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COINS FOR HARD TIMES: ARTIST MAKES HIS OWN MONEY
In his Coin Collector's Blog this week, Scott Barman wrote about an artist performing his own form of "coin drop" in Boston. Interesting!
-Editor
One of Hinçman's newest projects is the creation of Pomme de Terre (French for "Potato") and Pomme en l'Air ("Apple in the Air") tokens. Hinçman describes them as "loosely based on mid-19th century Hard Times Tokens." He had 1,200 copper tokens minted and will drop them on the streets of Boston by the end of the year. Those in the Boston are may want to follow Hinçman on Twitter @metchew for clues as to where he drops the token. Hinçman also had 50 silver tokens minted but has not announced plans for those tokens. Interestingly, this is the second time I found an artist making a statement about or with money using art. Rather than the existing bureaucracy, maybe we should include more of these artists in the process. They seem to come up with better ideas. To read the original blog post, see: Neat Coin Drop in Boston (coinsblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/neat-coin-drop-in-boston.html)
David Kestenbaum of National Public Radio also mentioned Hinçman and his tokens.
-Editor
I ran into artist Matthew Hincman last week, who has decided that things have gotten bad enough that it's time to create your own money. Hincman designed the coin above and had 1,200 minted in copper, which he plans to leave on the ground at random locations for people to pick up and puzzle over. Hincman figures there's no law against leaving coins around. He says sometimes drops to one knee and pretends to be tying his shoe, then casually deposits one on the sidewalk. To read the original blog post, see: Coins For Hard Times: Artist Makes His Own Money (http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2009/10/hard_times_coins.html)
So here's a challenge for our Boston-area readers: get some of those tokens! If you can catch up with the artist, find out for us who manufactured the tokens and how he designed them. Are any for sale?
-Editor
Wayne Homren, Editor The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org. To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor at this address: whomren@gmail.com To subscribe go to: https://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/esylum All Rights Reserved. NBS Home Page Contact the NBS webmaster 
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