We've not done "recycling", defined very broadly, in several years. I recall that resulting in a couple of very interesting items being shown around. If I were to be there, I could show everyone some of the odd things the Russians did to their 15 Kopek coins after they decided they were better used as telephone tokens.

Ford Motor Company World War I medal – National Foreign Trade Convention – Detroit, Made from (recycled bronze) of the USA Emergency Fleet, associated with the convention of 1927.

Bank of the Old Dominion at Rectortown, 1862 Five Dollar Note made from a recycled bank check. Neat!

Many more marvelous recycled coins were seen including coins with counterstamps (Mansion House, Vote the Land Free, Deanston Cotton Mill, Admit to the Model Artist’s, etc.), coins that were made into buttons and spoons, used as brine colorers, hallmark testers, admission tickets, and other forms of checks and money substitutes.

In follow up to the topic of animals on coins, first goat tags and then “chickens” including the enigmatic Rooster counterstamps discussed in previous E-Sylums - Gene Brandenburg still asserts those rooster counterstamps are from pre-Civil War New York; here is a curious “medal with chicken hat” (No offense intended to Frenchmen):

Art-Nouveau Silvered-Bronze medal by Louis Botee, (1852 – 1941) Officer of the Legion of Honor in 1903 – Fecit: Circa 1905. Obverse: Bust of Gallia looking right to a shining sun, wearing a winged helmet crowned with laurel and rooster. Reverse: Engraved by Adolphe Rouet, a flying victory holding a crown above a cartouche with oak leaves. “Syndicat de la Boucherie de Rouen et de la Region” meaning “Trade Union of Rouen, France in Normandy and “Concours d’animaus gras du Dimanche de Rameaux” meaning “Contest of Fat Animals during the Sunday before Easter.” Edge: Triangle mark, 2” diameter. Do any E-Sylum readers know what this contest entails?

As far as I'm aware, not much (if any at all) has been published in the past about the Model Artist Token. Rulau and Brunk merely allude to their origin and purpose.

Starting in the 1850s several entertainment ventures opened in New York which made tableaux vivants their primary bill. Tableaux vivants — the forerunner of burlesque — featured actors, mostly women, posing nude or semi-nude under the guise of replicating master artworks. Theatres such as the Temple of the Muses and The Wallhalla specialized in these types of “shows.” Given the predominantly conservative social-norms of the era, nary a better gimmick for enjoining eroticism with “culture” could have been invented.

Another name for tableaux vivants, ‘Model Artist’ shows put on the air of legitimacy by having “artists” re-enact semi-nude scenes found in classical paintings. Only but the most naive person couldn’t see through the contrivance. Marquee language often hinted to customers what to expect from the shows — and the customers certainly came. Indeed, the term “Model Artists” was simply code for voyeurism, while tableaux vivants was eroticism with a slightly tamer twist.

Several folks at my end of the table discussed recycling in a negative connotation whereby a lifetime collection of information, notes, and printed material obtained in numismatic research may be tossed out by heirs who don’t know or care what grandpa knew about his coin hobby. Some of us admitted that 40 years of images and databases were not properly backed-up and could be gone in a house fire.

That led to thinking about cloud storage and the need for offsite custodians of lifetime numismatic “e-collections” with orders to publish or make available to the public, any magnum opus that was near ready for release, if the author should lose it, one way or another. Some candidates for this service might include museum collections, image files of medals, tokens, Southeast Asian coins, dug coins, and who knows what all might be needing secure archiving and custodial direction someday.

As an example see Lou Jordan’s website where he shares colonial coin images and attributions from the Gore collection of Notre Dame. His is a grand example of a public service offered by numismatic academia of a collection that would otherwise be inaccessible to the casual inquirer.