil of two lessers. Over the course of my life, my politics have been all over the spectrum, from Democrat in my youth (think McCarthy and McGovern), to a 40-year stint of drinking the GOP Kool-Aid (I still think Reagan had the best interests of the nation at heart, but Cheney & Co. put an end to my straight-party history), to Libertarianism (too close to narchy for comfort), and back to the Dems since 2008, because like many Americans, I really was hopeful for some change, particularly in the economic arena.
While I don’t agree with all his politics or agenda, our current President has had a pretty good run if you look at the numbers. Those on the evangelical right tend to see him as Satan incarnate, the enemy of all righteousness, attacking foundations of “moral America” with jackhammers and wrecking balls, but despite what the John Birch Society would have you think, no religious code is enshrined in the Constitution; morals remain, thanks to the First Amendment, a matter of personal choice and personal accountability.
Bernie Sanders was the first real breath of political fresh air I have experienced on the national stage in my entire life. I worked for him, I stumped for him, I contributed my $3.00 (several times over, if the truth be known), I was a caucus captain for him in Maine, and I was really hoping for someone in the White House who would pay less attention to politics or private interests than those who have occupied that seat of power during my sojourn on earth.
Now those hopes have been extinguished, and once again I am left to choose between two people whose politics I do not endorse, and must choose the lesser evil. Or perhaps not.
Donald Trump is a caricature of all that is wrong with politics, a real-live Oliphant cartoon (I deeply regret this great commentator’s gentle slide into retirement, especially during this circus of an election season), Tammany Tiger in the flesh, the ghosts of Leona Helmsley, Imelda Marcos, and Joseph McCarthy brought back to life in one horrible package of xenophobic one-percentism. The prospect of a Trump presidency terrifies me, and the thought that a fraction of this country approaching 50% thinks he would be good for this country leaves me with cold sweats.
Despite my own feelings, I have a huge circle of friends who support both Trump and the GOP, and there are parts of their fears and frustrations that resonate with me. The “giant sucking sound” Ross Perot referred to with regards to American jobs – not to Mexico, as it turned out, but rather to Asia – is of deep concern. The rotting factories of America, the economic terror that is snapping at the heels of a far-too-great segment of our nation’s families, the social unrest, and a general trend in our country toward an “anything goes” outlook are valid concerns in the minds of many people. The growing fear of Islamic extremism is a real phenomenon; remembering that the enemy of freedom is not Islam but rather extremism of all stripes and ignorance has become ever more difficult since 9/11, an event that scarred my soul and twisted my Weltanschauung despite my being aware that it did so. But championing trickle-down economics and outright jingoism and fear-mongering are not the answers to these pressing problems, and these are precisely the principles upon which Donald Trump has built his campaign.
On the other side of the aisle we have Hillary Rodham Clinton, part of the “Buy one, get one free” package that we inherited under the presidency of her husband. During the Billary days, there was a joke circulating that was so cruel and petty that I can’t repeat it here, but it underscored the notion that both Bill and Hillary were crooked and dishonest. It’s worth considering that much of the “crooked Hillary” rhetoric that seems to have become part of the American psyche could be the result of a decades-long smear campaign by her opponents on the right, but for good or ill it has affected me. I don’t know if I trust her to act ethically and honestly for the good of America’s citizenry, and that’s admitting freely that as a person, I don’t know her from Adam’s off ox. The Clinton presidency appears to be settling on the positive side of the historical ledger, but the moral lapses of our 42nd president, followed by the web of deceit and duplicity that followed, add to the general feeling that having this team back in the White House will do more good for them than for us.
Coming back to Bernie Sanders, there is a segment of his constituency who have adopted the “Bernie or Bust” philosophy… and I understand that as well. My franchise under the Constitution is precious, and casting a ballot for someone I don’t support seems like squandering that franchise. I supported Bernie so fervently that it seems folly not to ignore the dominant candidates and cast my ballot for him as a write-in, or vote for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein to bolster third-party strength. But that’s not the attitude that Bernie himself has adopted; he’s a career politician, has stayed on message for over 3 decades, and he understands clearly that politics makes strange bedfellows.
From where I stand, Senator Sanders’ support for Hillary at this time is an effort to make the best of a less-than-optimal situation. Even his decision to run as a democrat was a calculated political move, and one that paid greater dividends in the long run than having run as an independent might have done. I like what he stands for. He has a lifetime in the political trenches. I trust him. And if he’s asking his supporters to support the Democratic candidate at this point in time, it makes sense that I do so now.
From a faith-based standpoint, I should be on the far right. I believe that there are certain standards of conduct that, if followed, will bring greater overall happiness to mankind than the alternatives. But I am also a fervent supporter of free agency which I see as the core principle of our earthly probation; the whole concept of “I don’t believe in eating cake, so you may not have any either” just doesn’t fly with me. As a result, the efforts of the Christian right to impose morality on the nation by political activism is just as worrisome as the jihadis who would impose Islam on the world by the sword.
So there’s the dilemma. I can’t just stay home and not vote, because that would be an insult to those who dedicated their lives to creating a republic where my franchise is guaranteed. I can’t really justify voting Libertarian or Green, because neither party has a hope of winning in the general election, and I can’t write Bernie in for the same reason, as much as I would love to see him at the helm of state. I can’t vote GOP, because the Republican Zeitgeist at this moment in time seems to revolve around a world that works for the rich, the few, and the holy.
Yes, I think there has been a lot of jiggery-pokery in the political process this year, perhaps more than in the past. I think the DNC basically shafted Bernie and his supporters with a cactus, and that the game was essentially rigged from the start. But in the end analysis, I have to ask myself “Which party’s ideals intersect most strongly with my own?”
The answer, for myself, is clear. I will vote for Hillary in November, not because she is the lesser evil but because I believe she will accomplish the greater good. But in the meantime, I will continue to work for and support candidates at the local and congressional level who support the ideals that Bernie Sanders offered the nation: equal opportunities for all, a political process free of corporate money and influence, universal healthcare, universal human dignity, and – in the words of R. Buckminster Fuller – “making the world work, for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.”
My first introduction to Moxie came as I read Stuart Little in the 1950s. Stuart, on his journey to find his lost love Margalo, stopped at a gas station and asked about something to drink.
“Have you any sarsaparilla in your store?” asked Stuart. “I’ve got a ruinous thirst.”
“Certainly,” said the storekeeper. “Gallons of it. Sarsaparilla, root beer, birch beer, ginger ale, Moxie, lemon soda, Coca Cola, Pepsi Cola, Dipsi Cola, Pipsi Cola, Popsi Cola, and raspberry cream tonic. Anything you want.”
At the time I had no idea what Moxie was, but was delighted to find out later that it was a real thing, unlike the Dipsi, Pipsi, and Popsi colas mentioned. And yes, it’s definitely an acquired taste. It’s reminiscent of root beer or sarsparilla, but the dominant flavoring is gentian root, which brings a bitterness to the drink not found in other soft drinks (unless you’re fond of Campari soda, not usually found outside of Italy.) God forbid anyone should make a soda version of Fernet-Branca!
But Moxie is different, and refreshing. The bitterness doesn’t bother me, in fact it makes the concoction more satisfying on a hot day than something that’s just overly sugary. I may like it for the same reason I like chestnut honey, which I discovered on a trip to Slovenia – wonderfully full-bodied, with that same distinctive bitterness which offsets the sweetness nicely.
Originating around 1876 as a patent medicine called “Moxie Nerve Food,” Moxie is closely associated with the state of Maine and was designated the official soft drink of Maine on May 10, 2005.Its creator, Dr. Augustin Thompson, was born in Union, Maine. (Extracted from Wikipedia)
For the longest time, Frank Anicetti ran the Moxie Museum in Lisbon, Maine; this year saw the closure of the store, which was at the heart of Maine’s annual Moxie Festival since 1913.
Frank Anicetti serves up Moxie ice cream
But even though the Kennebec Fruit Company store is gone, Moxie will stay close to the hearts and stomachs of Mainahs; there’s still the Matthews Museum in Union, which has an entire wing devoted to Moxie.
The Moxie Wing at the Matthews Museum in Union, Maine
Now in the interest of full disclosure, I’m still a Pepper, and always have been. In my years sojourning in Europe, I discovered that Europeans – while they find Coke and Pepsi palatable – generally look upon Root Beer and Dr Pepper as tasting like medicine. With that in mind, I suspect Moxie wouldn’t find much of a market in Vienna or Ljubljana… in fact, it might be just enough to turn even our best European friends into a torch-and-pitchfork waving mob.
But such is life. The poor souls probably wouldn’t appreciate nattō either. They have my sympathy. For the moment, I’m happy to be in Maine, where Moxie is readily available.
narchy for comfort), and back to the Dems since 2008, because like many Americans, I really was hopeful for some change, particularly in the economic arena.
Playing in the World Game 