Allen Rowe: This holiday season, shop for gifts that will last

With the holidays approaching, one more aspect of coins comes back to light: giving them as gifts. Almost every holiday season, we are bombarded by ads featuring the newest electronics, gadgets or fads, but how many of those gifts last more than a year or so? Think about your first cellphone. Mine was a Motorola flip phone. Today that phone is archaic by comparison and the newer phones seem to last shorter periods before a better version is here. A $500 gift becomes worth only a few bucks in just a couple of years. Same goes for computers, tablets, game consoles, televisions and Beta Max-VHS-DVD-BluRay players.