Jer Blog

Gift baskets are a hot commodity with predictions of over 4 billion dollars in annual sales last year. Gift baskets are hard to beat as they can be tailored to just about any event, holiday or occasion. Whether you just got a promotion, had a baby, went to the hospital, retired, graduated from college or even bought a new home, a gift basket can be the perfect gift.

There are more and more sites offering premade gift baskets for sale, and even more starting to spring up that offer customised gift giving. Heck, you can even make your own gift baskets, tailored to the event or occasion or person. I have a few ideas outlined below:

Wine Gift Basket: Fill a wicker basket or picnic basket with cheese wedges, gourmet crackers, a cheese slicer, small cheese board, a bottle of wine, corkscrew, book or magazine about wine, or a gift certificate to local liquor store. It’s a nice idea to line the basket with a tea towel or cloth napkin with a wine theme.

The first thing you need to do is set a date and time to devote for gathering up your items that you want to sell. Then decide if you are going it alone, or having other families or family members involved. Also, make sure you have plenty of loose change and one dollar bills on hand. I would recommend at least 5 dollars in nickels, dime and quarters, and at least 20 dollars in one dollar bills. You may want to have a few fives and tens as well.

Now start cleaning out your closets, storage, areas, basements and attics of things you don’t want or need anymore. Don’t throw anything away, as you just don’t know what people may buy. You heard the saying, “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure”!

It seems like just yesterday when I heard the exciting news that the US Mint was planning on releasing a new series of US quarters, called the ‘50 Sates Quarters’. I can remember finding the first few releases, Deleware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia and Connecticut, way back in 1999.

I remember a lot of mixed emotions as a coin collector. Will it be a success? Should I hoard tons of them? Will it be a great investment?

As hindsight prevails, I would say most people unanimously would agree that this series was a huge success for coin collectors, both new and old.

As all good things must come to an end, it is unfortunate that this series will be coming to a close in 2008. The final 5 quarters are slated to be released next year in this order; Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, Alaska, and last, but not least, good ol’ Hawaii.

Metal Detectors and metal detecting as a great hobby.

Many people use metal detectors to look for coins on the beach, parks, yards, school grounds and old battle fields. Most metal detectors are good to detect metal within a foot or so below the ground. The detection depth depends on the type of metal detector, type of metal in the buried object, size of buried object, type of metals in or on the ground, and other objects in the ground.

There are five major types of hobbyist activities involving metal detectors:

• Coin shooting is looking for coins after an event involving many people, like a baseball game, or simply looking for any old coins. Serious coin shooters will spend hours, days and months doing historical research to locate long lost sites that have the potential to give up historical and collectible coins.