The latest book by Roger W. Burdette covers a fascinating niche of American numismatics including the
Barclay Mint Experiments, the Bickford Eagle,
International Coinage, Goloid & Metric Patterns,
Cometallic Money and more. Here's the press release.
-Editor
Seneca Mill Press LLC proudly announces release of the latest
numismatic book by Roger W. Burdette:
Fads, Fakes & Foibles.
Most nineteenth century Americans thought of coins and currency in two practical
ways: a concern that their pieces of coin or paper currency would be accepted by
merchants for purchases and a desire to have more.
For those few involved in economic policy and politics, other, more esoteric
aspects of coinage were of concern. Their three principal subjects were prevention of
adulteration or counterfeiting, direct equivalence of international gold coins, and use of
metric weights for coins. Underlying each of these were certain economic assumptions
and profit opportunities that pushed governments toward decisions.
Adulteration and counterfeiting were of concern to all because bad coins meant
that merchants and banks would reject the money a person offered in payment. In this
regard, it must be remembered that gold coins were simply convenient tokens
containing a certain weight of pure gold. Banks and merchants could, and occasionally
did, reject legitimate gold coins because they appeared heavily worn or were lighter
than official standards. This was the focus of James T. Barclay and his obsession with
preventing degradation of the national coinage.
Nickel mining maven Joseph Wharton went to great lengths to promote alloys of
nickel and copper for minor coins valued up to ten cents. Here, he cracked skulls with
persistent mint officers who thought of base metal coins only as temporary Civil War
substitutes for silver dimes and half dimes.
Businessman Dana Bickford, alternatively, was concerned with the ability of
travelers to easily know the value of their American money in certain European
currencies. His idea for a gold international coin was not intended as a standard of
value, but as an equivalency calculator. His changes were of design, not content
although much of the work was facilitated by George Dunning, former Superintendent of
the New York Assay Office.
Silver producers of the 1870s wanted to stop the decline in silver value compared
to gold. Others wanted a bimetallic standard so that gold and silver would circulate
equally. Backers of standard international coinage wanted to follow principles of the
Latin Monetary Union and have the gold coins of all major nations exactly equal one
another. Further, many idealists across the world wanted all coin weights expressed in
grams of pure gold or silver and coin diameters and weights to be whole numbers. Here
we find Wheeler Hubbell proposing a bimetallic coinage alloy and U.S. coins of metric
weight. He was neither first not last to advocate these measures, but was certainly the
one most favored by a Congressional committee. Nicholas Veeder, on the other hand,
wanted not an alloy but a mechanical union of the two metals much like modern
bimetallic coins.
Others proposed to protect coins by adding an iron ring, or striking pieces with
one or more holes to permit a convenient diameter while aiding the blind in identifying a
coin’s value.
Fads, Fakes & Foibles brings together a strange crew of idealists and
opportunists – creators of the best known, but little understood coinage proposals. The
author, building on original archival sources separates fact from fancy while providing
today’s collectors with a delightful journey through some of the oddest coinage
proposals ever made.
Fads, Fakes & Foibles is available from Wizard Coin Supply
(www.wizardcoinsupply.com). Cover price for the 8 1/2 x11-inch book containing 273 full
color pages is $29.95. Purchasers may also request a complete digital index edition at
no cost. This will facilitate subject searches and provides a convenient copy for use on
smart phones, tablets, and similar portable devices.
Wayne Homren, Editor
The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization
promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org.
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