When I first started up my own coin firm once again, lo those many weeks ago, one of my goals was to keep overhead to an absolute bare minimum. I wanted to do everything myself. My focus was (and still is) on the coins and the coins alone.

That's all well and good, but like most people, I am better at some tasks than others. One of the things I am not good at is anything at all artistic.. I have no talent for it; I greatly admire those who do have it.

Nevertheless - in the first few days after my website was up and running I realized I needed some sort of graphic to insert in place of a photo of a newly purchased coin that I did not yet have. Sounds simple enough. "I'll do it myself!"Well, here is the result:

I want you to know that I did not purposely try to make it crappy. It just came out this way.

So - did I realize that it was so bad that it looked like a chimp drew it? No. I told myself that it was quaint. Charming even. Perhaps akin to folk art.

And I began to use it. Really. And since I had very few photos of my new purchases in the beginning, that graphic showed up on my site a lot.

Luckily a guardian angel was looking out for me. A guardian angel in the form of Matt Powell, a coin dealer/website builder/graphic artist extraordinaire. Here is a link to Matt's website: http://www.digitalstudionw.com

He sent me an email saying that he took the liberty of designing some graphics for me that I might want to use on my website instead of what I was using. I was surprised & delighted, and I gladly accepted his charity. Here is the one I chose:

Also luckily, not many of you saw the old graphic, as I was probably averaging about 3 views per day on my website at the time. [Not to brag or anything, but these days I'm getting almost triple that].

My takeaway from all this: Do such a lousy job that you get unsolicited charity from someone more talented.

Or maybe -- just maybe -- there are genuinely nice people out there who enjoy helping others. Thus with the help of others my website continues to evolve.

Lincoln Cent Struck on a Silver Netherlands 25c Planchet

Bechtler $5 Gold Contemporary Counterfeit

To visit Dave's web site, see:www.davewcoins.com