How Coins become Marvelous (Part 3)

Marvelous coins have four attributes. I explored the first attribute in a previous post. It is time now to explore the second attribute.
     Marvelous coins demand special care. Once a coin has been chosen to be collected, it takes on a new role. No longer money, it becomes a singular object that plays a specific role in the collection. Consequently, the coin is treated differently than when it was simply pocket change. The second attribute is Special Care Needed.

This marvelous NJ copper was once in a slab. Yet, before
that, it was exposed to the environment for a long time,
accumulating deep cuprite deposits with perhaps a bit of
tenorite where the color goes black-- in short, the piece was
going back to nature. All of this: from the horse and plow
design, to its history of use, to the "rust" that accumulated
is part of its history. It has a complicated story, and stories
is what coin necromancy is all about. Marvelous!

     As collectors we are accustomed to all sorts of holders. One of the first things we do after acquiring a coin for the collection is to place it in a special envelope, 2x2 flip, plastic holder, or slab -- whatever the collector desires. But from this point onward, the coin is treated with special care.
     The transition from old money to marvelous object is made clear in how we change our behavior once a coin is chosen to be included in a collection. Consider this ruddy horse and plow New Jersey copper. It was probably on the ground or behind a hutch for a long while, perhaps falling onto, or between, the floorboards of an old storehouse in the 1780s. There it sat with its surfaces accumulating corrosion products as the copper spewed off electrons, oxidizing to the wonderful mosaic you see here. After acquiring this unlikely survivor from the days of George Washington, the collector is likely to go into extreme protection mode: cotton insert, 2x2 non-sulfuric envelope and so on in order to protect this coin -- a coin that has already endured years in the harsh environment.
     We know the rituals well: safe storage, holding the coin on its edges, gently brushing with a camel hair brush (why not horse hair?). This rather obsessive-compulsive manner of behaving is the collector's way. This is how we behave when the object is Marvelous.