CCF History - And Why Do You Spend Your Time Here?

Does have the feel of a decades old three car garage out back--complete with a few old lawn chairs and misc. stuff--much of it combustible--piled along the back wall. And, of course, there are the many characters who stop in at all hours...

This will get you close:

http://goccf.com/t/80

This is the oldest existing topic:

http://goccf.com/t/4

Topics 1-3 were probably test posts and are now lost to time.

Re: Why do you spend time here?

When I got back into coin collecting in April 2023, I checked out a bunch of sites. The open forums where anyone could post seemed like an Internet free-for-all, with a lot of bad information and really snarky behavior. I found CCF while trying to find data on the presence of War Nickels in circulation. Someone had made a really great write-up that received a lot of thoughtful commentary. Once I joined, I could see that the forum was well moderated, which is essential to keeping Internet weeds under control. It's a great resource, assuming you are willing to roll up your sleeves and make an honest effort to learn the material. The Internet resources for coin collecting are bafflingly disorganized, so it is quite helpful to be able to ask seasoned collectors where to find information on certain subjects, and then return with questions after reading.

@jbuck, as the most prolific active poster in this forum I think you deserve a lot of the credit for that alongside your wonderful peers. We are all very fortunate to have you and you very even-keeled demeanor in the face of everything that comes at you in this place.

The zero tolerance for bad language and bad behavior is awesome but it only works because moderators enforce it in a stern and fair manner.

Just be aware that Rui, the person with the highest postcount, didn't actually make that many posts. Rui is our Snitz forum tech guru and artificially pumped up his own post count to make sure that if some future software upgrade makes anything bad happen to people with high post counts, it'll happen to him first.

As for me, I joined way back on the 31st of January 2006 - this forum was almost exactly a year old at that point, and still quite small but rapidly growing. I'm on Page 7 of our member list (out of 1028 pages at the moment). I was pointed to this forum by members on a now-defunct Australian coin forum, who had posted about the passing away of catman (whom you will see way up the top of the CCF chronological member list at position number 5). So I never knew catman, which is a shame; from reading his old posts I think I'd have liked interacting with him. Catman was one of the most knowledgeable world-and-ancients guys on the forum at the time, and this forum seemed a bit lost without his friendly and helpful input, with numerous posts from newbies asking for help and not getting answers - so I joined up to help out.

I'm a casual collector and have found answers to my questions on specific coins, series of coins, and exonumia very helpful. The experts are generous with their time and patient. It's a virtual LCS for me as the one LCS in my town doesn't have much charm or selection. The CCF is a friendly forum of folks with shared interests. It's also a fun place to browse on a cold rainy morning with a cup of coffee nearby.

Be careful! They are quite litigious!