A NUMISMATIC VISIT TO THE NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY

I hadn't been to the New York Historical Society on Central Park West in Manhattan since the 2003-2008 John J. Ford Stack's auctions, so I decided to renew my pleasure this past week while on vacation in NYC with my wife.

On my previous visit I discovered that the Historical Society owned two near mint state pewter specimens of the Wright pattern 1792 quarter of unknown provenance going back to the early 19th century. They quite literally didn't know what they had!

While the 4th floor numismatic exhibit - including the gold Horatio Gates Comitia Americana medal (which adorns Gates' neck in a splendid adjacent Metropolitan Museum of Art oil painting) and a huge gold 1854 entirely hand-engraved ornate NY lifesaving medal signed by Black Starr & Frost and a large gold 1889 Geo Washington Inaugural Centennial medals by St Gaudens still on exhibit - is still unchanged in these many years, unlighted in a dingy 4th floor balcony corner and barely visible, I was shocked by what else I saw.

On the street's first floor entrance lobby, open to wandering homeless drunks and anyone else who ventures in, way over in a corner on the opposite end of the main lobby from the blue jacketed unarmed "greeters" and the museum's entrance desk, in unlighted waist high dark cases are: three silver proof Seasons medals (adjacent to 3-4 valueless well-worn colonial coppers) and both of the two pewter 1792 Wright pattern quarters (next to a VF Fugio cent). You have to stoop down on bended knees to even see the medals and coins.

Now the Seasons medals' value totals easily $200K + and the two 1792 patterns over $2.5 million (based on the much more common silver center cent that just sold for $1.2M) , the Historical Society curators seem to be inattentive to both their significance and their value and most particularly the unsecure , downright hazardous conditions under which they are exhibited. Both of these waist high glass exhibit cases have a button for lights to be activated and neither lighting button even works.

What a shame.

In contrast, on the 3rd floor is an extensive well-lighted exhibit of early American silver chalices, trays, etc., all magnificently hand-engraved and unique and quite literally saliva-generating to those collectors who appreciate engraved silver scenics on their medals, as I do . Many of the silver items were literally transfixing in their beauty and historical significance. This alone was worth the visit and the $10 senior cost of entry.

For more information on the new-York Historical Society, see: www.nyhistory.org

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