The E-Sylum:  Volume 7, Number 35, August 29, 2004, Article 7

NBS BOOTH AT THE PITTSBURGH ANA CONVENTION

  Howard A. Daniel III writes: "Before the ANA Convention
   in Pittsburgh, I was not in a good mood because the forms
  were lost for our booth with IBNS and NI, but the meeting
  contractor did process the forms for the NI and IBNS meeting,
  which was in the same envelope.  Someone misplaced the
  booth form?  But Rachel Irish at the ANA came to the rescue
  and matched me up with Ray Czahor of the Philippines
  Collectors Forum and I shared a booth with him.

  [IBNS = International Bank Note Society;
   NI = Numismatic International.  -Editor]

  I arrived on Tuesday at my usual time and went to the bourse
  to help setup the exhibits area but it was already done!  The
  union labor had worked Monday night and had already put
  up all of the tables and cases!  So I went back to my vehicle in
  the   convention center parking garage and brought two loads
  of stuff to booth 15.  During the afternoon Ray and I set up
  our booth with each of us using one half of it, but after his
  forum on Friday, he packed up and departed and I had my
  usual complete booth to split it up between NBS, IBNS and
  NI.

  During each convention I give away one old Standard Catalog
  of World Paper Money and one old Standard Catalog of World
  Coins to a school-age person who I think shows much more
  than normal enthusiasm for numismatics.  So when I do not have
  many children at the booth, I ask each child and/or parent about
  their ethnic background.

  After they answer, I try to find an IBNS banknote and some
  NI coins that will complement that background, and tell them
  that collecting them and mixing it in with the family history and
  photographs can prove to be more valuable time and money
  spent than just collecting anything else.  There is usually a
  positive response and I continue to talk about how they can
  collect a type set to start, while the child digs through the NI
  box of world coins for his or her ten coins.

  During this convention, a boy of about 12 with some Boy Scout
  things on him came to the table.  I mentioned to him that the
  Boy Scout Coin Collecting Merit Badge now allowed him to
  collect US paper money, world coins and paper money, and
  tokens   to acquire his badge.  He did not know this and got
  quite excited about it.  I asked him what was his ethnic
  background and he said "Jewish."  I told him there were no
  Israeli banknotes in the IBNS stack but there were some coins
  in the NI world coins box.  He really jumped into the box and
  his father assisted him.

  As I talked to them, I could see they could really be interested
  in numismatics, and now more so that the boy could assemble
  an Israeli collection for his merit badge and the father could
  use it to talk to him about their heritage.  So I presented the
  two catalogs to them, and told them why they were getting
  the references.  I also said they were two years old but they
  can still learn something about Israeli coins and paper money,
  and they could create a want list from them.

  Besides buying the general world catalogs in the future, I also
  suggested that they should find some numismatic book dealers
  and buy several specialty catalogs too.  Not only will they
  discover more to collect, but they will find much more
  background information about each piece, and some things
  they can relate to their heritage.  I was very happy to see two
  enthusiastic people leave our booth with a goal of becoming
  numismatists specializing in Israeli coins and paper money.

  During the first few days of the convention, a man come to
  the booth twice and asked me about the NBS function with
  a dinner and a book auction.  It had really slipped my mind
  as to what he was talking about so I could not answer him.
  After his second visit, I walked around and asked some
  people about it until I discovered it was an American
  Numismatic Society function for their library.  I got all of
  the information about it and had it at the booth but the
  man never returned.

  I was planning to attend some of the NBS meetings and
  functions at the convention but I missed every one of them.
  Just as I planned to leave the booth, someone would come
  to it and we would get into a conversation and I would
  remember the meeting after it was over.  I hope everyone
  had a good time at the meetings because I did not.  But I
  did find time to attend a few meetings.

  On Saturday, I was moderator for the IBNS and NI meetings.
  The IBNS meeting had about 30+ attendees and the NI had
  about 10+.  I introducing myself and NI or IBNS and then
  had a show and tell session.  Everyone introduced themselves
  and many briefly talked about a piece they own, or a particular
  project.  Then I gave a talk: You Too Can Write an Article,
  Booklet or Book.  Part of my talk was that periodicals like
  our journal can even use one page articles about one piece,
  so they did not have to start by writing a major piece.  The
  talk was very well received and several of us volunteered
  to be anyone's editor who wants to try their hand at writing.

  For the entire convention, I passed out about 3000 world
  coins for NI and about 300 world notes for IBNS to children.
  My  standard spiel is that I ask them to research them and
  use them for show and tell in one or more of their classes.
  Many of the coins came from the shipment of about 40
  pounds of coins from an NI member who lives near Chicago, '
  and the notes came from several IBNS members, to include
  myself.

  If I had time, I also asked each adult if he or she was a
  veteran and each child if they had a veteran in their family.
  If yes, I gave them an Military Payment Certificate (MPC)
  or Allied Military Currency (AMC) note and asked them to
  research it, to also talk about it in a class, and show it to the
  one or more veterans in their family.  And I told them they
  could subscribe to the free MPCGram, an emailed newsletter
  about military monies to learn more about them.

  As I have already written, the Girl and Boy Scout Coin
  Collecting Merit Badge has been revised and they can use
  other than U.S. coins to earn their badge.  What I have
  not written about is that some of the work on it was done
  by George Cuhaj, of Krause Publications, who is also a
  Boy Scout advisor.  How many of you have this numismatic
  pamphlet in your library?

  My goal at every ANA is to sign up a total of six people
  for NBS, NI and IBNS.  This time I beat it by one with four (!)
  for NBS,  two for NI and one for IBNS.  And I probably
  found about a dozen more people who wrote down the
  information to subscribe to The E-Sylum!  See you at the
  next ANA Convention!"

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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