WAYNE'S NUMISMATIC DIARY: APRIL 14, 2019

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V22 2019 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 22, Number 15, April 14, 2019, Article 24

Patriotic Civil War Toekens 6th edition book cover

Tuesday April 9, 2019 was the monthly dinner meeting of my Northern Virginia numismatic social group Nummis Nova. Robert Hoppensteadt was our host, and we convened at Delia's in Alexandria. Eric Schena was waiting outside as I looked for parking. After finding a spot in a public garage I found Eric and Dave Schenkman at the hostess station and soon we were seated at our table for the evening. Other members quickly followed. I was seated across from Eric and Dave, and between Steve Bishop and Mike Packard. Other attendees included Chris Neuzil, Tom Kays, and Julian Leidman.

Dave brought along a copy of the new edition of the Civil War Token Society's Patriotic book.

Gabriel Wacht Five Minutes Work Token
Eric Schena picked up from me the bug of collecting Labor Exchange currency, and he's made some great finds. He showed us a great eBay purchase of a nickel-sized token I'd never seen or heard of before. It's 21mm in diameter and made of aluminum.

Obverse: MEDIUM OF EXCHANGE FOR FIVE MINUTES WORK ***** (map of the Western hemisphere)

Reverse: MAY BE REDEEMED ON RETURN TO GABRIEL Z. WACHT * (map of the Eastern hemisphere)

Eric's research turned up the crazy story of a related token by the issuer being found in, of all places, the stomach of a shark. Yes, I was already enjoying a glass of wine by this point in the evening, but it's true and Eric has a newspaper clipping to prove it. See his article later in this issue for more.

Toned Morgans and Teddy's Smile
Steve Bishop brought along some nice toned Morgan dollars, one of his many specialties. But the holders were the main thing of interest to me.

Baseball Schedule Tokens
In keeping with the spring season Dave Schenkman brought along some rare baseball schedule tokens. Click on the image to find higher-resolution images on our Flickr archive.

1. In 1994 the Birmingham Barons were in the limelight when ex-basketball superstar Michael Jordan was assigned to the team. The token is brass, 38mm.

2. The Sacramento Wolves was a minor league team. Charles F. Doyle, who issued the token, was a dealer in cigars, tobacco, etc. Brass, 38mm.

3. The Kansas City Blues, a class AA minor league team, was part of the American Association. The White Eagle Oil and Refining Company was located in Kansas City, Missouri, with a branch in Wichita, Kansas. The 41mm token is steel.

In conversation I recalled a great exhibit from a coin convention with medallic baseball season tickets. The talk put me in a receptive mood for this New York Times article found via the April 9, 2019 News & Notes email from the Society of Paper Money Collectors (SPMC)

For more than a century, baseball fans in Chicago have saved ticket stubs to preserve memories, both fond and frustrating, of their beloved Cubbies.

Some Cubs' tickets - like one from the 1932 World Series in which Babe Ruth is said to have "called his shot" before homering for the Yankees - are worth thousands. But most, sitting in drawers or pasted into scrapbooks, are valuable simply as physical links to the past.

That's over. This season the Cubs have joined more than a dozen other Major League teams in eliminating paper tickets in favor of digital versions, downloaded to apps and displayed on phones.

And so ticket stubs join theater playbills, picture postcards, handwritten letters and framed photos as fading forms of preserving our memories. It raises the question, Is our view of the past, of our own personal history, somehow different without hard copies?

To read the complete article, see:
Does Anyone Collect Old Emails? (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/05/opinion/memory-collections.html)

It had been another great evening of numismatic fellowship. Next week I travel to New York City for a conference for my day job. There won't be much time for numismatics, but one never knows. Have a great week, everyone.