Interesting post Mike. I can see a lot of your personality in that posting. My perspective is VERY different than yours. Many years ago I was laying on the bottom of the Cooper river one Saturday afternoon. It was about 25 feet deep, I had my HID light on (of course), my light had attracted a half dozen eels, I was trying to fan the bottom, but the eels were fighting over the light, so it turned into me fighting and pushing the eels out of the way so I could get to the sand and fan the bottom. It was then I had the thought "how many teacups does a man need?" From that point in time forwards I changed my perspective almost completely to enjoying the sunshine, the people, the fellowship, the diving, the fossiling, and the recreation.
I do have thoughts though when it comes to collecting combined with desire. I use to think about the Saber Tooth Cat skull when digging in ice age material, have had thoughts of the sloth claw, a large dino skull (dreaming) would be awesome, a mammouth tooth, some higher quality large megs, some hemi's (they have eluded me), I really like ivory (ever since I layed my eyes on some ivory poker chips), i like my fossilized murex shell... would like more fossilized shells, a CSA belt buckle, more old and attractive bottles, would like to find some gold (met a guy on Subaboard that found a couple of dozen gold coins while diving), emeralds (met a diver that worked with Mel Fisher and said 20yrs back she saw LOTS come off the bottom)
do i think the fellowship is more valuable that all that crap... yes
Fisher found emeralds on the Atocha
Thompson found gold offshore NC approximately 1990
