Welcome to the Tarnished Truth. YOUR newsletter. In all my decades pursuing this great hobby I have never been to a major coin show. So it is really refreshing to see the type of material that is now appearing even at the smaller shows. At our local show just past I was able to lust after such rarities as the 1901 S Barber Quarter, several 1913 S Barber Quarters, an astounding number of 1923 S Standing Liberties as well as the 1921 of that same series. And to my personal sadness for the lack of funds both a slabbed uncirculated 1915 S Buffalo and a slabbed uncirculated 1932 D Washington. .

I was born in the extremely small town of Lake Village, Arkansas. My family had a crop farm there and I spent my formative years working in the rice, cotton, and soybean fields. But even then, I had the coin-collecting bug. I was "introduced" to the hobby by a friend of mine in the 5th grade when he showed me about a half dozen wheat cents he had acquired. I don't remember that much about them except for the fact that the following weekend, I made the jaunt to the local Kay-Bee toy store to pick up my first blue Whitman Lincoln Memorial Cent folder and I've been hooked ever since.

I never did fill up that old folder. The s-mint cents of 68 through 74 constantly eluded me and by the time I graduated high school, I had lost interest temporarily in numismatics. Although I do remember fondly scrounging up some pocket change and sending off through the mail for a 1975-S proof cent. I was probably 13 or 14 at the time and that was the first proof I'd ever seen or owned and I was simply amazed by the shine of it. I wish I still had that one just for the sentimental reasons.

When I graduated high school, I spent 3 years in the Navy visiting famous and interesting ports of call such as Chicago, San Diego, and --- my favorite --- Pascagoula Mississippi. (Actually, Pascagoula was one of the nicer bases I was stationed at). I did do a Carribean cruise and spent quite a bit of time in the Cayman Islands and I got to travel through the Panama Canal so I can say that I did travel a little bit.

Leaving the Navy behind, I spent some time in college. I started in a 2-year school and got my associates degree in electromechanical technology (fancy term for robotics) and then promptly got a job as a computer programmer. Haven't touched a robot since! I later returned to the University of Arkansas to complete my bachelors degree and finished my Junior year but financial constraints forced me back into the work force and I've never finished the math degree I was was shooting for.

Back to numismatics --- by the time I had graduated college, I was making a decent enough income that I could actually buy coins I needed. So, not having my childhood collection anymore, I simply started over. This time through, I was aiming for date/mintmark sets. Didn't care about the grade --- I just wanted one of everything (insert maniacle laughter here). At one point, a few years ago, my collection had become fairly complex. I had all the current series as well as buffalo nickels, mercury dimes, WL halves, Peace, and Morgan dollars (except for the 1895 of course), etc.. But I'd look at the sets and I'd have a G-4 coin sitting right beside an MS63. Although the sets were basically complete, there was something "wrong" with them. So about two years ago, I radically altered my collecting methods. I went to my local coin dealer (at the time), took everything to him and liquidated the whole mess. Got rid of it all! I'd done tons of business with him so he treated me extremely fairly.

Now I had to sit down and figure out how I wanted to approach this correctly (to me anyway). I knew I wanted sets that had pleasant visual appeal. To accomplish this, I decided that a set had to be consistent across the board. Thus, I decided on matched-condition sets. But of course, in any good set, there is always one or more key coins. Mercury dimes are generally low-cost coins and readily available but I knew that the 1916-D would never be available to me in a condition much higher than VG or so. But I didn't want a VG set of mercs simply because of one stopper. So I decided to drop the "must collect all mintmarks" mentality and put together date sets of matched condition. That allowed me to have a nice complete date run of VF mercs without being trapped by the 16-D. (I decided on VF because either of the 1921's were mini-stoppers but VF is still an acceptable grade for all dates). I've further refined my sets to business-strikes only. That eliminated those pesky proof-only issues as well.

So now I'm fairly focused on my collecting ambitions with my "business-strike, full date run, matched-condition" series of coins. :) I'm shooting for all the US sets and I plan to eventually do the same for the Canadian series. I work on one series at a time so I don't get distracted. Currently, I'm putting together an MS63 date set of Franklin Halves. Once it's completed, my next plan is to do either an AU or low MS set of Peace dollars. One set at a time....one set at a time. I am a member of the ANA, the TSNS (Tennessee State Numismatic Society), and the Middle Tennessee Coin Club based here in Nashville.

Off of numismatics now --- I've been married for five years. My wife's name is Susan and we have a dog named Pooh and a cat named Tuna (don't ask). We moved from the Little Rock area here to Nashville in 1997 and currently reside in Spring Hill -- home of the Saturn car plant. I work in Nashville at Genesco --- the company that makes Johnston & Murphy, Journeys, and Jarman shoes. I am the computer network administrator for the corporate offices. I've been a computer network admin/engineer for the past ten years working mainly with Novell Netware and have been a certified Netware engineer for the past 4 years.

And there you have it. More than you ever wanted to know about Jim Gosney.

Probably still the only true commemorative quarter dollar. I say probably because some people consider the 1932 Washington as a commemorative, and others may even consider the State Quarters as such, but I do not. As an interesting side fact, the reason the U.S. went from the founding of the mint to 1893 before striking their first commemorative coin is that before this time the mint produced medals to commemorate famous people and events of their time.