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Join us at LEGENDS!
We are excited and honored to be named one of the Ambassadors for The La Cienega Design Quarter’s annual LEGENDS event (for the second year) ! Truly one of the best design events in the country. Thousands of design aficionados will flock to West Hollywood for 3 days of keynotes, discussions, book signings, and social events. Come hang with us and like-minded design lovers May 9-11. Registration just opened, visit lcdqla.com to book your tickets. Hope to see you there! #OnlyinLCDQla #shoplcdqla
#OnlyinLCDQla shoplcdqla#westhollywood#lcdq#zioandsons#zio and sons#west hollywood la#la#beverly hills#designers#design event#interior designers#interior decor#interior designs#la coinage design quarter
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United States Mint launches 49th America the Beautiful Quarters Program coin
New quarter celebrates the cultural and natural heritage of four San Antonio Missions
San Antonio — The United States Mint today officially launched the America the Beautiful Quarters Program coin honoring San Antonio Missions National Historical Park in Texas. This is the fourth quarter of 2019, and the 49th coin overall in the program.
Hover to zoom.
The reverse (tails) design of the quarter depicts elements of the Spanish Colonial real coin to pay tribute to the missions. Within the quadrants are symbols of the missions: Wheat symbolizes farming, the arches and bell symbolize community, a lion represents Spanish cultural heritage, and a symbol of the San Antonio River represents irrigation methods and life-sustaining resources.
In his remarks to the crowd, Mint Acting Deputy Director Patrick Hernandez said:
The San Antonio Missions quarter serves as a reminder of the importance of diverse people coming together, sharing their skills and heritage, to form self-sustaining, multicultural communities.
Additional guest speakers included U.S. Congressman Lloyd Doggett, Trinity University President Danny J. Anderson, Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller, and National Park Superintendent Mardi Arce. Mint Artistic Infusion Program member Chris Costello, who designed the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park quarter, received acknowledgment during the ceremony. Video footage of Costello, along with that of Mint Chief Engraver Joseph Menna, discussing their work on the quarter, is available here.
Additional event highlights included the Mint’s customary coin forum on the eve of the launch ceremony, and a coin exchange of $10 rolls of San Antonio Missions National Historical Park quarters following the event. Products containing the new quarter are available for purchase through the Mint’s online catalog.
Established in the 1700s, the San Antonio Missions were among the largest concentrations of Spanish missions in North America and helped create the foundation for the Texas city of San Antonio. The San Antonio Missions National Historical Park manages four of the five missions: Mission Concepción, Mission San José, Mission San Juan, and Mission Espada. The four missions, along with Mission Valero (the Alamo), were designated a United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site in 2015. The park also includes Rancho de las Cabras, the ranch associated with Mission Espada, in Floresville, Texas.
The America the Beautiful Quarters Program is a 12-year initiative that honors 56 national parks and other national sites authorized by Public Law 110-456. Each year until 2020, the public will see five new national sites depicted on the reverses (tails sides) of the America the Beautiful Quarters coins, with a final coin scheduled for release in 2021. The Mint is issuing these quarters in the order in which the national sites were officially established.
About the United States Mint
Congress created the United States Mint in 1792, and the Mint became part of the Department of the Treasury in 1873. As the Nation’s sole manufacturer of legal tender coinage, the Mint is responsible for producing circulating coinage for the Nation to conduct its trade and commerce. The Mint also produces numismatic products, including Proof, Uncirculated, and commemorative coins; Congressional Gold Medals; silver and bronze medals; and silver and gold bullion coins. Its numismatic programs are self-sustaining and operate at no cost to taxpayers.
Press release courtesy of the United States Mint.
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The first global city
High in the Andes, Potosí supplied the world with silver, and in return reaped goods and peoples from Burma to Baghdad
In 1678, a Chaldean priest from Baghdad reached the Imperial Villa of Potosí, the world’s richest silver-mining camp and at the time the world’s highest city at more than 4,000 metres (13,100 feet) above sea level. A regional capital in the heart of the Bolivian Andes, Potosí remains – more than three and a half centuries later – a mining city today. Its baroque church towers stand watch as ore trucks rumble into town, hauling zinc and lead ores for export to Asia.
Elias al-Mûsili – or Don Elias of Mosul, as he was known – arrived in 17th-century Potosí with permission from Spain’s Queen Regent, Mariana of Austria, to collect alms for his embattled church. Potosí silver, Don Elias believed, would stave off the Sunni Ottomans and Shiite Safavids who battled for control of Iraq, periodically blasting Baghdad to smithereens with newly scaled-up gunpowder weapons. Just as worrisome to Don Elias were fellow Christians, schismatics with no ties to Rome.
The great red Cerro Rico or ‘Rich Hill’ towered over the city of Potosí. It had been mined since 1545 by drafted armies of native Andean men fuelled by coca leaves, maize beer and freeze-dried potatoes. When Don Elias arrived a century and a quarter later, the great boom of c1575-1635 – when Potosí alone produced nearly half the world’s silver – was over, but the mines were still yielding the precious metal.
By 1678, native workers were scarce and the output of the mines dwindling. Yet in the city’s royal mint, Don Elias marvelled at piles of ‘pieces of eight’, rough-hewn precursors of the American dollar, fashioned by enslaved African men. He saw them ‘heaped on the floor and being trampled underfoot like dirt that has no value’. For a long time, Potosí’s medieval technologies kept producing fortunes, if on a smaller scale.
On Potosí’s main market plaza, indigenous and African women served up maize beer, hot soup and yerba mate. Shops displayed the world’s finest silk and linen fabrics, Chinese porcelain, Venetian glassware, Russian leather goods, Japanese lacquerware, Flemish paintings and bestselling books in a dozen languages. Votive African ivories carved by Chinese artisans in Manila were especially coveted by the city’s most pious and wealthy women.
Pious or otherwise, wealthy women clicked Potosí’s cobbled streets in silver-heeled platform shoes, their gold earrings, chokers and bracelets studded with Indian diamonds and Burmese rubies. Colombian emeralds and Caribbean pearls were almost too common. Peninsular Spanish ‘foodies’ could savour imported almonds, capers, olives, arborio rice, saffron, and sweet and dry Castilian wines. Black pepper arrived from Sumatra and southwest India, cinnamon from Sri Lanka, cloves from Maluku and nutmeg from the Banda Islands. Jamaica provided allspice. Overloaded galleons spent months transporting these luxuries across the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans. Plodding mule and llama trains carried them up to the lofty Imperial Villa.
Potosí supplied the world with silver, the lifeblood of trade and sinews of war – and as Don Elias knew, the surest means to propagate the Roman Catholic faith. In turn, the city consumed the world’s top commodities and manufactures. Merchants savoured the chance to trade their wares for hard, shimmering cash. The city’s dozen-plus notaries worked non-stop inventorying silver bars and sacks of pesos, loaded onto grumbling mules for the trans-Andean trek to the Pacific port of Arica or for the much longer four- to six-month haul south to Buenos Aires. In the rainy season rivers swelled, and in the dry season livestock died of thirst between scant watering holes.
Mule trains returning from the Pacific brought merchandise and mercury, the essential ingredient for silver refining. Most mercury came from Huancavelica in Peru, but the Spanish Habsburgs also tapped mines in Almadén (La Mancha) and Idrija (Slovenia). From Buenos Aires came slavers with captive Africans from Congo and Angola, transshipped via Rio de Janeiro. Many of the enslaved were children branded with marks mirroring those, including the royal crown, inscribed on silver bars.
Soon after its 1545 discovery, Potosí gained world renown, but central European mines also flourished after 1450, faltering only before Potosí hit its stride in the 1570s. Silver was discovered in Norway in the 1620s, but not enough for export. The Iwami silver mines of southwest Japan, developed in the 1520s, exported substantial silver via the port of Nagasaki after 1570, first by the Portuguese and then, between 1641 and 1668, by the Dutch. The main exporters of Japanese silver however were the Chinese. Scholars dispute the numbers, but Iwami was not quite another Potosí.
As early as the 1530s, Mexico exported silver too, and considerable amounts of it. Yet Mexico’s many mining camps – Zacatecas, Guanajuato, Taxco, Pachuca, Real del Monte and the namesake San Luis Potosí – peaked only after 1690. In the 18th century, the Mexican peso or ‘pillar dollar’ took the world by storm. Even in the Andes of South America there were other silver cities (or towns) besides Potosí, including Oruro and Castrovirreyna in Peru. But no silver deposit in the world matched the Cerro Rico, and no other mining-refining conglomeration grew so large. Potosí was unique: a mining metropolis.
Thus Don Elias, like others, made the pilgrimage to the silver mountain. It was a divine prodigy, a hierophany. In 1580, Ottoman artists depicted Potosí as a slice of earthly paradise, the Cerro Rico lush and green, the city surrounded by crenellated walls. Potosí, as Don Quixote proclaimed, was the stuff of dreams. Another alms seeker, in 1600, declared the Cerro Rico the Eighth Wonder of the World. An indigenous visitor in 1615 gushed: ‘Thanks to its mines, Castile is Castile, Rome is Rome, the pope is the pope, and the king is monarch of the world.’ A 1602 Chinese world map identified the Cerro Rico as Bei Du Xi Shan, or ‘Pei-tu-hsi mountain’.
For all its glory, Potosí was also the stuff of nightmares, a diorama of brutality, pollution and crime. What Don Elias might not have known in 1678 was that Potosí’s reputation – and with it the Spanish Empire’s – had a generation earlier suffered mightily. In 1647, amid royal bankruptcy, King Philip IV dispatched a former inquisitor to unravel a massive debasement scheme that had metastasised inside Potosí’s royal mint. The plot corrupted nearly every official within 1,000 miles. Even Peru’s viceroy was suspected of complicity. Potosí’s debased coins, mostly pieces of eight, hit world markets after 1638, and before long merchants from Boston to Beijing were rejecting Potosí coins. The fountain of fortune had become a poisoned well.
It took more than a decade to hunt down and punish the great Potosí mint fraud’s culprits and to restore the coinage to proper weight and purity. A new design debuted to signal the new coins, but winning back global trust in Potosí silver took decades. Into the 1670s, even as Don Elias took donations in exchange for sermons in Syriac, Sumatran pepper-growers balked at coins stamped with a ‘P’.
Like the Bernard Madoff scandal of the 2000s, the Potosí mint fraud of the 1640s tells an interesting if not universal story. Nobody wanted to admit that they had been deceived. For Spain’s King Philip IV, the mint fraud – an inside job – was a world-class embarrassment and a sign of the decline of his empire’s fortunes. The global flood of bad coins hurt everyone, rich and poor. Genoese, Gujarati and Chinese bankers suffered ‘haircuts’, merchants worldwide forfeited precious ties of crosscultural trust, and soldiers throughout Eurasia saw their pay halved or worse.
Almost a century before Don Elias visited Potosí, Viceroy Francisco de Toledo revolutionised world silver production. Toledo was a hard-driving bureaucrat of the Spanish empire – and he more than any single man transformed Potosí from a hardscrabble mining camp into a bona fide city. It was a colossal undertaking, but one suited to the ambitions of King Philip II, the first European monarch to rule an empire upon which the sun never set. Toledo reached Potosí in 1572, anxious to flip it into the empire’s motor of commerce and war.
By 1575, the viceroy had organised a sweeping labour draft, launched a ‘high-tech’ mill-building campaign, and overseen construction of a web of dams and canals to supply the Imperial Villa with year-round hydraulic power, all in the high Andes at the nadir of the Little Ice Age. Toledo also oversaw construction of the Potosí mint, staffed full-time with enslaved Africans. Its first coins were hoarded, higher in silver content than they were supposed to be, and overweight.
Toledo’s successes came with a steep price. Thanks to the viceroy’s ‘reforms’, hundreds of thousands of Andeans became virtual refugees (those who survived) and, in the search for timber and fuel, colonists denuded hundreds of miles of fragile, high-altitude land. Implementation of a new technology, mercury amalgamation, introduced from Mexico on the viceroy’s orders, fouled the region’s air and streams. The city’s smelteries belched lead and zinc-rich smoke, guarantees that its children would suffer lifelong stupefaction.
Environmental hazards multiplied as the city boomed, and with these ills came murderous social conflicts, vagabondage, sex-trafficking, gambling, political corruption and general criminality. Epidemics swept the city every few decades, culling the most vulnerable. How did people respond to this lawlessness and chaos? How could they live in such an iniquitous and foul place? In what might be termed the ‘Deadwood paradox’, bonanza brought out the worst in people even as it also provoked startling acts of liberality. It was, after all, the city’s generosity, its profligate piety, that brought Don Elias to Potosí, all the way from Baghdad.
The Habsburg kings of Spain cared little about Potosí’s social and environmental horrors. Potosí silver, for them, was an addiction: deadly and inescapable. For more than a century, the Cerro Rico fuelled the world’s first global military-industrial complex, granting Spain the means to prosecute decades-long wars on a dozen fronts – on land and at sea. No one else could do all this and still afford to lose.
A steady flow of Potosí silver – or, rather, the promise of silver futures – rendered the Spanish Habsburgs’ otherwise absurd dreams possible. Then, all of a sudden, it didn’t. Even before the mint fraud of the 1640s, which helped bankrupt the crown, large quantities of Potosí silver slipped away, siphoned off by the empire’s friends and enemies alike: foreign bankers, contraband traders, pirates. At the same time, silver’s abundance stunted other parts of Castile’s internal economy. Some joked that the Habsburgs had discovered the magic formula for turning silver into stone.
The great Potosí bonanza, source of price disruptions, fiscal crises and costly building projects all over Europe, mostly fuelled commercial and imperial expansion in Asia. Throughout the 17th century, Dutch, English and French merchant-colonists, followed by a few intrepid Italians and Scandinavians, jockeyed with each other and with the embattled Spanish and Portuguese for a space at the great Asian table. All that Asia wanted, beyond tips on gun design, was silver. Europeans steered or inflected some of this pan-Asian trade and empire-building, but not most of it.
Often forgotten were the many thousands of Asian and African merchants and bankers based in Mombasa, Mocha, Mosul, Gujarat, Aceh, Makassar, Canton and many other port cities, including European-controlled Goa, Batavia, Madras, Macau and Manila. In the 17th century, these ‘country traders’, as Europeans called them, moved and lent more Potosí silver than all Europeans combined. Chinese diasporic trading communities in Southeast Asia alone controlled a large share of this global business.
Asian emperors were another matter. Mughals such as Akbar and Shah Jahān, or the Safavid Shahs Abbās I and II, or the Ottoman Sultans Murad III and IV, ruled tributary states whose size and diversity more than matched the empires of the Iberians. Northern Europeans, Dutch ambitions notwithstanding, were far behind. Just as the Spanish Habsburgs began squaring off against the French and English, the ‘gunpowder’ monarchs of the Middle East and South Asia scooped up satellite kingdoms and principalities, propelled to a degree by Potosí silver.
And what about China? As the Potosí mint fraud reverberated, the Ming Dynasty collapsed. The tipping point came in 1644, but the historic Qing takeover was hardly instantaneous. Both Qinqs and Mings spent massively as China’s economy shuddered from war and famine. Ming subjects scrambled for slivers of silver to ward off invading soldiers or to buy passage to freedom. Even a debased peso was a gift of heaven.
When Don Elias visited in the 1670s, Potosí had seen better days. But it was without qualification a global city, a site of suffering but also of wonder, a showcase of technological innovation and cultural sophistication. In the 1970s, proponents of dependency theory, most famously Eduardo Galeano in Open Veins of Latin America (1971), held up Potosi as the tragic exemplum of third-world underdevelopment, a hollowed-out periphery. Yet in its own day, Potosí was a recognised centre. A 1640 manual by Alvaro Alonso Barba, its great metallurgist, was translated and republished for centuries. Numerous painters, poets and playwrights made the city home. In the decades before the great mint fraud, potosinos challenged the king, proclaiming that he (and the world at large) needed them more than vice versa.
The end came not as spectacular implosion but as irreversible decline. Lower taxes and the imposition of a harsher labour regimen lifted silver production in the later 18th century, but the mines were deep and mercury expensive. Technological fixes failed. Simón Bolívar reached a beaten-down but jubilant Potosí in 1825, but British capitalists – close on the Liberator’s heels – could not revive the mines. It was local entrepreneurs and smallscale miners and refiners, many of them indigenous, who kept Potosí alive to the end of the 19th century using archaic but trusted technologies, including the methods of Barba.
By the time that the American historian Hiram Bingham visited the former Imperial Villa in 1909, Potosí had less than a 10th of the population it had boasted three centuries before. A colonial precursor to Bingham’s 1911 ‘discovery’ of Machu Picchu, the old Imperial Villa struck the professor as a silent spectre, not a typical US ghost town but rather a ‘super-sized’ object lesson in the vanity of Catholic Spain’s global ambitions. By this time, mineral rushes had helped to produce cities such as San Francisco and Johannesburg, but nothing quite compared for sheer audacity with the Imperial Villa of Potosí, a neo-medieval mining metropolis perched in the Andes of South America.
Today, almost 500 years after its discovery, Potosí’s Cerro Rico continues to supply the world with raw metals, a bit of silver and tin, but mostly lead and zinc. Half-processed ores wend their way through town and across the mountains and the Altiplano, to refineries in China, India, South Korea and Japan. The city has grown considerably in recent decades, now surpassing its colonial population (and severely straining its water supply). Has Potosí come full circle or is it stuck in the same rut? Will the sale of metallic mud to Asian manufacturers do more for ordinary folks than what was done by the silver-hungry Spanish, British or Yankees?
Potosí remains a globally connected city, a cog in the world economy, a regional magnet for migrants, a space for self-reinvention. Yet recalling its Habsburg heyday, the Imperial Villa of Potosí was famous not only for its mineral bounty but also for its artistic production, its political heft, its piety. Despite their own troubles, the city’s inhabitants gave Don Elias a small fortune in silver to fund his quixotic project in ‘Babylon’. Potosí also remained infamous for its pollution, its round-the-clock workingman’s horrors, its perennial violence, its corruption. Potosí was a mountain of silver that changed the world even as the world changed it. After five centuries of globalisation and exploitation, we can look back on this unique city’s history and ask what, in truth, it means to be ‘worth a Potosí’.
https://aeon.co/essays/potosi-the-mountain-of-silver-that-was-the-first-global-city
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CCAC recommends a “Scene Within a Scene” for Weir Farm quarter
Photo by AgnosticPreachersKid.
On Thursday, September 27, 2018, all 10 members of the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee (CCAC) convened to review U.S. coin and medal designs, including a portfolio of seven proposals for the Weir Farm National Historic Site quarter dollar to be released in 2020.
The coin will be the 52nd entry in the United States Mint’s 56-coin America the Beautiful program, which creates a quarter dollar and a five-ounce .999 fine silver coin for each state of the Union, plus the District of Columbia and five U.S. territories. The quarters are minted for circulation as well as in several collectible formats (including Proofs and silver). The five-ounce silver coins are specially produced on the Philadelphia Mint’s massive Gräbener coinage press. Struck on large three-inch-diameter planchets, they are available in regular bullion format and in a Burnished (called Uncirculated by the Mint) finish.
Eight members of the CCAC attended the meeting in person at Mint headquarters on Ninth Street in Washington, D.C., and two called in telephonically. (One position on the 11-member committee currently is vacant.) Present were:
Chair Mary N. Lannin, of New York City (in her last meeting as the committee’s chair, after which she’ll return to regular membership). Ms. Lannin is a specialist in ancient coinage and serves the American Numismatic Society on its panel overseeing the recently purchased historical archives of the Medallic Art Company.
Donald Scarinci, of New York City, a noted collector and historian of U.S. and world art medals, chair of the J. Sanford Saltus Award committee of the American Numismatic Society, and a senior member of the international Coin of the Year design competition judging panel.
Michael Moran, of Lexington, Kentucky, an award-winning numismatic author and biographer of President Theodore Roosevelt and American artist Augustus Saint-Gaudens.
Thomas Uram, of Eighty-Four, Pennsylvania, a governor of the national American Numismatic Association and president of the Pennsylvania Association of Numismatics.
Erik Jansen, of Mercer Island, Washington, an engineer, businessman, and lifelong coin collector with a special interest in modern minting processes and techniques.
Jeanne Stevens-Sollman, of Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, an internationally known sculptor and medalist, past president of the American Medallic Sculpture Association, and currently the U.S. delegate to the Federation Internationale de la Medaille.
Herman Viola, of Falls Church, Virginia, a specialist in the history of the American West and the Civil War, curator emeritus of the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History, and a senior advisor to the National Museum of the American Indian.
Dennis Tucker, of Atlanta, Georgia, a numismatic author, editor, lecturer, and columnist, and publisher at Whitman Publishing.
(by phone) Mr. Robert W. Hoge, of New York City and Catalonia, Spain, curator emeritus of the American Numismatic Society (retired curator of North American coins and currency), and past curator of the Edward C. Rochette Money Museum of the American Numismatic Association.
(by phone) Ms. Heidi Wastweet, of Albany, California, a leading American medalist and sculptor with more than 1,000 coins, medals, and tokens to her credit, member of FIDEM, and president of the American Medallic Sculpture Association.
The CCAC is a public committee mandated by Congress to advise the secretary of the Treasury on all coin and medal designs of the United States.
Weir Farm is a national historic site in Connecticut first developed by artist Julian Alden Weir as a place for artists to draw inspiration from the rural environment—an outdoor studio of sorts. The Mint’s director of design management, April Stafford, described Weir Farm:
Weir Farm National Historic Site is the finest remaining landscape of American Impressionism and provides a pristine setting where contemporary artists can connect to and paint in the same place that American masters painted at the turn of the 19th century. The park was home to Julien Alden Weir, a leading figure in American art and the development of American Impressionism. Designed and preserved by artists, the park is a singular crossroads of creativity, art and nature. Thousands of artists travel to the park every year to be inspired by the rare quality of painter’s light at Weir Farm and to paint and draw en plein air in the iconic and exquisite landscape. Here visitors find an experience that empowers and inspires them to connect with their personal creativity and enjoy the feeling of wellbeing that results from that discovery.
Design from June 2018 (left) and design from September 2018 (right). Hover to zoom.
Design from June 2018 (left) and design from September 2018 (right).
Design 14A from September 2018.
Our first meeting to discuss the Weir Farm coin designs was on June 12, 2018. In that analysis, we praised the creativity and innovation of several designs including CT-13, 14, and 14A. Lightly modified versions of those designs, plus four others, were on our docket for the September meeting.
Design from June 2018 (left) and design from September 2018 (right).
Design from June 2018 (left) and design from September 2018 (right).
Design from June 2018 (left) and design from September 2018 (right).
The committee roundly discarded four of the resubmitted designs—CT-01, 04, 06, and 06A—this despite 06A being one of two preferences of representatives of Weir Farm (the second being 14A), as well as the choice of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts (The CFA is the other committee that advises the Treasury secretary on coin and medal designs). Many CCAC members praised the four set-aside designs—but the praise was so faint that it spoke volumes to their lack of real enthusiasm.
Design 06A from September 2018.
Robert Hoge, who in June wished for a more interesting presentation in 06, said he was “satisfied” with Weir Farm’s preference of 06A; Heidi Wastweet observed its “straightforward, pleasant composition”; Donald Scarinci pronounced it “pedestrian”; Erik Jansen called it “safe and boring.” Jansen further emphasized his dislike of buildings in coinage designs, urging the Mint’s artists to stay away from mere “pictures on coins.”
That left the majority of our discussion to focus on designs 13, 14, and 14A.
In our June meeting we were all drawn to the “scene within a scene” motif in these three designs, and our Mint artist went back to the drawing board and incorporated several revisions that improved upon what we saw then. Our Weir Farm liaison, Superintendent Linda Cook, had expressed dissatisfaction with the full canopy of trees in the painting. She said, “We’re really not in the tree business. We’re constantly taking down trees to keep these views up. So to see the Weir House completely engulfed in trees doesn’t do anything for the resource as a recognizable location.”
The revised 13, 14, and 14A have the tree cover scaled back, so we can see much more of Weir House. These designs also include the words “National Park for the Arts,” which several committee members recommended, and which was also a request of Superintendent Cook.
These designs nicely avoid the formats that we, as a committee, discourage—we want to get away from dioramas, posed tableaux, or montages.
While 13, 14, and 14A are slightly staged, they benefit from the dramatic tension that comes with a scene of paused activity. We don’t see the artist at work, but we don’t need to. He, or she, has stepped away, out of our sight, or has stepped backward to look at the painting in context. Ideally, we look at this scene and we become the painter. I look at this coin, and those are my paint tubes, that’s my canvas; I’ve painted this beautiful scene en plein air, as artists do at Weir Farm.
Natural and manmade elements combine here. The easel, the canvas, and the painting are the human elements of the park. And of course, the background, the landscape, is the natural element. Weir House and Weir’s studio become both landscape and painting as we look at this “scene within a scene.” It’s really a remarkable construction for a coin design.
Any of these three designs would make a beautiful three-inch silver coin. Will they translate to the smaller one-inch diameter of a quarter dollar? I know the Mint’s program managers wouldn’t present them to the CCAC if they didn’t feel the Mint’s world-class sculptors and technical team were up to the task. We can confidently leave that challenge up to them, because we know they can do it.
Design 14A from September 2018.
Going into the meeting, my strongest preference was for design 14A, because it gives the greatest size to the painting.
Design 14 from September 2018.
But after hearing Mint design and engraving manager Ron Harrigal describe design 14 as the better option from a technical standpoint, that became my preferred choice. Committee member Thomas Uram also preferred 14 over 14A, saying it has better depth perspective than 14A, where the painting’s canvas “takes up too much space.”
Robert Hoge was impressed with all the options: “These are all rather pretty designs.” Heidi Wastweet said of 14A: “It would be a shame to pass up such a creative design.” Donald Scarinci was effusive in his praise: “14A is what we want to see in creativity,” he said, predicting that “It will look amazing in Proof, and even better in the three-inch size.” He sent kudos to the Mint’s artist. Erik Jansen quizzed Ron Harrigal on various technical aspects of polishing and frosting for the designs. Herman Viola gave his preference as 14A and, as I did, expressed his trust in the Mint’s engravers: “We’ll let the experts figure out how to make it work.” Jeanne Stevens-Sollman voiced some concern about the amount of detail that would be visible at the one-inch diameter of a quarter dollar. Michael Moran also warned against the temptation to think the Mint can fit “anything,” without limits, on a quarter.
Design 13 from September 2018.
Mary Lannin broke somewhat with other committee members with her preference of design 13, noting that it lines up the background and foreground more precisely, and has the legend NATIONAL PARK FOR THE ARTS eye-pleasingly centered.
Weir Farm superintendent Linda Cook telephoned in to the September meeting, as she had in June. She expressed the gratitude of the national historic site to the CCAC and the Mint, for insight and attention to the coin’s design—”something outside of what we normally do.”
After robust discussion came a round of voting, with each committee member assigning one, two, or three points to each of the seven design proposals. The results were as follows, ranked from high to low:
Design Tally
CT-14 29 points
CT-14A 28 points
CT-13 16 points
CT-06A 5 points
CT-06 4 points
CT-01 3 points
CT-04 1 points
The CCAC’s recommended design: 14A.
Designs 14 and 14A received 29 and 28 points, respectively, out of a possible 30. Noting that 14A was actually one of the Weir Farm liaisons’ preferences, committee member Erik Jansen moved that 14A be the CCAC’s formal recommendation to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. This motion passed unanimously, and 14A became the committee’s recommendation. The guidance of the CFA and the CCAC will now be reviewed by Secretary Mnuchin or a delegate in his office, and he will make the final decision on the coin’s design. It will likely be announced in late 2019 and coinage will begin in 2020. The Weir Farm coin will be the second of that year, following American Samoa, and being followed by the U.S. Virgin Islands, Vermont, and Kansas. The final coin of the program will be released in 2021, for Alabama’s Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site.
My June 2018 reports on the CCAC’s recommendations for those coins can be found online at Mint News Blog:
National Park of American Samoa
Weir Farm National Historic Site (Connecticut)
Salt River Bay National Historical Park (U.S. Virgin Islands)
Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park (Vermont)
Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve (Kansas)
Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site (Alabama)
Dennis Tucker is the numismatic specialist on the U.S. Treasury Department’s 11-member Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee. He is a life member of the American Numismatic Association and publisher at Whitman Publishing. For more information on the CCAC and its work, visit its website.
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Community Voice Response: March 3, 2020
From the Feb. 7, 2020, Numismatic News E-NewsLetter
Have you come across any error coins in circulation or in an inherited collection? If so, what was it?
Here are some answers sent in from our E-Newsletter readers.
I’ve found a few “BIE” error coins, a couple of RPMs, some strike-throughs, and a couple die breaks. Many of those were found while coin roll hunting in Lincoln cents.
Garry Bowers La Junta, Colo.
In 1980 I received an off-center Lincoln cent sans date during a convenience store transaction. The clerk was relieved that I did not demand another in replacement. Yes, I still have the coin. It may be $4-5 now.
Wesley Ellis Portland, Ore.
I recently have come across two 2019 Lincoln cents with decent-sized reverse die cracks. They are brilliant uncirculated red condition. I was able to find them without magnification and they are great to see in the hand! You can still find some nice errors in modern coinage! Collect what you like, friends!
Tony Brubaker Elkton, Md.
I found a 1983 double die reverse cent in a coin jar I was rolling up for the bank. It was graded AU-58 BN by NGC. I found it in July of 2017.
Rich Vatovec Birmingham, Ala.
I have come across a fair amount of coins in circulation over my lifetime (I am now 72) that I have held onto because they looked different from others in circulation. About 2009 when gold started to rise in value, I became interested in acquiring coins for investment, and also started to educate myself by purchasing coin books, joining the ANA, SSDC, NGC and PCGS Collectors Society, CAC, etc. As a result, I began to review my holdings for possible errors and varieties.
The following three are the most prominent error coins that I found in circulation:
(1) 1946-S Roosevelt dime that is a Broadstrike without Collar, Type 2. Grade looks to be VG-6
(2) 1947-S Roosevelt dime with a Misplaced Text Stop (0.2 mm round, raised feature) just left of the Torch Upper Band. Grade looks to be MS-66
(3) 1963 Jefferson nickel that is a Bonded set of three planchets. Grade looks to be EF-45. Diameter is oversize by 0.41 mm; thickness is over max design by 0.52 mm; Weight is over by 0.14 gm.
Proto Rim is high and thin. Distinct planchet delineations can be viewed at various points along a portion of the coin’s edge.
Gary Silvers Address Withheld
In 1967, I received a Franklin half dollar in change that had a lamination error on the obverse. I was 9-years-old and was thrilled to get an obsolete silver half dollar in change but didn’t realize it was an error until I later became a serious collector.
Mark Saladino Palm Springs, Calif.
After going threw nine $500 dollar boxes of quarters looking for W mint marks, the tenth box had a nice 1994 broad strike. This is the first and only error coin I’ve ever found in circulation.
Johnny Widener Lincolnton, N.C.
I have a unique situation that allows me to find mint errors. I have been in the minting industry (private sector) for over 30 years. In that time I have refurbished many used coin presses. Most have been ex-government (both U.S. and foreign). Over the years I have developed a saying that goes “used coin presses are treasure troves of numismatic anomalies.”
I have found probably 100+ errors, mostly minor, but there have been a few major finds. I have found thousands of blanks and hundreds of coins. In the last ex-U.S. mint press, I purchased in the second-hand market, I found enough change in the bowels of the press to buy donuts for my entire mint staff for a week (after the oil, grease, and dirt was cleaned off the coins.)
I rebuilt some old HME CM1 presses that were ex-Birmingham mint that were just chock full of coins, blanks, and errors of royal mint outsourced products from the 70s and 80s for countries like Lesotho, Trinidad & Tobago, Hong Kong, India, and Angola. I might have the only known error coin from Lesotho, I have never seen another one. I have found precious metal blanks and bullion products when purchasing presses from some failed private bullion mints (typically 1-ounce rounds and bars, but also many base metal medallions and badges.)
It is not just coins that can be found, there is also damaged tooling, like coined feed fingers, tools, and other interesting items. The largest mint error I have ever seen, and maybe the largest mint error known, was on an old Schuler M200 press that had a pedigree of the Karlsrue mint in West Germany. The “feed plate” which is about 12 in. wide by 9 in. high and half-in. thick had one-third of the obverse and reverse of an Ecuadorian 1 Sucre (KM-78b) coined into the plate on either side near the center opening. That must have been exciting when that happened. That plate was still usable and I ran it for almost 10 years before the company was sold.
I have pictures of many of these items. I have used many of these items in a presentation that was first given at the CSNA (California state numismatic association) education seminar in 2015. I am also trying to write a book on the minting process and what can go wrong with many of the graphic errors I have found and many I have had to repair.
Sean Moffatt Oklahoma City, Okla.
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Exhibitors Honored at Chicago World’s Fair of Money®
The American Numismatic Association (ANA) presented 53 competitive exhibit awards at the 2019 World’s Fair of Money in Rosemont, Illinois. Winners were announced at the exhibit awards presentation and reception on Aug. 17.
Thirty-six exhibitors of all experience levels, showing 51 exhibits, competed in this year’s program. There were also five non-competitive individuals or clubs showing five additional exhibits.
Michael Kodysz received the Howland Wood Memorial Award for Best-of-Show for his exhibit “Virtus and Victoria: Coins Relating to the Severan War Against the Tribes of Caledonia.” The Radford Stearns Memorial Award for Excellence in Exhibiting, presented to the first and second runners-up, was awarded, respectively, to Robert A. Moon for “First Notes: A Selection of Serial Number 1 Notes from the First Sheets Issued by Several New York State National Banks,” and to Floyd A. Aprill for “The United States Mint in Manila.”
The ANA also presented competitive exhibit awards for young numismatists (YNs) age 17 and younger. The Charles H. Wolfe Sr. Memorial Award for the YN Best-of-Show exhibit was presented to Hayden Howard for “Money Marvels: Selected Superhero Coins.”
The Thos. H. Law Award for the best exhibit by a first-time exhibitor at the World’s Fair of Money also went to Michael Kodysz for his best-of-show exhibit.
The Rodger E. Hershey Memorial People’s Choice Award, selected by convention attendees, was won by Jeffrey Rosinia for “One Giant Leap…”
Rosinia also received the Women in Numismatics award for his exhibit “Feminism at the Fair: The Isabella Quarter: Women and the World’s Columbian Exposition.”
James Davis received the Derek Pobjoy Award for Best Exhibit of Modern Circulating Commemorative Coins for his exhibit “Exonumia of the Elgin, Illinois Coin Club.”
Mark Wieclaw received the Ira & Larry Goldberg Award for the best exhibit of “Coins that Made History” for “Irish ‘Gun’ Money 1689-1690 (A Complete Type Set).”
J. Eric Holcomb received the Joseph E. Boling Award for Judging Excellence.
2019 Class Exhibit Awards
Class 1: United States Coins, Lelan G. Rogers Memorial. All United States coins and patterns and all coinage or trade tokens used in pre-Federal America, except gold.
First place: Floyd A. Aprill, for “The United States Mint in Manila.”
Second place: Franklin L. Noel, for “A NEW CONSTELLATION: Nova Constellatio Coppers; Designs, Dates, and Die Varieties.”
Third place: Mark Wieclaw, for “An 1883-CC Dollar, the GSA and What Went Wrong?”
Class 2: United States Fiscal Paper, Sidney W. Smith/William Donlon Memorial. All paper money and bonds issued by the United States government, including military currency; pre-U.S. colonial, Continental, and Confederate paper money and bonds; state and private banknotes and bonds; scrip; college currency; and stock certificates. Essays, proofs, and souvenir cards of such items may also be shown.
First place: Robert A. Moon, for “First Notes: A Selection of Serial Number 1 Notes from the First Sheets Issued by Several New York State National Banks.”
Second place: Dale Lukanich, for “Two Ten Dollar Bills from The Citizens National Bank of Joliet, Illinois.”
Third place: Dan Freeland, for “Selected Michigan Nationals from Union City.”
Class 3 : Medals, Orders, Decorations and Badges; Burton Saxton/George Bauer Memorial. Medallic items not used as a medium of exchange, or not having trade value, including orders and decorations, convention badges, and badges issued by fraternal orders or other organizations. Excluded are Masonic pennies and tokens included in classes 5-8.
First place: Floyd A. Aprill, for “Selected Twentieth Century Medals of the United States Assay Commission.”
Second place: Pete Smith, for “A Public Display of Numismatic Awards.”
Third place: Donald H. Dool, for “La Sociedad ‘La Medalla’ Forty-one of the Forty-five medals Issued by this society.”
Class 4: Modern Coins and Medals, John R. Eshbach Memorial. Coins and medallic (non-denominated) material issued 1960 and later, including philatelic numismatic covers.
First place: J. Eric Holcomb, for “50 for 50: A Selection of Apollo 11 Medals.”
Second place: Jeffrey Rosinia, for “One Giant Leap…”
Third place: Billy Herrick, for “Commemorative World Coins with Multiple Dates That Include 1965: The World I Was Born Into.”
Class 5: Tokens, B.P. Wright Memorial. Items, including encased postage, issued as a medium of exchange for goods and services or for advertising purposes, but excluding American colonial items included in class 1. Includes Masonic pennies and substances used in lieu of metal.
No exhibits entered in this class.
Class 6: Casino Chips and Gaming Tokens, Archie A. Black Award. Items of all types and materials used as gaming pieces, including traditional and non-traditional tokens and other money substitutes, and including tokens used in military clubs.
No exhibits entered in this class.
Class 7: Engraved Coins, Love Token Society Award. Numismatic items that have been converted into jewelry, amulets, or decorative objects. Examples are love tokens, hobo nickels, and “pop-out” coins.
First place: Simcha Laib Kuritzky, for “Engraved Coins of the ‘Three Abrahamic Faiths.’”
Second place: Kathy Freeland, for “Connecting to the Past—Love Token Bracelets From the 1800s.”
Third place: Judy Schwan, for “Baghdad Shilling News.”
Class 8: Elongated Coins, Dottie Dow Memorial. Souvenirs created using an elongating machine, whether the underlying piece is a coin, token, medal, or blank planchet.
First place: Simcha Laib Kuritzky for “Feline Elongated Type Set.”
Second place: Cindy Calhoun, for “Apollo Space Mission Elongateds by Earl Anderson.”
Third place: Cindy Calhoun, for “The First of Many Wonderful Elongated Coins…Don Adams’ Start as an Elongated Designer and Roller.”
Class 9: Coins Issued Prior to 1500 A.D., Dr. Charles W. Crowe Memorial. Coins, including gold, issued by any government before 1500 A.D.
First place: Michael Kodysz, for “Virtus and Victoria: Coins Relating to the Severan War Against the Tribes of Caledonia.”
Second place: Michael T. Shutterly, for “Shining Lights in a Dark Age.”
Third place: Donald H. Dool, for “AD Dated Copper Coins of the Fifteenth Century.”
Class 10: Regional U.S. Numismatics, William C. Henderson/Fred Cihon Memorial. Numismatic material of any type specific to a particular region of the United States, such as the locale where the exhibit is being presented.
First place: Floyd A. Aprill, for “Milwaukee St. Patrick’s Day Parade—Award & Commemorative Medals.”
Second place: Dave Holladay, for “Select Items From Connecticut’s 1935 Tercentenary.”
Third place: George Cuhaj, for “Medallic Tributes for George Cardinal Mundelein, Archbishop of Chicago.”
Class 11: Numismatics of the Americas, Henry Christensen/John Jay Pittman Sr. Memorial. Numismatic material of any type issued or used in the Western Hemisphere outside the United States.
First place: Donald H. Dool, for “Nineteenth Century Latin American Scripophily: Stocks, Bonds and other monetary instruments issued in Latin American Cities.”
Second place: no exhibit
Third place: no exhibit
Class 12: Numismatics of Europe, John S. Davenport Memorial. Numismatic material of any type issued or used in Europe, including Russia east to the Urals.
First place: Mark Wieclaw, for “Irish ‘Gun’ Money 1689-1690 (A Complete Type Set).”
Second place: Michael T. Shutterly, for “Vive Le Franc!”
Third place: Gerald Grzenda for “Coinage of the German Democratic Republic.”
Class 13: Numismatics of Africa and the Middle East, Menachem Chaim and Simcha Tova Mizel Memorial. Numismatic material of any type issued or used on the continent of Africa and in the Middle East (from Turkey east through Iran and south to Aden).
First place: Simcha Laib Kuritzky for “Henrietta Szold and Her Legacy: Hadassah and Youth Aliyah.”
Second place: no exhibit
Third place: no exhibit
Class 14: Numismatics of Asia and the Pacific, William B. Warden Jr. Memorial. All numismatic material issued, used in, or related to Asia east of the Urals and Iran, and in the southeast Asian, Australasian, and Pacific islands (excluding Hawaii under the U.S.).
First place: Floyd A. Aprill, for “U.S. Philippines Half Centavos (1903-1908).”
Second place: Dr. Sunil Richardson for “Elephant Copper Dumps—The Link To Mysore’s Tipu Sultan and British Ceylon.”
Third place: Hayden Howard, for “Money Marvels: Selected Superhero Coins.”
Class 15: Gold Coins, Gaston DiBello/Melvin and Leona Kohl Memorial. Gold coins of any provenance and era.
First place: Erwin E. Brauer, for “1795-1933 Major Design Types of Regular Issue American Gold Coins.”
Second place: Simcha Laib Kuritzky, for “Israel’s Two-Decade Long Road to Standardized Gold Coinage.”
Third place: Kevin Dailey, for “Gold Coins of the Mint’s Golden Girl.”
Class 16: Numismatic Errors and Error Varieties, Numismatic Error Collectors Award. Any numismatic material mis-struck or misprinted by the producer, including varieties caused by die or plate deterioration or damage. Items mutilated or altered after production are excluded.
No exhibits entered in this class.
Class 17: Numismatic Literature, Aaron Feldman Memorial. Printed and manuscript (published or unpublished) literature dealing with any numismatic subject.
First place: Michael T. Shutterly for “Buy the Books for the Coin.”
Second place: Marc Charles Ricard, for “The Numismatic Literature of Napoleonic Medals.
Third place: no exhibit
Class 18: General, Specialized, and Topical, Robert Hendershott Memorial. Numismatic material not covered in other classes or covered by more than one class. Includes wooden money, political buttons and insignia, and other exonumia, as well as media of exchange used in carrying out purchases and business transactions by primitive people and later by others as they progressed from barter to coins, or other items generally accepted as primitive or odd and curious currencies. Also includes exhibits showing material linked by design, such as elephants or bridges, or by theme, such as a world’s fair.
First place: Erwin E. Brauer, for “A Tribute Display of Unique & Rare Collectibles to Honor A Fine Lady, A Special exhibit of Selected, Favorite Highlights, From the Numismatic Spectrum.”
Second place: Lawrence Sekulich, for “The Numismatic Chronicles of Medusa.”
Third place: Fred Schwan, for “Those Daring Young Men in their Flying Machines.”
Class 19: Convention Theme, Clifford Mishler Award. Numismatic items of any type that, together with the exhibit text, illustrate the announced theme for the convention at which the exhibit is shown. The 2019 convention theme is “Chicago: Crossroads for Culture and Progress.”
First place: Russ Frank, for “The Capital Stock of the World’s Columbian Exposition.”
Second place: Jeffrey Rosinia, for “Feminism at the Fair: The Isabella Quarter: Women and the World’s Columbian Exposition.”
Third place: Terri Ventresca, for “A Selection of Elongated Pennies and Postcards: Scenes of the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair.”
Class 20: U.S. Commemorative Coinage, Society for U.S. Commemorative Coins Award. Material of any type or period related to United States commemorative coinage and to the events being commemorated.
No exhibits entered in this class.
Class 21: Emeritus, Barry Stuppler Award. Exhibits by individuals not otherwise eligible to exhibit competitively or exhibits that have won best-of-show or twice won in class competition at the World’s Fair of Money. Any other exhibit may also be entered at the exhibitor’s option. The winner of this class does not advance to best-of-show judging.
No exhibits entered in this class.
2019 Young Numismatist Exhibit Awards
Class Y1: United States Coins, Edgerton-Lenker Memorial. All United States coins and patterns and all coinage or trade tokens used in pre-federal America.
No exhibits entered in this class.
Class Y2: World Coins, James L. Betton Memorial. Coins issued 1500 A.D. or later in any foreign country.
First place: Hills Howard IV for “Selected Famous European Train Coins.”
Second place: no exhibit
Third place: no exhibit
Class Y3: Paper Money, Kagin Family Award. Paper money and paper numismatica of all types, issued in any country.
No exhibits entered in this class.
Class Y4: Israeli or Judaic, J.J. Van Grover Memorial. Israeli or Judaic numismatic material of all types. In the event no exhibits qualify, the award may be presented to another deserving exhibit.
No exhibits entered in this class.
Class Y5: Medals and Tokens, Charles “Cheech” Litman Memorial. Medals and tokens of all countries. In the event no exhibits qualify, the award may be presented to another deserving exhibit.
First place: Hayden Howard, for “Money Marvels: Selected Superhero Coins.”
Second place: no exhibit
Third Place: no exhibit
Class Y6: Medieval and Ancient, Charles H. Wolfe Sr. Memorial. All numismatic material issued prior to 1500 A.D.
No exhibits entered in this class.
Class Y7: Errors and Varieties, Alan Herbert Memorial. Any numismatic material mis-struck or misprinted by the producer, including varieties caused by die or plate deterioration or damage. Excluded are items mutilated or altered after production. In the event no exhibits qualify, the award may be presented to another deserving exhibit.
No exhibits this year.
The American Numismatic Association is a congressionally chartered nonprofit educational organization dedicated to encouraging people to study and collect money and related items. The ANA helps its 25,000 members and the public discover and explore the world of money through its vast array of educational and outreach programs, as well as its museum, library, publications, conventions, and seminars. For more information call 719-632-2646 or visit www.money.org.
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Letters to the Editor: July 2, 2019
Answers to Previous Letters
1. “Crystal ball fails”- you can go back to 1970-D Kennedy Half Dollars, 1973 Eisenhower Dollars, and of course, the famous 1950-D Jefferson Nickels. No one has gotten rich on these coins. There are no crystal balls in Numismatics.
2. “Keep the ads coming”- I totally agree, how else can you keep the publication going? The parent group is bankrupt, so I ask all subscribers, to read the ads and purchase coins of interest.
3. The section on collector finds is not necessary, unless it’s a 1913 Liberty Nickel, that’s important. I don’t need to hear about a silver Washington Quarter.
4. “Dealer only accepted cash”- it is well known that dealers only accept cash for bullion coins to keep prices low. They mostly allow credit cards, but the buyer must pay for what the credit card company charges the dealer.
5. For the person that said coins shows play no part in coin collecting who has a nice $78K valued collection. Bring it to a coin show, I am sure the best offer will be $20K. You can go to multiple dealers. I agree that coin auctions are for the rich.
I hope this answers many questions to the recent letters to Numismatic News.
Ronald Rescigno Basking Ridge, NJ.
Editor’s Note:
Thank you Ronald for offering your insight on our previous letters. I’m sure readers appreciate it!
Along Came Mike
I read about the great 2019 coin hunt idea and being new to the hobby I liked the idea, but along came Mike at some late night hour on HSN offering these “W” mint marked graded coins for close to $75.00.
To tell the truth it made me feel a bit sad that I may never find mine in change.As good old Mike takes partial credit for perhaps bending the mint’s ear to start such a program, I now know why. It is to fatten his wallet. The man has NO shame.
Jeffrey Booth Bozrah, CT
Bicentennial Coinage
Bicentennial coinage was immensely popular when the new Bicentennial coins were first released in mid 1975. They featured a dual date 1776/1976 with all new reverse designs. They were selected from a design contest of many entries by the U.S. Mint.
Mintages were at recent highs and the supply seemed virtually unlimited especially late in 1976. As I recall, demand was huge as people young and old were saving the new coins. Even the Bicentennial proof sets were at record sales. Over seven million were sold!
The Bicentennial coinage was in honor of America’s 200th birthday, and what better way to celebrate than on our nation’s coinage!
Mark Switzer Washington
Counterfeit or Only Existing Piece?
I have an 1838 50c piece stamped in copper with a reeded edge. I have owned this coin for about 50 years and at one point had it looked at by a dealer in New Hampshire who told me the coin was a counterfeit because it was stamped with the 1838 dies in the 1850’s.
But after consulting with the Smithsonian’s numismatist I was told it was a pattern. “Why would a counterfeiter stamp a 50c piece in copper?” It is interesting to me because, according to Dr. Judd’s book on patterns that I have, besides one other, the only patterns of that year were designs not chosen for minting. There doesn’t seem to be an existing pattern of the minted design.
Could I have the only surviving pattern of that design?
James Marvel Sweetwater, Texas
New Half Dollar President
Your article written by Ken Potter in the May 14 issue of Nuimismatic News has me searching for the copper alloy 1982D. I have found about 20 but when I weigh them on my digital gram scale, to my unbelievable surprise, I had found one that weighed three grams. Also, I have found a 1982 that weighs three grams and both of them are small dates.
Changing the subject, when is the U.S. Mint going to change the half dollar and put another president on them? Kennedy was a great president but we need a new half dollar with a new president.
I would like to have the U.S. Mint coin $5, $10, $20, and $50s to replace or help along the bills we use everyday. I mailed the 1982 and 1982D small date pennies to a grading company on June 3.
George Parks Kaplan, La.
Editor’s Note:
Hello George,
Since 2002, the Mint only produces non-circulating half dollars for collectors. We suggest you reach out directly to the U.S. Mint with your suggestions. Their contact information is available at their website www.usmint.gov.
Using eBay to Sell Coins
I just read Mr. Cicio’s “State of Coin Collecting” Viewpoint and I agree with almost everything he has to say but I can’t help but wonder… if coin collecting is in decline, why are all of the coins I want still so expensive?
I do disagree with the part about needing to ask children or grandchildren about how to sell coins on eBay. I am 68 years old, I have no children or grandchildren, and I sell things on eBay all the time. I realize that some older individuals are computer illiterate but please don’t put all of us older guys in the same bucket. If you are not making as much money selling your coins as you would hope for and not using eBay, it is your own fault.
Peter Glassman Schaumburg, IL
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Argentina gold tops Sedwick’s May auction
Argentina (River Plate Provinces), 8 escudos, 1832/1P, La Rioja mint, NGC MS 62.
A rare early Argentinean gold coin in a remarkably high grade is coming up for auction May 2-3 as part of Daniel Frank Sedwick, LLC’s Treasure, World, U.S. Coin & Paper Money Auction 25.
The top coin lot is an Argentina gold 8 escudos struck in 1832 at the La Rioja mint. The coin exhibits an overdate of 1832/1 and is graded by NGC as MS62, a rare grade for the type. It is pedigreed to numismatist George Gund III’s collection. The obverse of the coin depicts a sunface, a common design found in post-colonial Latin American coinage. The coin is estimated at $20,000 and up.
The sale will also host a number of ingots recovered from famous shipwrecks. One such ingot is a large gold bar from the Tumbaga wreck, which sank around 1528 off Grand Bahama Island. The bar weighs 1.816 kilograms and contains 9 karat gold with a balance of silver, copper, and other trace metals. The early Spanish colonial bar also bears the tax stamps of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. It is estimated at $35,000 to $50,000.
Another gold bar and four silver ingots from the wreck of the Atocha, sunk in 1622 off Key West, Fla., are also available for bidding. The largest silver bar weighs 92 troy pounds, 3.84 troy ounces and features markings from the owner, Arriola, and the assayer, Mexia. The bar is accompanied by the original salvager’s certificate as well as stock certificates originally issued for the salvage company. The estimate on the bar is $30,000 and up.
Large “tumbaga” gold ingot, 1816 grams, marked with fineness V and three dots (5.75 karat, or 23.96% fine), also marked with R and S and several tax stamps of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, lot #297 of the Christie’s (London) auction of April 28, 1993, ex-Tumbaga wreck (ca. 1528).
Gold “finger” bar #33, 622 grams, marked with fineness XX-dot (20-1/4K) three times, foundry / owner SARGOSA / PECARTA and seven tax stamps, ex-Atocha (1622).
The gold bar from the Atocha weighs 622 grams and has a gold fineness of 20-1/4 karats. Its long, thin shape led to its modern-day nickname of “finger” bar. The surface of the bar shows markings for the fineness, foundry, owner, and seven tax stamps. The lot also includes the original salvager’s certificate. The ingot is estimated by the auction firm at $25,000 to $37,500.
Shipwreck coins will make a big showing in the auction. In a rare occasion, a pair of gold Seville, Spain, cob 2 escudos, one each from the Atocha and its sister ship Santa Margarita that sank at the same time, will appear in the sale. The Atocha 2 escudos is dated 1617 and estimated at $7,000 to $10,000. The Santa Margarita 2 escudos bears a partial date from the 1620s and is estimated at $6,000 to $9,000.
Another shipwreck artifact of historical importance is a 22-karat, 42-inch long gold chain from the “Cabin wreck” site of the 1715 Fleet. The fleet sank on July 31, 1715, off the east coast of Florida during a hurricane while carrying treasure to Spain. On July 21, 1964, the chain was recovered and documented by the salvage company Real Eight Company. Supporting documents attesting to the find and where it was located at the wrecksite are included with the chain. The estimate on the lot is $20,000 and up.
Other top lots in the sale include:
• Lima, Peru, cob 8 escudos, 1705H, from the 1715 Fleet and graded NGC MS62 as well as pedigreed to the Real Eight Co. and Pullin collections. Estimate: $15,000 and up.
• Cut gold bar #22, 282.2 oz troy, marked with fineness XIX: (19.5K) four times, assayer/foundry FERNAND / ALONSO, and tax stamps, from the Santa Margarita. Estimate: $15,000 and up.
• Lima, Peru, cob 8 escudos, 1714/3M, rare, NGC MS62, from the 1715 Fleet (designated on label). Estimate: $15,000 to $22,500.
• Guatemala, gold bust 8 escudos, Ferdinand VII, 1757J, NGC VF35. Estimate: $15,000 to $22,500.
• Honduras, gold 10 pesos, 1883, NGC AU50. Estimate: $15,000 to $22,500.
• Large gold-in-quartz specimen, 323.2 grams, from the Sixteen to One Mine in California. Estimate: $12,500 to $20,000.
• Lima, Peru, cob 8 escudos, 1747V, NGC MS63, finest known in NGC census. Estimate: $10,000 to $15,000.
• Guadalajara, Mexico, bust 8 escudos, Ferdinand VII, 1821FS, rare, NGC AU50, ex-Damon (stated on label). Estimate: $10,000 to $15,000.
• Peru, gold star medal with diamonds, ca. 1853, rare, Salbach Plate. Estimate: $10,000 to $15,000.
• Popayan, Colombia, 10 pesos, 1870, extremely rare, PCGS AU58, finest known in PCGS census. Estimate: $7,000 to $10,000.
• Set of original proof British India silver coins dated 1945 consisting of the one, half, and quarter rupees, all graded by PCGS. Combined estimate: $10,000 to $15,000.
Bidders can register now for the auction at www.auction.sedwickcoins.com. The auction catalog will be available April 8 at www.sedwickcoins.com. For more details, please contact Daniel Frank Sedwick, LLC at [email protected].
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Letters to the Editor (June 5, 2018)
Phase out low-value coins and introduce higher values
David Harper’s May 15, 2018, “End of Coins?” editorial was spot on.
Inflation and electronic payments have chipped away on the public’s acceptance of coins. Absent an overhaul of circulating coinage, it’s hard to feel confident that U.S. coins will be in much use 20 years from now.
Will collectors and hobby leaders push, with vigor, for higher-denomination circulating coins? Will we advocate phasing out negligible-value coins – the cent and nickel?
Appealing themes and attractive coin designs certainly are important. However, fewer and fewer people will carry a pocket full of low-value coins. Game over, or revitalization?
J.W. Houghton Florida
Time for a 21st century makeover of our coins
The May 15th edition of Numismatic News came today, and I started with the “Letters” column as usual.
A local (Cleveland, Ohio, suburb) collector urges us to create coin designs that win COTY awards.
There is a huge problem with that. Our country is not other countries when it comes to “listening” to its coin collectors. Except on rare occasions, the introduction of a new coin design is closed to the public and left to the “thinkers” of the government. New coin designs, or coins, then have to go through governmental red tape before becoming part of a Mint product.
Several years ago, when the POTUS boasted changing America, I thought I could write him about my idea of “changing the change” (U.S. coins following the form of the euro). I received a nice “thank you” form letter. THAT’S ALL.
I agree with you, Ralph. America’s circulating coins do need design change. Lincoln’s face has been on the cent for 109 years. Both Jefferson and his house, with a few minor changes, have been on the nickel for 80 years. FDR on the dime is a year younger than me. Washington, with slight changes to the obverse of the quarter, has resided there six years longer than Tom on the nickel. Kennedy appeared a year after I graduated high school and joined the Navy. Even Sacagawea-faced golden dollars are getting old at 18.
The only other country whose coin designs haven’t changed in over 100 years is Switzerland.
This is the 21st century. It’s time for total makeover of our coins. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, is one of the sitting members on the U.S. Banking and Housing Committee; perhaps it would be some help to contact him about design changes. Who knows? You might get some action. Or receive a nice “thank you” form letter.
Bill Tuttle, Cleveland, Ohio
Why give banks a cut of every single transaction?
If we are in a cashless society, the government will have access to all of our transactions. But that isn’t even the peak of stupidity.
These cashless payments will have to go through banks. Everyone trusts the banks, right? Well, maybe not Wells Fargo …
But the banks aren’t going to do this at no charge. They will be charging a fee for every transaction.
With the transaction fee, percent of sale fee, and additional fees for those bonus cards, we are paying around 3.5 percent for each credit card transaction in our shop.
Maybe the banks don’t get that full amount. Let’s be conservative and assume the bank “only” gets 1 percent.
One percent of every transaction. Where do I sign up! To receive, not pay.
Giving the banks a percentage of every transaction is the peak of stupidity, at least until someone else points out another more stupid “benefit” of a cashless society.
Dick Hanscom Fairbanks, Alaska
ANA should reach out to bring public to coins
If the American Numismatic Association, and specifically the whole coin community, desires to add new collectors to the hobby or business, they must reach out past the publications that cater to the people in the know. How about a syndicated column that appears weekly or so in printed or digital newspapers?
Perhaps in the hobby (there could be), puzzle, entertainment sections. The contents of the articles should not solicit folks to join as collectors but to offer an overview and then go into specifics like coin design changes, varieties, etc. Show an image. Very few non-collectors have ever seen a beautiful Buffalo nickel, for example, which may spark an interest. I’m sure the ANA has the means and desire to initiate such a venture.
Horst Seeley Manchester, N.H.
Millennials show no interest in taking up collecting
I enjoyed reading your satire “Enjoy long numismatic ride to the future”. The problem is, Baby Boomers are selling coins and Millennials could care less about coins. If you look at the PCGS price guide for collector coins, it has a downward trend for many years.
David Hall, the great promoter, first promoted coins to sell like stocks; then, when that didn’t work, he invented the concept of “registry sets.”
The bottom line is that Millennials have no interest in coins. By the way, I put together a state quarter set for fun; my son couldn’t care less.
Ron Rescigno Address withheld
List more grade prices for proof-only Trade dollars
I have long been curious regarding the Trade Dollar section in NN’s “Complete Monthly Coin Market Price Guide.” Specifically, the 1879-1883 proof-only issues.
While a value is listed in grades G-4, VG-8, F-12, VF-20, XF-40, and AU-50, as well as PF-65, no value is listed under grades MS-60 or MS-63. Not only would, I think, most surviving examples of these pieces be in the -60 or -63 grading range, there is also quite a gulf between the value of a “50” ($1,100) and a “65” ($5,900).
If values can be determined for, say, the 1794 dollar in all grades (as you have done), certainly there must be sufficient data available to estimate the value of these proof-only pieces in the condition in which they are usually found.
Addressing this hole in our price guide knowledge would surely benefit the hobby.
Tom Felhofer Luxemburg, Wis.
Half dollars good coins to ask for at various banks
There is silver in them there dresser drawers and catch-all places that make their way into banks. Young tellers are unaware of the difference in the bullion content or “complexion” of Kennedy clads vs. 40/90 percent coinage.
Yesterday, I randomly walked into a branch of East West Bank and asked for any half dollars they may have. Sure enough, they offered me a plastic Zip-Lock bag containing 24-40 percent Kennedy halves, slightly tarnished, in MS-60 or better (two 1965, two 1966, five 1967, seven 1968-D and eight 1969-D). There were also six Kennedy clads and five “golden dollars” for a total of $20. Similar finds of “mini-hoards” occur on an infrequent basis and are generally just one or two silver coins in the mix. Seek and ye shall find, but rarely in ordered rolls from banks.
Jack Rosenfeld, San Francisco, Calif.
James Laird’s passing leaves big hobby gap
My Smartphone would ring, and on the other end a jovial, kind and loving voice would chime, “How are you doing?” Always the same opening, and with those words, James H. Laird of Alamo, Calif., would commence another telephone conversation.
Sadly, that jovial, kind, and loving voice has been stilled. James H. Laird, at age 64, in his prime, was called to “the big coin club in the sky,” as Michael M. “Steamer” Stanley and I remark at the passing of another coin celebrant.
James was blessed. His affluence allowed him to assist and to aid a wide variety of causes and challenges. When the Alamo Women’s Club needed a new kitchen, he wrote the check. When biannually the devoted East Bay Hospice held its major fundraiser, he sponsored a table and welcomed his friends, freely, to join him. With Las Trampas, which helps the developmentally needy, he paid for his friends to attend and underwrote the cost.
When Will C. Wood High (Vacaville) School brought the AP Junior United States History students to the Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum, as “Classroom Curators,” he funded the costs, and earlier, he did the same for the Solano County Annual Drafting-Fest. In 1999, he underwrote the Treasure Hunt at the ANA National Money Show in Sacramento.
For our hobby, he served 10 years as Diablo (Concord/Walnut Creek) Numismatic Society president, as well as serving other numismatic organizations.
James taught me that money is a tool. Do good with it. For me, James instilled that you give long before you receive, that your generosity does make a difference, making a dent in our world’s needs.
In closing, my heart wants to say that he is still here, anticipating another telephone call; but, the cruelty of my mind confirms his passing.
Michael S. Turrini Vallejo, Calif
This article was originally printed in Numismatic News. >> Subscribe today.
More Collecting Resources
• Are you a U.S. coin collector? Check out the 2019 U.S. Coin Digest for the most recent coin prices.
• Keep up to date on prices for Canada, United States and Mexico coinage with the 2018 North American Coins & Prices guide.
The post Letters to the Editor (June 5, 2018) appeared first on Numismatic News.
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Letters to the Editor (June 5, 2018)
Phase out low-value coins and introduce higher values
David Harper’s May 15, 2018, “End of Coins?” editorial was spot on.
Inflation and electronic payments have chipped away on the public’s acceptance of coins. Absent an overhaul of circulating coinage, it’s hard to feel confident that U.S. coins will be in much use 20 years from now.
Will collectors and hobby leaders push, with vigor, for higher-denomination circulating coins? Will we advocate phasing out negligible-value coins – the cent and nickel?
Appealing themes and attractive coin designs certainly are important. However, fewer and fewer people will carry a pocket full of low-value coins. Game over, or revitalization?
J.W. Houghton Florida
Time for a 21st century makeover of our coins
The May 15th edition of Numismatic News came today, and I started with the “Letters” column as usual.
A local (Cleveland, Ohio, suburb) collector urges us to create coin designs that win COTY awards.
There is a huge problem with that. Our country is not other countries when it comes to “listening” to its coin collectors. Except on rare occasions, the introduction of a new coin design is closed to the public and left to the “thinkers” of the government. New coin designs, or coins, then have to go through governmental red tape before becoming part of a Mint product.
Several years ago, when the POTUS boasted changing America, I thought I could write him about my idea of “changing the change” (U.S. coins following the form of the euro). I received a nice “thank you” form letter. THAT’S ALL.
I agree with you, Ralph. America’s circulating coins do need design change. Lincoln’s face has been on the cent for 109 years. Both Jefferson and his house, with a few minor changes, have been on the nickel for 80 years. FDR on the dime is a year younger than me. Washington, with slight changes to the obverse of the quarter, has resided there six years longer than Tom on the nickel. Kennedy appeared a year after I graduated high school and joined the Navy. Even Sacagawea-faced golden dollars are getting old at 18.
The only other country whose coin designs haven’t changed in over 100 years is Switzerland.
This is the 21st century. It’s time for total makeover of our coins. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, is one of the sitting members on the U.S. Banking and Housing Committee; perhaps it would be some help to contact him about design changes. Who knows? You might get some action. Or receive a nice “thank you” form letter.
Bill Tuttle, Cleveland, Ohio
Why give banks a cut of every single transaction?
If we are in a cashless society, the government will have access to all of our transactions. But that isn’t even the peak of stupidity.
These cashless payments will have to go through banks. Everyone trusts the banks, right? Well, maybe not Wells Fargo …
But the banks aren’t going to do this at no charge. They will be charging a fee for every transaction.
With the transaction fee, percent of sale fee, and additional fees for those bonus cards, we are paying around 3.5 percent for each credit card transaction in our shop.
Maybe the banks don’t get that full amount. Let’s be conservative and assume the bank “only” gets 1 percent.
One percent of every transaction. Where do I sign up! To receive, not pay.
Giving the banks a percentage of every transaction is the peak of stupidity, at least until someone else points out another more stupid “benefit” of a cashless society.
Dick Hanscom Fairbanks, Alaska
ANA should reach out to bring public to coins
If the American Numismatic Association, and specifically the whole coin community, desires to add new collectors to the hobby or business, they must reach out past the publications that cater to the people in the know. How about a syndicated column that appears weekly or so in printed or digital newspapers?
Perhaps in the hobby (there could be), puzzle, entertainment sections. The contents of the articles should not solicit folks to join as collectors but to offer an overview and then go into specifics like coin design changes, varieties, etc. Show an image. Very few non-collectors have ever seen a beautiful Buffalo nickel, for example, which may spark an interest. I’m sure the ANA has the means and desire to initiate such a venture.
Horst Seeley Manchester, N.H.
Millennials show no interest in taking up collecting
I enjoyed reading your satire “Enjoy long numismatic ride to the future”. The problem is, Baby Boomers are selling coins and Millennials could care less about coins. If you look at the PCGS price guide for collector coins, it has a downward trend for many years.
David Hall, the great promoter, first promoted coins to sell like stocks; then, when that didn’t work, he invented the concept of “registry sets.”
The bottom line is that Millennials have no interest in coins. By the way, I put together a state quarter set for fun; my son couldn’t care less.
Ron Rescigno Address withheld
List more grade prices for proof-only Trade dollars
I have long been curious regarding the Trade Dollar section in NN’s “Complete Monthly Coin Market Price Guide.” Specifically, the 1879-1883 proof-only issues.
While a value is listed in grades G-4, VG-8, F-12, VF-20, XF-40, and AU-50, as well as PF-65, no value is listed under grades MS-60 or MS-63. Not only would, I think, most surviving examples of these pieces be in the -60 or -63 grading range, there is also quite a gulf between the value of a “50” ($1,100) and a “65” ($5,900).
If values can be determined for, say, the 1794 dollar in all grades (as you have done), certainly there must be sufficient data available to estimate the value of these proof-only pieces in the condition in which they are usually found.
Addressing this hole in our price guide knowledge would surely benefit the hobby.
Tom Felhofer Luxemburg, Wis.
Half dollars good coins to ask for at various banks
There is silver in them there dresser drawers and catch-all places that make their way into banks. Young tellers are unaware of the difference in the bullion content or “complexion” of Kennedy clads vs. 40/90 percent coinage.
Yesterday, I randomly walked into a branch of East West Bank and asked for any half dollars they may have. Sure enough, they offered me a plastic Zip-Lock bag containing 24-40 percent Kennedy halves, slightly tarnished, in MS-60 or better (two 1965, two 1966, five 1967, seven 1968-D and eight 1969-D). There were also six Kennedy clads and five “golden dollars” for a total of $20. Similar finds of “mini-hoards” occur on an infrequent basis and are generally just one or two silver coins in the mix. Seek and ye shall find, but rarely in ordered rolls from banks.
Jack Rosenfeld, San Francisco, Calif.
James Laird’s passing leaves big hobby gap
My Smartphone would ring, and on the other end a jovial, kind and loving voice would chime, “How are you doing?” Always the same opening, and with those words, James H. Laird of Alamo, Calif., would commence another telephone conversation.
Sadly, that jovial, kind, and loving voice has been stilled. James H. Laird, at age 64, in his prime, was called to “the big coin club in the sky,” as Michael M. “Steamer” Stanley and I remark at the passing of another coin celebrant.
James was blessed. His affluence allowed him to assist and to aid a wide variety of causes and challenges. When the Alamo Women’s Club needed a new kitchen, he wrote the check. When biannually the devoted East Bay Hospice held its major fundraiser, he sponsored a table and welcomed his friends, freely, to join him. With Las Trampas, which helps the developmentally needy, he paid for his friends to attend and underwrote the cost.
When Will C. Wood High (Vacaville) School brought the AP Junior United States History students to the Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum, as “Classroom Curators,” he funded the costs, and earlier, he did the same for the Solano County Annual Drafting-Fest. In 1999, he underwrote the Treasure Hunt at the ANA National Money Show in Sacramento.
For our hobby, he served 10 years as Diablo (Concord/Walnut Creek) Numismatic Society president, as well as serving other numismatic organizations.
James taught me that money is a tool. Do good with it. For me, James instilled that you give long before you receive, that your generosity does make a difference, making a dent in our world’s needs.
In closing, my heart wants to say that he is still here, anticipating another telephone call; but, the cruelty of my mind confirms his passing.
Michael S. Turrini Vallejo, Calif
This article was originally printed in Numismatic News. >> Subscribe today.
More Collecting Resources
• Are you a U.S. coin collector? Check out the 2019 U.S. Coin Digest for the most recent coin prices.
• Keep up to date on prices for Canada, United States and Mexico coinage with the 2018 North American Coins & Prices guide.
The post Letters to the Editor (June 5, 2018) appeared first on Numismatic News.
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