Welcome to The E-Sylum: Volume 3, Number 31, July 30, 2000:
an electronic publication of the Numismatic Bibliomania Society.
Copyright (c) 2000, The Numismatic Bibliomania Society.
SUBSCRIBER UPDATES
We have two new subscribers this week: Peter Mosiondz, Jr.,
and Serge Pelletier of Silver Spring, MD. Serge writes: "Doug
Andrews forwarded to me E-Sylum Vol. 3, No. 30, great info,
please sign me up!"
Welcome aboard! This brings our subscriber count to 304.
Next week we'll have a burst of new subscribers as a result
of the sign-up section on the new NBS dues envelopes.
Secretary Dave Hirt forwarded a hefty stack which will take
some time to process.
BEST ASYLUM ARTICLE VOTING
The 2000 No. 2 issue of The Asylum was mailed last week
to all current NBS members, and has begun appearing in
mailboxes. Included with each issue is a ballot for voting on
the Best Asylum Article of 1999. John Bergman will tally the
votes; ballots should be postmarked by August 2, 2000.
The winner will be announced at the annual meeting at the
ANA Convention in Philadelphia August 11, 2000.
We recognize that the vagaries of the postal system coupled
with the late mailing of the issue may make this a very tight
deadline for some members. As a result, we will also accept
emailed votes received by midnight August 2nd, PDT.
(Pacific Daylight Time).
Vote for no more than three articles. Send your votes to
me at this address: whomren@coinlibrary.com. Please
include "Asylum Vote" in the subject line, and include your
NBS mailing address in the body of the message. I will
confirm your NBS membership status and forward your votes
to John Bergman. Remember - email your vote ONLY if
you don''t receive your ballot by August 2nd.
BREEN'S CYNIC'S DICTIONARY
In response to my question about Walter Breen's "Cynic's
Dictionary, David Fanning writes: "I don't know the answer to
this question, though I've wondered about the Dictionary fairly
often. I was a good friend of Walter's and stayed with him for
three weeks ten years ago, during which time I read much of
the manuscript/typescript.
I have copies of a number of entries, mostly included by him
in letters to me. I got out of the coin business in 1990 and so
don't know if he published any of the definitions in numismatic
publications around that time (except in the Legacy interview).
In a letter to me written on Sept. 28, 1989, he wrote "I have
been working on this project since 1982; it is complete but in
process of updating. My agent is enthusiastically showing it to
various NY publishers, almost certain that one or another will
buy it. The latest news is that Oxford Univ. Press wanted it
but that someone upstairs (outranking their editor in chief) was
scared off by its extremely controversial political positions and
its use of four-letter words. It exposes every sacred cow I can
find as baloney in drag."
One of the definitions I have is for "Coin Dealer," which reads
as follows:
coin dealers n. phr. Apt to believe themselves prey of
cherrypickers. Nevertheless, many brag to their peers
about the rarities they just cherrypicked from some walk-in
yokel. Prov. 20:14; Isaiah 24:16.
Even some of the least educated display the title
"Professional Numismatis," like Eeyore's tail pinned to
his rump. Their pitfalls are greed, dishonesty, and stupidity.
God bless the rare exceptions.
I lost touch with his family after he died and so don't know
what became of this book. I'd very much like to read it."
BLAKE & AGNELL GOLD BAR
John W. Adams writes: "In the last issue, Mr. Leonard
expresses his doubts about a specific Blake & Agnell gold
bar. Be it said that there are rebuttals to all the points he
makes - i.e. other Western gold bars contain misspellings
(e.g. Parsons, e.g.Schultz), other gold bars/coins of the period
are 6% or more light (see Eckfeldt & Dubois) and other
known bars presumed to be good do not look like some of
those found in the wreck of the Central America (e.g. Moffat).
These points made, Mr. Leonard could still be right in his
contention. What we learned from this extended controversy
is that the most reliable means of testing any given piece is a
non-destructive assay; there is a fingerprint to the composition
of these items that appears to be definitive.
Blake & Agnell aside, I would like to urge E-Sylum readers to
take a few hours to decipher the whole argument. All that is
required (other than the time) is the last two issues of the AJN
(obtainable from the A.N.S.) and the tape of the Great Debate
(obtainable from the A.N.A.). The points to be learned from
Mr.Buttrey's and Mr. Hodder's presentations, along with
comparisons thereof, are so many as to amount to a graduate
course in numismatics. Note that there may be one more
chapter to be written: Mr.Buttrey is being sued for libel by
Stack's and John Ford; Mr. B's most obvious defense will be
to prove that his various allegations are the truth."
OH, YOU MEANT REAL DOLLARS
NBS Board member Larry Mitchell sends this interesting
note: "In 1999, James Weber of Calgary, Alberta, paid his
tax bill (equivalent to about $75,000 U.S.) dollar-for-dollar
with Colombian pesos (worth about $50 U.S.), arguing that
the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency failed to print its
dollar signs with two bars through the "S."
A dollar sign with only one bar through the S, he said, is used
only by several South American currencies, and thus he is now
paid in full. (In March 2000, an appeals court ruled against him,
despite his having produced several favorable historical banking
documents from as far back as 1910.)"
MORE ON CATALOG CD'S
David Cassel writes: "I have been getting every consecutively
numbered catalog of Swiss Bank (UBS) since 1996, Catalog
number 41. No CD was included in any mailings to me before
the catalog #48, December 1999. Unless I somehow missed
a prior CD, I would assume that #48 was the first for UBS.
If you would like to contact UBS, their e-Mail address is
sh-numismatics@ubs.com."
Michael Marotta writes: "On the subject of CD Catalogs, as
international editor at Coin World, I received a CD of Product
Photography from the Perth Mint. This was Volume 5 in a series.
It came across my desk on June 28, 1999. (The disk was quickly
declared "in error" and was superseded by a replacement.) The
Perth Mint is a commercial enterprise and this disk included
images of their work for other nations. I consider it a catalog.
Perhaps my predecessor, Richard Giedroyc, can shed some light."
NUMISMATIC TERMS: MEDAL, TOKEN, JETON
Our topic of numismatic terms has generated quite a bit
of interest.
Serge Pelletier writes: "Doug forwarded your e-mail because he
knows I am working on a "Canadian Dictionary of Numismatics"
and that the question from Bob Knepper would definitely interest
me. Here is the light I can shed on the subject:
MEDAL: CoinNews (UK) define the term in their 2000
Yearbook as "A piece of metal bearing devices or given as
an award. Military medals date generally from the 16th and
17th centuries, but were not generally awarded to all ranks
until the 19th century. Commemorative medals can trace their
origin back to Roman times, but in their present form they date
from the Italian Renaissance when there was a fashion for
large-diameter cast portrait medals." They further state that a
"medalet" is a small medal of 25mm or less and a "medallion"
is a large medal of 50mm or more. I must add some caveats
in that "Military medals" are commonly referred to in North
America as "decorations" to avoid confusion. Furthermore,
even though "medal" is the more generic term, the tendancy in
North America is to use "medallion" as the generic with "medal"
being the larger size one.
JETON: CoinNews "Alternative term for "counter", and used
originally on the chequerboard employed by medieval
accountants. Nuremberg was the most important centre for
the production of medieval jetons, often issued in lengthy
portrait series. Carlton in his "International Encyclopaedic
Dictionary of Numismatics" simply states that it is the French
translation of "token". Carlton is quite right to say so,
particularly in North America. However, Gallléazzi in his
"Lexique numismatique" clarifies that for the French there are
three types of jetons: jetons de compte (usually refered to as
jetons or counters in English), jetons de circonstance ou à
thème (would more appropriately be translated as a medal)
and jetons-valeurs (appropriately translated tokens).
TOKEN: CoinNews "Any piece of money whose nominal
value is greater than its intrinsic value is, strictly speaking, a
token or promise. Thus most of the coins issued since 1964
can be regarded in this light, but numismatist reserve the term
for a piece of limited validity and circulation, produced by
tradesmen, chambers of commerce and other organisations
during times of a shortage of government coinage. (...) Tokens
with a nominal value may be produced for security reasons to
lessen the possibility of theft from milk bottles, vending
machines, telephones, parking meters...
My simplified and simplistic approach to it is as follows: I only
use "jeton" in English to describe medieval counters; any piece
with a denomination or a "good for" value on it is a "token", and
everything else that is not a coin is a "medal"!
So, I hope this will help Mr. Knepper. I don't know what he
collects but he should definitely consider Municipal Trade Tokens
for his thematic collection."
Bill Malkmus writes: "In the microtrivia category: You may have
gotten other responses, but will comment since I just happened
to be reading a Spanish paper about a countermark on a jeton.
The (Spanish) author distinguishes between the two terms as in
your comment, and uses "contramarca" for countermark as you
defined, but uses "resello" for your definition of "counterstamp."
The paper I'm referring to was published by Juan Jose Moreno y
Casanova, "Contramarca privada sobre un jeton frances,"
Gaceta numismatica 126, 49-56 (1997). (I'm not touching the
"jeton" part of the definitions!}"
Robert A. Levinson writes: "I will take a stab at the differences
between medals, tokens and jetons. Medals are items which
commemorate things, events and people. Tokens are items
used for exchange or goods. Jetons are counting tokens used
originally to calculate mathematics and later, with the advent of
modern math spreading throughout Europe by the early 1600s,
found other purposes as presentation pieces, propaganda
devices and small medals."
Jørgen Sømod writes: "A jeton is a little medal. A token can be
used for some kind of payment. An advertising piece is a jeton
and a communion token is still a token, even the admission is free."
COUNTERMARK VS COUNTERSTAMP
Jørgen Sømod continues on the subject of countermark and
counterstamp: "Both terms should be used on official pieces,
but to a goldsmith's or engraver's test, I would use the term
counterstamp."
Ralf W. Bopple of Stuttgart, Germany writes: "I am on the
E-Sylum mailing list for almost a year now, and will finally be
able to contribute to your fine journal!
As a coin collector with much interest in counterstamped coins,
I have come in touch with the 'counterstamp vs. countermark'
discussion quite often. Yes, it is true that the words are mostly
used interchangeably by cataloguers. I go along with Alan
Luedeking's definition, that is, defining a counterstamp as having
an 'official' background. This is also backed by Burzio's
'Diccionario de la Moneda Hispanoamericana', in which a
clear distinction is made between a 'resello' (indeed the Spanish
equivalent to counterstamp) applied by a governmental entity and
containing some official coat of arms or state symbol, and a
'contramarca', which is more generally defined as any kind of
number, symbol, letter, or monogram, applied by individuals or
political factions for various reasons.
Given the colorful history behind most counterstamps and
countermarks, one can easily imagine that it is not always possible
to make a clear distinction there.
The definite work on counterstamps in German (Ehrend/Schreier:
Gegenstempel auf Muenzen, Speyer, 1975) does not differentiate
between counterstamps and countermarks. In German, the word is
'Gegenstempel' (old-fashioned: Kontermarke), where 'Stempel'
signifies both 'stamp' and 'die'. Ehrend/Schreier explicitly exclude
'Punzungen' (punch marks) from the vast field of counterstamps,
that is, they don't count test or validation marks, like the Chinese
chops, or assay marks like the ones found on Japanese obans or
Brasilean 'Sampex' bars.
Thus, the countermark vs. counterstamp discussion does not exist
in Germany, simply because there is only one term! I hope this
has been helpful, and I am looking forward to the replies by other
readers."
THE GOLDEN CENTS
On July 19, 1832, The Boston Weekly Messenger published
the following article, which in turn was copied from the
Hampshire Gazette:
"NEW SPECULATION! -- Within a few days there have been
runners in most of the towns in this vicinity, gathering up cents
coined in 1814. They find but few and buy them as they can,
giving 2, 4, 6, 10, 12 or 17 cents each; and we have heard of
75 cents being given for a single cent. 12 1-2 cents have been
offered in this town. The story is that in 1814 some gold was
accidentally mixed with the copper at the United States Mint,
and that the cents of that year contain gold. We verily believe
that the whole affair is a humbug, and that the cents of 1814 are
of no more intrinsic value than those of any other year. It has been
suggested that the speculation originated in the following manner.
Copper was very scarce in 1814, on account of the war, and but
few cents were coined at the mint during that year. Some virtuosi,
who were desirous of laying up in their cabinets specimens of the
coinage of every year, could not find any cents coined in 1814,
and offered certain toll-gatherers a dollar or two to collect for
them a few cents of that year. This offer led others to suppose
that the cents of 1814 contained gold. -- We know not whether
this be a true explanation of the mystery. "
The March 27, 1997 issue of The Coin Collector, published
by Bowers and Merena Galleries printed this interesting
follow-up:
"During the last century there was a persistent rumor to the
effect that at the Mint in 1814 a pot of molten gold was emptied
by mistake into a pot of copper from which planchets for cents
were made. Thus, cents of this date were of great value for
their gold content. Every so often someone would offer a cent
of 1814 to the Mint, seeking a strong premium for it.
Unfortunately for the possessors of such cents, the rumor was
baseless.
However, it is likely that 1814 cents did contain at least a
little bit of gold, as did other large copper cents of that era.
William Ewing Dubois, assistant assayer at the Philadelphia
Mint, presented a paper, "On the Natural Dissemination of
Gold," to the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia,
in June 1861. He noted that a cent of 1822, made on a
planchet imported from England, proved to have gold to the
extent of 1 part in 14,500, which, because of the value of
the gold, meant that every 20 cents of that date contained,
in the aggregate, one cent's worth of gold. An 1843 cent,
made of copper obtained from a New England source, was
found to have a higher content; 14 of those cents contained
one cent of the precious metal. Gold was found to exist as
an "impurity" in most batches of copper."
FEATURED WEB SITE
This week's featured web page is a very useful reference
listing serial numbers of known reproductions of U.S.
banknotes. Anyone who answers numismatic questions
from the general public should bookmark this page.
http://www.ronscurrency.com/rcbogus.htm
Amaze people with your psychic ability, like the time I
told a caller that the serial number of the $1,000 Bank of
the U.S. note he was describing to me over the phone
was "8894".
Wayne Homren
Numismatic Bibliomania Society
The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a
non-profit organization promoting numismatic
literature. For more information please see
our web site at http://www.coinbooks.org/
There is a membership application available on
the web site. To join, print the application and
return it with your check to the address printed
on the application. For those without web access,
contact Dave Hirt, NBS Secretary-Treasurer,
5911 Quinn Orchard Road, Frederick, MD 21704
(To be removed from this mailing list
write to me at whomren@coinlibrary.com)
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