GREEN [SPACE] DUCK CORPORATION WAS ORIGINALLY GREENDUCK

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V13 2010 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 13, Number 51, December 19, 2010, Article 20

You added "Corporation" to headline on my Green Duck article. This completely changed the meaning and is not true. "Corporation" was not in their name until 1962.

Sorry! Headlines are a curious animal. Since all of our E-Sylum articles end up on the NBS site as separate web pages, the headlines serve multiple purposes. In addition to informing the reader about the story's content, they must also serve the needs of web searchers. Adding "Corporation" lets search engines and their users know that the article is about a company named Green Duck as opposed to say, an animal that quacks.

In the early years of The E-Sylum I enjoyed writing pithy tongue-in-cheek headlines for stories, and although it was fun I reluctantly stopped and strove instead to ensure that the headline (boringly) more-or-less matches the content of the story. On the web our audience goes far beyond our weekly subscriber list - we're building an archive for both present and future numismatists, researchers and ordinary knowledge-seekers. In this case, a more precise headline would be "GREEN [SPACE] DUCK CORPORATION WAS ORIGINALLY GREENDUCK", -Editor

I cataloged a collection this week that had Greenduck items issued well into the 1930s. The use of the two-word version of the Greenduck name could even have occurred after World War II. Perhaps one of our more knowledgeable readers has more information of the actual date of this event. I know this datum of information is not world shaking, but this enters into the realm of "collector lore" that is such a delight for all collectors to learn.

The tiny letters of a maker's name are often quite small and difficult to read. An example of this was the 1963 first edition of the standard work on So-Called Dollars by Hibbler and Kappen. The authors included five medals made by Greenduck that fall in this category. Four of the five medals they described as made by "Greenbuck" -- mistaking the D for a B. (Where were their magnifying glasses?) These included HK 467 and 468, 656, 662 and 693. They got it right for HK 673.

The second edition, published 2008, got the Greenduck name right on all five issues.