December 13, 2010: "Your Name Here"

Author:
J. Agre

Concept:
I think we have pretty well documented on this site that we like pedigreed coins for a variety of reasons:

It tells us something about a coin if a prominent collector (or 2, or 4) deemed it to be worthy of their own set.
It makes it possible to trace a coin through the years and verify that it still looks today like it did years ago.
It provides an additional guarantee that your coin was not made in China last Tuesday.

We also think it’s pretty cool that you (as highlighted by this ad) can acquire a piece that has been owned by a veritable numismatic Who’s Who and add your name to the pedigree chain.

Captions that didn’t make the cut:
We began by merely commenting on the number of prominent previous owners with "With a pedigree chain so long it sounds like a law firm." This presented a bit if a problem, though, as it didn’t really allow us enough space to actually list Messrs. Newcomb, Starr, Halpern and Naftzger, which of course was mandatory.

But then it occurred to me that a long string of names would be more compelling to the reader if he could picture his own name at the end of it.

So we went with the interactive concept to your left.