We have some fairly diverse contributions this week.
Our first contributor is David
Finkelstein. David wrote, "Henry
Voigt’s Surety Bond" for us. A tip
from the editor for readers of the JR Newsletter: you really do want to read this article, for
it contains information that will surprise you (I was pleased to be one of the
first people to read this excellent work!).
David's article is linked here: https://gallery.mailchimp.com/74a0e3c37d154d935bdeb2daf/files/DJF_MInt_Voigt_Surety_Bond.pdf
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Winston Zack wrote with a report about his ANA
show experience:
It has taken me a week to get settled in from the 3 days I
spent in Rosemont at the ANA World's Fair of
Money. I grew up in the Chicago
area and it was great to return, see my family, see my geeky numismatic
friends, and look at some excellent coins.
My adventure began on Tuesday, August 11th. I had an 11 AM
flight out of California, which
meant leaving my home at 8 taking an hour train, 20-minute bus, and finally
getting to my gate at 10 AM...only to
learn my flight was delayed 45 minutes. This was cutting it close since I had a
modest layover in Vegas. Luckily I get to Vegas with about 30 minutes to spare.
I hustled to my next gate, which actually was nearly on the other side of the
airport...which took 15-minutes to walk there. When I got to the gate my flight
stated there was another 30-minute delay. Ugh! I ended up arriving in Chicago
around 9:30, got my bags at 10:15, and home around 11...to eat some Lou
Malnati's deep dish pizza...which IS pretty much the best pizza around...I digress.
The next morning I woke at around 6:00 (which is like 4 AM in Cali),
gathered breakfast items for the JRCS meeting (coffee, OJ, bagels, cream
cheese, coffee cake, and other stuff (I think)). I got to the show at 7:15, and met Louis Scuderi and Mike Sherrill
(who I had never met in person before), and Barry Sunshine and Brad Karoleff
right outside the convention center. They helped transport the food to the JRCS
meeting room, and I had enough time to settle in and rest a little bit before
the meeting.
The JRCS meeting was PACKED! Wow, we were all eager to hear
Mr. Garrett Ziss' presentation on Bust coins depicted on paper money. Like
everyone else said, the presentation was excellent and the standing ovation for
this 12-year-old wonder-numismatist was well deserved. Steve Tompkins presented
his new, 575-page book on Flowing Hair and Draped Bust half dollars...it looks
superb! And on behalf of my other co-authors I introduced the newest Bust dime
book - Bust Dime Variety Identification Guide; proceeds from the sale of this
book went to the JRCS breakfast spread...but I think the JRCS should host more
breakfasts...everyone loves to eat!
At 10 AM David Kahn invited the Bust Dime authors to a book
signing at his table...which was a lot of fun! Much to our amazement our book
sold like hotcakes...and I saw a lot of other people with Steve's new book too.
If you would like a copy of the new Bust Dime book, please contact one of these
four distributors - David Kahn, Rich Uhrich, Glenn Holsonbake, or Dave Wnuck.
That's the last plug for new books in this show report.
By 1 PM I was
finally able to look at coins...if there was anything good left on the floor!
And it turns out the first table I visited made my show...and maybe my year! I
picked up two awesome contemporary counterfeit half eagles for my collection as
well as for my current and future research project (Encyclopedia of
contemporary counterfeit U.S. Federal coins 1792-1891).
Speaking of this research project, I plan on working on this
project for about 10 years because there's a lot of data to gather and counterfeits
to study. If you have any contemporary counterfeits, any denomination, from
this time period that you would like included in this research project please
feel free to contact me at stoneman101(at)gmail.com. One of the components of this
research is to identify the alloy of each counterfeit. As such, XRF Analyzers
are a machine I hope to use for this research. If anyone knows where I might be
able to use an XRF Analyzer in Southern California (for
little or no cost) I would be most appreciative...buying one is essentially out
of my budget at this time. I have a few leads already to use an XRF Analyzer,
but those are not local, and as such less convenient for this project.
The remaining 2.5 days of the show were a blur. I was
constantly running into people, networking, talking coins, life, etc and having
a blast. I also picked up a few more pieces for my collection(s). This really
was my favorite coin show I've ever been to.
I also wanted to mention to the JR Newsletter readers that
some of the proceeds from the sale of the new Bust Dime book ($2/copy) will be
going back to the JRCS so that we can continue the Club's mission of advancing
the study and education of early U.S. Federal coins (primarily silver and
gold).
Cheers,
Winston
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Finally, Len Augsburger, Project Coordinator for the Newman
Numismatic Portal, published an introductory letter concerning the project:
The Newman Numismatic Portal seeks to unite the world’s
numismatic information into a single, searchable database, accessible to all on
a free and forever basis. Administered through Washington
University in St.
Louis, the Portal is funded by a grant from the Eric
P. Newman Numismatic Education Society and began development in December 2014.
This summer has been busy with the establishment of our
scanning center, located in Olin Library on the Washington
University campus. Since June,
we’ve scanned several hundred documents, representing over 30,000 pages, and
these are visible through Internet Archive at
https://archive.org/details/newmannumismatic. We’ve partnered with Internet
Archive to upload and host our scanned material, and this collection will
increase on a daily basis as items are added.
While Internet Archive acts as a warehouse for our scanned
documents, we are in parallel developing the website that will be known as the
Newman Numismatic Portal. The Portal will be able to search across the scanned
documents as well as a store of electronic content acquired from other sources
such as auction companies. The Portal will go online in 2016. In the meantime,
our scanned material, via Internet Archive, is freely available to all for
scholarly purposes.
We are especially interested in acquiring in-copyright
content for the Portal. If you represent an organization that wishes to
digitize its publications at no cost to you, we are an ideal candidate to
offload the scanning effort. Already several specialty clubs within American
numismatics have given us permission to digitize and present back issues of
their journals. We also seek unique materials such as manuscripts, archives,
bid books, and the like. Finally, several collectors have loaned us rare items
such as early U.S. Mint Reports. It is through such collaboration that the
Portal will achieve its objective of sharing numismatic information with all.
