WAYNE'S NUMISMATIC DIARY: JANUARY 26, 2020

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V23 2020 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 23, Number 4, January 26, 2020, Article 23

Tuesday, January 21, 2020 was the first meeting of the new year of my northern Virginia numismatic social group, Nummis Nova. I was the host and had chosen Ristorante Bonaroti in Vienna, VA. We'd been there in June. I liked that they could provide us with a separate room at no extra charge, which is nice for a raucous, talkative group like ours.

When I arrived a number of folks were already seated including Wayne Herndon, Jon Radel, Mike Packard, Chris Neuzil, Dave Schenkman and Eric Schena. While I was talking Julian Leidman magically appeared at the other end of the table, and I walked over and chatted with him, Robert Hoppensteadt and Wayne for a bit. Back at my seat I was next to Chris and across from Eric and Steve Bishop.

The waitstaff were attentive and served up drinks, bread and appetizers while we talked and perused our menus. I ended up ordering manicotti, a dish I hadn't had in some time.

I hadn't brought any display items this month, but many others were going around the table already.

Great Bronze of Tarsus
Robert Hoppensteadt collects some great ancient coins, specializing in those depicting ancient buildings and monuments. He passed around this bronze of Tarsus. Here are the images and description from the seller Dorotheum.

"Tarsus, Cilicia. Great bronze) (40mm 24.07 gr. Av: gr. Leg. AY K SEOYEROS ALEXANDROS, Bust of the laurel-crowned Emperor l. wearing cuirass, holds lance and big shield. On the shield: Athena on Cuirass l. sitting, throws something in a large round vessel and holds a lance. In front of her altar or pillar, behind her the river god Kyndos resting with cornucopia. i. F. l. and r. "Pi". Rv: gr. Leg. ADR SEOYE ALEXA METR TARSO // (Gamma) B, temple of Apollo with six pillars, with a statue of Apollo Lyceus holding two wolves on the front paws, on roof of the temple Nike with wreath, in the gable a garland. On the right, in front of the perspective temple Nike, holding the wreath of the high priest of Cilicia, who in turn is crowned by a small Nike. The wreath of "Ciliarchen" has attached heads of Roman rulers. Missing in BMC, SNG Aulock, SNG Cop. and larger collections. Extremely rare CNG Mail Bid Sale 66, 1195, (19.05.2004.) SNG Levante Suppl. 275 * (same dies.) SNG Fitzwilliam 5333 * (same dies.) "

Civil War Cardboard Scrip
Dave Schenkman passed around a great group of Civil War cardboard chits. He writes:

"Below are images of one of the cardboard chits I passed around at the dinner. The set of five denominations was sold as lot 1399 in the 1985 Bowers and Merena sale of the David Proskey collection of Civil War Era Cardboard Money.

"In the Proskey sale there was another lot of three round cardboard tokens from a different merchant in the same town; I have them also. And, there was a third lot of cardboard attributed to Naperville, consisting of five denominations from a merchant named A. C. Yundg. They weren’t illustrated, and the catalog description only has the name. I couldn’t find that name in any directory, but they were manufactured by a CW printer.

"I wondered if possibly the cataloger had misspelled the name. Sure enough, I found the man; his name was A. C. Yundt, a merchant in Naperville who, in 1864, became overly friendly with a friend’s wife, and she died from a botched abortion. It made the Chicago newspapers."

I had also purchased some cardboard scrip in that David Proskey collection sale. I resold them along with my U.S. Civil War collection through American Numismatic Rarities in 2006. Here's the catalog as digitized by the Newman Numismatic Portal:
https://archive.org/details/lakemichiganspri2006amer/page/130/mode/2up

Antebellum Farmer's Bank of Virginia Ledger
Eric Schena and I discussed recent and planned additions to the Newman Numismatic Portal. I invited Eric to lend for digitization his Board of Directors meeting minutes book from the Winchester branch of the Farmer's Bank of Virginia. It covers the years from 1845 to 1849. He'll bring it next month and I'll ship it to St. Louis for scanning into NNP. I learned from Eric that pre-Civil War bank records from the South are rare today because so many were burned or lost in the war.

Active Interest Media
Another topic of conversation at the dinner was AIM, the new owner of the former Krause Publications periodicals. I promised to reach out to Tom Michael, and later he provided this report:

"We have been doing very well with Active Interest Media. They have been supportive of our ideas to build NN, WCN, Coins Mag and BNR. [That's Numismatic News, World Coin News, Coins magazine and Bank Note Reporter - Editor] AIM is happy to have us continue building out the database so we are adding new listings on a regular basis and hope to make this data available soon.

"We catalogers are now also involved in the magazine content generation. I have been writing articles for WCN and general online use. Coin of the Year awards are also supported by AIM and we are set to travel to the World Money Fair next week for our awards ceremony set for February 1st. Keep an eye on our Facebook page under Krause Publications for updates through the Fair as Maggie Judkins and I meet with mints and distributors, explore the Fair and present the COTY awards on Saturday.

"Thanks for your and your Virginia dinner group's concern for all us old KPer's! Keep in touch."

It's good to hear the new owners are supportive and planning to move forward. We'll look forward to future developments. Here's a link to the KP Facebook page:
Krause Publications Numismatics (https://www.facebook.com/kpnumismatics/)

Bishop's Beauties
Steve Bishop shared these images of his display items which included two nice plaques, a beautiful Morgan dollar, and a Columbian Expo medal in the largest slab any of us had seen. Thanks.