They were very distrustful of banks and kept their gold coins in a box which they placed in a huge bag of dog food believing that their guard dog would protect their coins better than a safe deposit box.

This reminded me of a visit I made to a customer's house many years ago to deliver a couple of coins he wanted. It was my first trip there and he wanted to "show me the sights" of his other collections.

He was a collector's collector and had a world class collection of US license plates and barbed wire mounted on large pegboard sheets in his basement. There was a SMALL winding path between the stacks. He also collected reptiles and spiders. They were housed in numerous cages, aquariums and child swimming pools in the garage. Yes, you could only gain access by winding through the maze of license plates and barbed wire!

After arriving at the end of the maze I knew what the mice felt like before he fed them to the snakes. Many of the aquariums were stacked one on another and I thought that at any moment they would topple releasing their captives to lunch on yours truly. Now, I am not very fond of snakes or spiders the size of my hand so I was a little uncomfortable. I began to look for somewhere to sit down to reduce the possibility that I would knock over a stack of vipers. As I was about to sit on the side of a metal child's pool he chided me that the crock inside could, and would, bite me in that position.

I directed the conversation to the coins I had brought and he mentioned that we had to come to that portion of the house so he could compare a couple to what he already owned. I was confused until he removed a couple of Dansco albums from the rattlesnake pit. He explained that when he had coins at home he put them there for safe keeping. He didn't think the average thief would care to deal with the snakes to see what was in the books. I think he was right!

Not everyone needs a guard dog when they have an alligator and numerous poisonous vipers as part of their "collection".