WAYNE'S NUMISMATIC DIARY: APRIL 15, 2012

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V15 2012 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 15, Number 16, April 15, 2012, Article 17

Tuesday night was the April meeting of my northern Virginia numismatic social group, Nummis Nova. We met at Legal Seafoods in the Tyson's Galleria. Eric Schena was our host and he'd arranged for a private room.

The venue was great. Our table was arranged in a large square, making it easy for everyone to see and talk to everyone else. The room has some extra tables set up, and these were used to display some exhibits. I laid out some recent purchases including the bronze and silvered Eric Newman medals made by the Rittenhouse Society and the recent Medal Collectors of America medal. I was most proud to show my "splasher" or lead die trial of a Carnegie Hero medal.

Jon Radel displayed his copy of Robert Pepping's New Zealand History Notes on the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Bank Notes. Eric had declared a theme of "Death and Taxes" and displayed an original tax collector's ledger from a town in Virginia. Later he passed around two pieces from his wife Heather's collection of undertaker tokens. We gave her the nickname "Morticia".

On a different topic Eric also passed around a token with a possible connection to the Andy Griffith Show. He writes:

Here's the I. T. Banks token from Mayberry, in Patrick Co., VA. The actress who played Thelma Lou said that while Andy Griffith modeled the TV town after Mt. Airy, he chose the name from this Mayberry. He himself said someone else chose the name. That said, Mayberry is ~20 miles north of Mt. Airy and the folks at the Mayberry Trading Post said he and his father used to come to the store.

In any event, I do like the tie-in of tokens to TV shows. As far as I know, the Banks tokens are the only ones from Mayberry. Next mission: get a token from the Virginia Soapstone Co. in Schuyler (Nelson Co.) - that's where the father of Earl Hamner of "The Waltons" fame worked. Walton's Mountain/Rockfish Depot was based on Schuyler and there's a museum there now.

I had my denomination collection out of the bank to photograph for an article. Most collectors don't realize that so many denominations and variations exist (for example, in addition to the common 5¢, it can be found expressed as Nickel, Half Dime, V¢., and .05¢).

This is one of the neatest; a 37mm silver token with one dollar expressed as 8 bits, with a bit on each of the three horses and 5 bits below. The Seattle merchant that issued it, John W, Orth, also issued tokens with one bit (12½¢) depicted.

Other attendees were Mike Packard, Julian Leidman, Joe Levine, Gene Brandenburg, Wayne Herndon and Roger Burdette. I sat next to Roger and we talked a good bit about one of the book manuscripts he has in progress.

Gene brought along a book for me: Report of the Director of the Mint Upon the Production of Precious Metals in the Year 1891. I had to let him know it was a commonly seen item, although this copy was in a nice binding with marbled boards. He had fun crying to everyone how I'd dissed his book, and others went overboard noting, "Well, he did say it had a swell binding..."

Mike Packard brought the best item of numismatic literature - a nice copy of the 1933 reprint of Sylvester Crosby's book on 1793 Cents and Half Cents. He'd bought it on eBay for a song. Great find!

The evening ended all too soon - it was another wonderful night of numismatic fellowship (not to mention decent food and an abundance of wine.

Wayne Homren, Editor