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Collecting tends to be a geeky thing. Jocks never seem to be collectors. No one snaps a towel and announces that they received their 1902 MS 66 dime in the mail from a recent e-bay win and are gleeful about it. Nor do they describe the blow by blow sniping action of how they got the winning bid in (their loss).

My favourite area is coin collecting. It has much to offer the geek. You must be skilled at the bookish arts. There are books coin mintages, coin varieties (you know when the mint screws up and makes a mistake on a coin) and coin grading. The hobby has its own lingo. It also passes the acid test of geeky hobbies: at a coin convention the ratio of men to women is 100 to 3. In fact the only women there are the ones looking to use the phone, or are dutiful wives and girlfriends dragged there against their will (or as part of a complex tit-for-tat involving attendance at some fashion show, movie marathon of the “chick” variety).

One upside is that you can do it for fun and profit!!$!! Take one of my favorite areas within coin collecting is collecting radar notes for example. A radar note is a note that is the same read frontwards or backwards like this: 1234321 just like the word “radar”. In Canada one note in 1000 is a radar because Canadian banknotes have 7 digits. In the case of US banknotes one note in 10,000 is a radar note because US notes have 8 digits.

The profit potential is huge. When I started looking for radar notes I found one in the first two weeks. It was a juicy two digit radar. This means it was comprised of only two different numbers: 7222227 (in this case 7s and 2s). I got it from a bank machine and it was well used/circulated. I put it on e-bay and it sold for $30. If it were uncirculated or lightly used it may have sold for $50-$80.

It is easy to get hooked after a nice score like that. I have built my collection up nicely over the last 5 years. In that time my older notes have trippled in value.

So while you jocks talk about sports, the big game etc some geek will be making money checking his change. Also a word of caution to the jocks out there: while you are absorbed with watching sports on TV or in the bar with the other jocks … guess who is chatting up your girlfriends BWAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH!!!!!

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