ERIC JENSEN INTERVIEW, PART THREE

Greg Bennick
Canadian love tokens?

Eric Jensen
Yes. Canadian love tokens specifically. And I said, yes, and asked him if we could meet? I met with him and his daughter. He was here yesterday. A super individual. I cataloged her collection. The really good part there is that she had sorted it and tried to figure out the layering on each coin, because that is one of the hardest things with love tokens: what does it say? What's the order of the letters?

She did all that, and I cataloged it. It's on the website as well. I put it on under his name, her name and my name, because it's their stuff. It was just great. I got that done. And then one day, I was talking to Ronald Greene. He's got a tremendous database and made his database print out available to anybody that would donate to the JD Ferguson Foundation, which he was the head of, and people would buy this. But it was just a word description, and again as a result, you couldn't tell if this or that was your token or if it was a different token?

I happened to be talking to him one day, and I asked if he had ever been on the Saskatoon Coin Club website? I mentioned that the fellows there have put all of the merchant tokens known in Saskatchewan on that website, along with a lot of great articles and more. We talked about it and realized that no one had done this for British Columbia material. I told him that I can't do websites but said that if he was willing to use my format and send me images, that I would do it. Well, he did. Four and a half years later, we put it on the website.

BC is now updated. Saskatchewan is available. Alberta is available. And more. It is a huge achievement. This is about the time to describe that another individual came along. His name is James Williston and he as you know is how we connected, when he told me about your appreciation of counterstamps and expertise with them.

James was getting countermarks. Often times with auctions and various sales, some of these coins just get sold off and disappear. James is excellent at finding them and getting information about them, so I said that we should catalog them. How do you catalog something you don't know anything about? I knew nothing about the merchant token or countermarks. He brought over his Brunk books. He's got all three versions. He brought over other books where they are mentioned, and he started to bring me all the information I need to better classify them.

Most of them have some provenance to them, so I made sure I copied the provenance. I'm not a professional. I just do it for fun. I got a light stand, and until I got a light box, that used to be a lot of hand painting to get the dark background and everything. Now it's one click of a button.

I started in on the counter marks, and I got them to a point where I said, "Okay, James, this is going to the website." I've added to it since and I continue to add to it. I've got the Northwest territories, which nobody had done, all the exonumia stuff, all the miscellaneous. I've got all of that on there in addition to the countermarks.

I just keep updating, updating, updating. I've got several on the go at any given time. And another one I want to mention was the Calgary Police Services material. My neighbor happens to work for them. He works in the IT department, and he didn't really know that there were challenge coins, some quite early ones, put out. I was showing some to him and he was quite interested. I also showed him there were some pins and I managed to pick him up a collection of about thirty or forty Calgary Police Service pins. Suddenly, he's very interested. Now he's got the most fabulous collection of Calgary Police Service pins and challenge tokens and medallions you'll see.

I had it just again with this collection as just a simple as the others. I put the coins in and put the information beside it of what's on them. Then I started to realize that that was one that could use some fleshing out of. If you go to the website, you'll see those.

One thing I forgot to mention, that was one of the early things I'd done was the listing of attributed Canadian maverick tokens. A maverick token being one, of course, that is either unknown or it doesn't have the province or the town, so you can't readily pinpoint who made it. A friend from Saskatchewan, in about 1967 or somewhere in there, did a listing of the known mavericks. Being a collector, I thought that it needs updating, so I started with the updates, and I think revision ten is online at this point.

I'm always looking for feedback where errors get pointed out to me because I make them and am always putting up new information. Anytime I come across a new book, like Chris Faulkner's recent book on Imperial designs which is just a fabulous book I got given to me from my birthday in May, I make updates. I have used his book to identify a lot I never would have been able to identify otherwise. His book has got exceptional photographs that show great detail, which is important because they're wonderful pieces. I continue to dig out research and more material and try and improve what I've done so far.

Greg Bennick
This is really great. I will love the title for this interview to focus on keeping the hobby alive, because you are, in a sense. Not just keeping the hobby alive by giving people a point of reference for all of the different areas of interest that you talked about, but by documenting coins which otherwise could disappear into the ether, into generational collections where children and grandchildren had no idea what to do with them. You're putting this stuff online so that it continues and exists.

Eric Jensen
And as long as they can find information easily, I think we'll reach out to the younger generation more effectively. If information is only found in limited edition books, people will always have trouble trying to find the books. I'm looking for a couple now that are going to be very difficult to find. I can't tell you how much fun I've had working with individuals to put this all together. And the fact that you're enjoying it, I'm good with that. It made my day.

Greg Bennick
Well, I love it. I love that your focus is really on documenting everybody else's everything.

Eric Jensen
Exactly, and for several reasons, with the main one being, I don't have to dust the material off. I don't have to put it all in two by twos. I don't have to put insurance on it. I don't have to store it anywhere. As the one individual said to me, you have by far the best collection of BC and Alberta digital images and countermarks than anybody else out there.

Greg Bennick
That's what attracted me too with what you were doing. It's not just the fact that you're documenting for the sake of the hobby interesting things which otherwise would disappear. It's the quality of the images, and the consistency of the listings and the consolidation of the information. That is of infinite value to collectors.

Eric Jensen
Thank you, but I will say that if somebody could give me better information on how to take even better photographs, I would do it because my photographic skills went from almost being able to do nothing to something where at least it's acceptable enough that I can put it online. But if I could improve it with the really shiny stuff, the slab stuff, the some of the images that are hard to take, I would do it. But for now, at my age, it's more still about the friendship. After this show, James will come over to my house. I will make coffee, and he brings Tim Horton's donuts, and we'll sit and we'll chew the fat for a couple hours, and we'll go through anything new that he has. After that, he disappears, and I go to work. I am still enjoying it very much. I do need to mention one thing I've been extremely fortunate to have is my wife of 61 years, Carol. She has been extremely patient, and it's a darn good thing she has!

Eric Jensen can be reached with questions at egjensen@telus.net.

About the Interviewer
Greg Bennick (www.gregbennick.com) is a keynote speaker and long time coin collector with a focus on major mint error coins and US counterstamps. He is on the board of both CONECA and TAMS and enjoys having in-depth conversations with prominent numismatists from all areas of the hobby. Have ideas for other interviewees? Contact him anytime via instagram @minterrors. He can also be reached by email at minterrors@gmail.com.

To read the earlier E-Sylum articles, see:
ERIC JENSEN INTERVIEW, PART ONE (https://www.coinbooks.org/v29/esylum_v29n28a12.html)
ERIC JENSEN INTERVIEW, PART TWO (https://www.coinbooks.org/v29/esylum_v29n29a12.html)

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