I don't understand paper wallets.
Hi FinShaggy, what do you mean? That you don't see the usefulness of papaer wallet and cold storage?
No, I don't understand how you get a coin from a wallet to a serial number or barcode or whatever. I don't really understand how they put information in a barcode either...
go here: https://www.bitaddress.org
notice how a Bitcoin address (double hash of public key) and private key are generated with the corresponding QR codes (just another way of representing the key).
keep clicking. each click will generate a brand new, unique, never been seen before keypair. you can use anyone of these pairs for your own. just send coins to the address and save the private key somewhere safe. from then on, you can keep sending as many coins to that address as you want and the sum will be collected there waiting for you to cash them out using the private key one day.