Immaculate Coinception

It is said that Necessity is the Mother of Invention. That would make Invention the Child or Stepchild of Necessity. In the case of insomnia -- the inability to just lie down and get to sleep -- the necessity is rather severe. The first thing you must do is forgive yourself for not being able to sleep. After that, the rest is easy. I have a plan which I call Mindful Tedium...

My plan for Mindful Tedium is coin sorting, but coin sorting with a Purpose, a Plan and a Prosperity.

I'll be only too happy to explain:

First you put your hands upon your knees...no, sorry, that's the instructions for the Eagle Rock. Ah, yes, I have it now...

Mindful Tedium.

Get hold of a box of West Coast Pennies. Obtain another box, but of East Coast pennies.

Sort them in the following manner:

Separate out the GEM BU coins in separate stacks according to date and mint-mark. Do NOT accept any below-perfect coin unless it is a:

1960 small date -- 1960d small date -- 1970s small date -- 1983 ddo -- 1992 am -- 1995 ddo or any other coin with obvious above-face value. I wouldn't toss the 1969s ddo away on the basis that it's only an XF-40.

That's the whole plan.

Well, at least as far as collecting and magic-find go. Even a good date or mint mark will lose significant value when it's not totally and cleanly GEM BU in these dates, meaning the Lincoln Memorial Set.

Okay, so I've now determined experimentally that I can put one of these sets together in a single day, sometimes two or three sets where I have to fill in a hard date from my feed tubes.

I could in fact produce even more if I permitted myself to buy the 1970s small date, 1960 and 1960d small date and the 1982 7 variants as a GEM BU set. If I do buy those coins, it will set me back about $80-$100 bucks, a serious dent on a single retail sale, but not bad if you get ten LincMem Set sales a day!

A really fine Lincoln Memorial Set in a Dansco Album, with Proofs Only, should bring upwards of $450 on eBay or Amazon, but don't forget, that's not the retail coin shop or person-to-person price, which could be anywhere from 10% to 100% more, if the market for Lincoln Memorial happened to be strong, which it isn't.

Unfortunately, Lincoln Memorials are in circulation right now, which makes them both good and bad to collect and sell.

It's great, because you can control the price -- it's mostly your time, and if you have nothing else to do at the moment anyway, it's a great way to spend some time.

It involves so many different levels of decision and comparison and evaluation that it creates a very active mental environment, which can be further enhanced by my special method of coin searching, which can be taught by a coach trained by me.

Using the 7 Levels of Attention, a simple coin-search is transformed into a transformational tool.

And furthermore, a transformational tool that not only costs nothing, but can actually produce a rather serious and formidable income in a very short time.

What's the catch?

Your intelligence. Your ability to self-start, self-motivate. Your imagination. Your adaptability. Your smartness... but mostly, it's about your attention.

7 Levels of Attention, all at the same time, and what's more, they're different types of attention, too -- gathering attention, motor attention, scanning attention, target acquisition attention and even tougher types of attention to master before you can use this method as a transformational tool.

But long before you can successfully use it as a transformational tool, you'll get the immediate benefits of concentrated attention and divided attention, and you'll not only feel a whole heck of a lot smarter, you actually might be.

Smartness is a hard guarantee, but I can guarantee that whatever happens, your box of 2500 U.S. pennies will be worth more than the $25 you paid at the bank for the privilege of looking through them for treasures.

Treasures indeed. Let's talk Magic-Find.

Magic-Find is partly dependent on Sheer Luck. It is also partly dependent upon Good Fortune, and a little Coincidence-Control wouldn't hurt, either.

One way or another, Penny Solitaire produces bursts of surprises, joy and wonder, when those special moments happen and Something Wonderful pops out of the coin batch you're examining at the moment.

Grampa found a good one, you hear one of the youngsters whisper behind you, which might feel a bit weird if you happen to be a 37 year old single no children, but that's what happens to the mind during coin search. Not everything has to make sense.

Mindful Tedium. Restful. Mindful. Zen.