Why is it so difficult to find active genealogy researchers of my family surname?

I have been pondering this Q? for many years now.

In years past, I have been blessed by corresponding with a few individuals, via postal mail, who shared a common goal, researching my specific family surname, ARNEY.  These people openly shared their research with me, even going as far as sending me copies of actual documents (they made copies of themselves), old photographs, etc.

With the introduction of the Internet, I believed this would make doing research much easier as well as connections with others doing the same research.  After all, if you cannot afford to travel to an area, to perform research yourself, finding someone else who lives in that area, and is also interested in actively researching the same family, is a "win-win" situation for both of you.

However, I have not found this to be the case.
I have found that many people are what I term, "stand on the shoulders of others", meaning they are not actually interested in doing any active research, but simply accept (blindly) the research they find of others, without regard to checking the sources, etc.

They are not willing to do any active research, and when shown "errors" in past research, they simply ignore it, or are not concerned with finding the true answers.

I, myself, have a very limited income, so I cannot afford to travel around the Country, visiting local libraries and Genealogy Societies, nor can I afford each of these places to make copies of anything I might find useful because of the costs they charge for people who are not residents of that State.

I have joined many web-groups (ex. Yahoo) and email groups (ex. Rootsweb), that note they were created for my specific surname, ARNEY.  So, I foolishly (naively) joined these groups thinking that other people that joined them were actually interested in doing "active" genealogy research.  Together, we could tear down the genealogy "brick-walls", and share our findings with other people. Well, I was wrong, it seems no one (that I have found) is interested in doing any active research.  Therefore, I press on, alone.

Buying old coins for genealogy purposes

Recently, I was considering what "tangible" items do I have that future people looking at my research could actually hold in their hands.  I'm not talking about copies of documents, but actual items from the past.  Since I don't have really any item from an ancestor, I thought of something that is possible to obtain, coins.  That's right, United States coin currency.  So, I thought about it, what years would I want to look for, and for how many ancestors would I attempt this?  So, since I'm researching my family surname, ARNEY, I decided to concentrate on direct ancestors, as far back as I could trace and obtain, at a reasonable cost.  I chose to concentrate on birth and death years, perhaps marriage years (if known).  As far as my first ancestor to arrive in Tennessee, I went a little further, the year he went to the Cumberland area of Tennessee, and when specific Tennessee Counties formed, that he lived in, but the County borders, therefore names changed (ex. Smith County > Jackson County > Overton County), he died in Overton County, Tennessee.

I wasn't actually looking for "perfect" coins, and any specific denomination.  I only looked for coins, of the years I needed, without regard to their actual condition, as long as they were readable and a low cost to me.

What do you think of this idea?