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Editor's Notes -
Coins! Cameras! e-Bay!

As has been pointed out in many numismatic publications, there are a number of auction sites on the Internet, with e-Bay being one of the largest, if not already the largest. Many coins are offered there, and it seems that anyone with a camera can post some pictures and auction off a coin. I have been a buyer and an under-bidder so far, but have not yet placed a lot for auction. (Club member Bill Burd has run some auctions on-line, and he probably has some insights and stories to tell?)

I collect varieties of U.S. Bust Dollars and Bust Half Dollars, and have bought each off the 'net. As cameras and peoples' camera skills improve, the 'net is improving as a source of coins. With good images out there I have been able to identify varieties and bid on those I need. A few times it has been necessary to send e-mail to the seller, asking for further information; after seeing an 1827 Half Dollar obverse paired with a reverse from 1826, for example. (It was the seller's error, mixing up images. And no, I cannot identify varieties quickly, I just had a lot of time.)

I found the images at Heritage to be very useful; the enlargement made the Bust Dollar larger than full-screen size, and even the clashed denticles were clearly seen. I study the clashed denticles on Bust Dollars of 1799, and I placed a strong bid on that coin only because of the great picture. Their site is at www.heritagecoin.com, and the only problem now is the (relatively) poor quality of the images of slabbed coins; the plastic seems to blur the coin's details.

Auction sites are not the only source of on-line coin images. Members of newsgroups and mailing lists often place an image on the 'net and ask, "What is this?" Two recent postings of "What is this ancient coin?" were answered by members of our club. Don Dool wondered if enough detail was present to justify a previous poster's suggestion of an Austrian kreuzer of 1812, and Bob Leonard could only say "Islamic inscription, image rotated 90 °" due to the coin's poor condition.

And while mentioning activities of club members, I would like to point out Ed Stevens' article in The Numismatist, where he recounts his involvement in the recovery of some stolen California banknotes, for which action he was awarded the PNG's Sol Kaplan Award at the 1999 ANA convention in Rosemont.

Paul Hybert, editor

Minutes of the 974th Meeting

The featured speakers for the evening were Bob Vandevender and Jim Hodgson who spoke on small size US currency. At the end of their presentation, First VP Steve Zitowsky presented them with Featured Speaker Medals and the ANA Educational Certificate.

Exhibitors for the evening were as follows:

1. Bob Weinstein - Barbarous Roman Coinage
2. Bill Bierly - $1000 Confederate 6% Coupon Bond
3. Jeff Rosinia - Variety of toned coins
4. Don Dool - Liberty Head coins from various countries
5. Richard Hamilton - American Tobacco Co. stock certificate
6. Mike Metras - Reproduction 1804 Dollar
7. Bob Leonard - French/English Manillas used in Africa
8. Mark Wieclaw - Wooden nickels, $3 CICF piece, Dollar notes
9. Chet Poderski - Soldier Home tokens Quincy ILL, SS Eastland tickets 1915
10. Carl Wolf - Souvenir sheet 1980 Memphis Paper Money Show
11. Bob Feiler - $100 & $200 City of New Orleans notes, $1000 Mississippi Union Bank note

There was a second reading of membership for Flemming Lyngbeck Hansen of Denmark who then became a member at this meeting.

Under old business, Carl Wolf gave archivist Phil Carrigan the #1 CPMX sheet as he left the meeting. Also, Mike Metras is offering color copies of the current CPMX sheet for 50 cents to anyone interested. Bob Feiler suggested that Herb and Martha Schingoethe receive a CPMX sheet and that will be done.

For CICF, Bob Leonard is working on the souvenir sheet which includes actual 1862 postage stamps and a letter outlining the demand for stamps in 1862.

For new business, Mark Wieclaw will donate the Life Membership badges, and the club approved use of its logo in the design.

Members listed here are Past Due in paying dues. If you know these people, please have them forward their dues or else they will be dropped from our mailing list.

• Jeffrey F. Bernberg
• Michael Brodsky
• Venson Brown
• James P. Flannery
• Thomas Kulasik
• Akio Lis
• Lester Miller
• Russ Reaves
• Chuck Swanson
• Patrick J. Wooldridge

Meeting adjourned 8:57 pm.

Respectfully Submitted,

Richard Hamilton
Secretary-Treasurer

In Memory -- Arthur C. Allen

Arthur C. Allen passed away January 2, 2000. He joined the club at the January 1966 meeting and had already collected paper money for over thirty years. Mr. Allen was a resident of Elmhurst and an executive with the Visual Aids Company on Randolph Street in Downtown Chicago. Some time ago he moved to Kimberling City, Missouri and then moved to Marietta, Georgia where he passed away.

Speaker's Wor[l]d

Speakers for the evening were Bob Vandevender and Jim Hodgson, and they covered many aspects of collecting small size US currency. The talk started with an overview of the current market, explaining common terms and identifying collector concerns. They followed by describing the various types of small currency that have been issued, ending with a review of the collectible notes still available from circulation -- if you look long and hard.

There are two dimensions to grading paper money: paper quality and centering. In addition to looking for faults, one also must look for attempts to fix-up a note. In addition to such obvious faults as pin holes and folds, the collector must beware of washed (cleaned) notes and pressed notes. Detect pin holes by holding the note between you and a light source, and detect folds not by looking at the note full-on either face (as when reading this page), but look at it from an edge.

Just as coin doctors have developed a set of tricks to "better" a coin, people have found ways of "improving" currency. After pressing a note, the embossed seals and serial numbers are flat; the paper lost the three-dimensional texture. So someone might try to use small metal punches to recreate the look and feel of original embossing. Examine a high grade note carefully; look for poorly applied embossing that is not aligned with the seal or serial numbers.

Knowledge of what a note should look like is important. Some of the older notes were printed on darker appearing paper, so a washing with bleach might produce a note with the lighter look common to the notes produced now. Another problem is with the size of a note and the quality of its edges. The original size of the notes is not exact; notes from different packs can have slightly different dimensions. Someone might use that variance to cover the trimming of large notes to remove edge problems.

Collectors prefer a perfectly centered note to a poorly centered note, and pricing reflects that. But something happens with terrible centering; if the shift is large enough to see part of a second imprint, the note is attractive as an error! Good references are as important to paper money as to coins. Bob Vandevender concluded his part of the talk by reviewing some works on US small currency:

• Friedburg - old standby; good on large size, but weak on small size.
• Hessler - covers wide range of material, but has a number of mistakes (typo, data, etc.).
• Oakes Schwartz - tried and true; the bible for small size currency. Highly recommended.
• and a few small, specialized works are interesting:
  • Kvederas & Kvederas on Web Fed notes.
  • Murray - large size star census

Jim Hodgson used his time to give a history of US small currency. Produced since the US Civl War, there are different series to collect:

• Red Seal denotes United States Note. First produced during the Civil War, they are backed by the faith of the US government. With no precious-metal backing, their value (in terms of silver and gold) fluctuated widely during the war.
• Each Silver Certificate in circulation was backed by one Silver Dollar in a government bank vault until 1934. After 1934, the wording was changed to "one dollar in silver" (meaning one dollar's worth of silver bullion) so no more silver dollars were produced. They were made in $1, $5, and $10 denominations.
• Federal Reserve Notes started in 1914, with the establishment of the Federal Reserve System. Up to 1934 they had a redeemable in gold statement. Notes from each of the twelve Federal Reserve Banks originally had a number (from 1 to 12) to identify the source bank (a "7" for Chicago for example), but some people thought that number was the denomination so a change was made. A letter was used to represent each bank (a "G", the 7th letter of the alphabet for Chicago, for example). The color of the seal is Lime Green, and the lightness or darkness of the color affects the price.
• Emergency Notes were quickly produced after the 1933 banking holiday, after some areas ran out of money. They are backed by government bonds, and the centering is usually pretty poor. Examples from Minneapolis and Atlanta were shown.
• WW II issues were produced for use in two theaters. The notes for North Africa and Italy have a yellow seal, while the notes for Hawaii were overprinted in blue ink on red seal notes.
• The last series to be discussed was the Web Fed experiment. Used only to produce $1 notes at a facility in Fort Worth, Texas, the notes were not printed on separate sheets of paper but were printed as are newspapers, off of large rolls of paper. The web fed notes did not print as sharply as sheet fed notes (some people would refuse them, calling the counterfeit), and there were other problems. After spending about $33 million on the equipment, the press was sold as scrap metal for about $100,000. But the government did make 200 million of the notes from 1992 to 1997 so they did not lose money printing money.

Although some web notes are still to be found in circulation they do wear out, making for fewer available every day. The quickest way of identifying a web note is by examining the reverse of a dollar bill. Look for a small "plate" number; a web fed note has the number after "IN GOD WE TRUST" while a sheet fed note has the number below and to the right of the large "ONE".

Show and Tell

1. Bob Weinstein started us off in the area of his previous two presentations - barbarous imitations of Roman coins. These coins are probably from the frontier areas of the mid-3rd century, and show the emperor with a radiate crown (the emperor as the sun god). The current feeling is that these were made as interim money for use during a typical coinage shortage; similar pieces have been found in coin hoards with good coins. These are smaller than the real coin, have crude figures, and the legends could have terrible spelling.
   
   The first coin was from eastern Europe, and the legends consisted of repeated gibberish characters. Next was a barbarous radiate minna struck only in England, after the the empire was reunified. The last coin had a nice portrait of Claudius Gothicas, and a full obverse legend, but at less than 7mm in diameter was about one-third the size of a legitimate coin. (For comparison, a US dime is about 17mm in diameter.) The reverse was not as well executed, with bad legends.



2. Bill Bierly showed a purchase from the recent CPMX; a $1000 Confederate 6% bond, missing one coupon for January 1865. Each coupon was good for $30 each 6 months, the bond was printed in Columbia, South Carolina, and it was printed on a thin paper of poor quality.



3. Jeff Rosinia likes beautifully toned coins, and he brought along many to show us. After many Morgan dollars toned in gold, blue, brown, green, and red, he showed some silver bullion eagles with electric blue toning; these recent bullion pieces tone very quickly.
   
   Next were Kennedy and Franklin half dollars toned from sulfur in the paper coin rolls. He ended with some examples of toning on copper coins; some Indian Head Cents with rainbow toning, and some proof Lincoln Cents.



4. Coins with Liberty heads was the theme for Don Dool.
   • Argentina: 2 centavos from 1884, and 50 centavos from 1960.
   • US: large cent from 1840.
   • France: 1923 1 franc, and 1928 50 francs.
   • Switzerland: 1958 20 francs.
   • Italy: 1966 100 lira.
   • Uruguay: 1848 featuring only a liberty cap.
   • Austrian Netherlands: 1790 featuring a Belgian lion and liberty hat.
   
   
5. Richard Hamilton was another member showing an acquisition from the recent CPMX. He showed a 100 share stock certificate of the American Tobacco Company, hand signed by all officers. It was dated April 16, 1960.



6. Mike Metras showed Gallery Mint reproductions of the 1804 US silver dollar, in both proof and uncirculated versions. The word COPY is present on the horizontal bars of the shield, and the coins came with a booklet on the 1804 dollars.



7. The manillas (a type of primitive money of Africa) was the topic for Bob Leonard. After openning the reference book Nigerian Currencies by Sven-Olaf Johansson (second edition, Sweden 1967) to a plate illustrating many of the available types in real scale, Bob placed three manillas from his colection on the appropriate image. Perfect matches. The handout of a few years ago at CICF was identified as being of French origin, while a smaller one made from a high-lead content brass was identified as coming from Birmingham. A price guide, also by Johansson (Beirut, 1968), also was shown.



8. Mark Wieclaw showed a range of items:
   • set of three Wooden Nickels from the Golden Jubilee of Monessen, Pennsylvania (Mark's hometown), denominated as 1, 2, and 5. They were good until 8-16-1948 at People's National Bank.
   • 1992 CICF dealer "food ticket" good for $3; five tickets were issued per day per table.
   • Federal Reserve Notes glued on edge and formed into pads; 20 consecutive $1 in one, and 10 consecutive $2 in the other.
   • $5 Cochituate Bank uniface note dated 1853, bearing the legend "will pay to J.W. Clark or bearer."
   • last was an example of a bank note with an "odd name." Here in Illinois, the main campus of the University of Illinois is located in the adjacent towns of Champaign and Urbana. Mark showed a $10 note from The Champaign National Bank of Urbana, Ohio.


9. Chet Poderski showed two items he had acquired years ago.
   • On a long-ago fishing trip with some buddies, they were in a diner when another customer's money was not accepted by the waitress. Chet then bought the money, and showed us a set of tokens good at the Quincy, Illinois Old Soldiers' Home; denominated in 5, 10, 25, and 50 cents, and 1 dollar.
   • He followed that with a lot purchased at the Rypstra Sale held in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Two Parcel Room Checks (numbers 5877 and 5870) from the S.S. Eastland which capsized in the Chicago River in 1915, killing many hundreds of passengers. (Capsized while still tied to the dock!) Mr Rypstra probably acquired them while serving on a committee that investigated the tragedy.


10. Carl Wolf showed a souvnir sheet for the 1980 International Paper Money Show in Memphis, Tennessee, showing an 1860 $100 note from the Bank of Lebanon, Hew Hampshire. Produced by the Western Bank Note Company (Chicago) which was bought by the American Bank Note Company, Carl used the 1959 Story of the American Bank Note Company to describe the secretive nature of the company regarding all aspects of note production and handling. One result of that secrecy is the small amount of information about the vignettes on their notes, But Gene Hessler and others are tracking down some information.



11. The last presenter was Bob Feiler showing recent acquisitions from CPMX.
    • $100 New Orleans note, with vignettes of Washington, cowboy roping steer, and Liberty.
    • $200 New Orleans note, unissued remainder.
    • $1000 Mississippi Union Bank with nice vignettes, but it was made from parts of two cancelled notes.

As mentioned in last month's Chatter, we dropped one exhibitor's listing from the February meeting. Here is that entry.

• Carl Wolf started off with a framed souvenir banknote of People's Bank of Baltimore 1856, reprinted by by the American Banknote Co for the 1993 ANA Convention held in Baltimore.
  
  Next displayed was a metallic nickel silver keytag for the First Congregational Church of Colorado Springs, Colorada, struck for Ken Hallenbeck, and ex-president of ANA. The geometric pattern on one side was described as a maze, the full size version of which is inlaid in the church's floor.
  
  Carl's last piece was a City of Las Vegas Millennium Medal which had a mintage of 1,000,000.

That makes us current with this log. Good luck in finding some interesting pieces at CICF for future meetings.

Our 975th Meeting

Date:	April 8, 2000 (session #1)
Time:	1:00 PM
Location:	Chicago International Coin Fair, held at the Ramada O'Hare Hotel, 6600 N. Mannheim Road, Rosemont, IL.
Featured speaker:	David L. Vagi, - Some New Perspectives on Ancient Roman Coins
	The coinage of the ancient Romans is under constant reappraisal, as history, archaeology and numismatics are living sciences. New perspectives are fueled not only by archaeological discoveries, but also by the critical re-examination of existing knowledge. Having recently finished the two-volume book Coinage and History of the Roman Empire, David Vagi will share some of the most interesting perspectives of recent years. A variety of topics will be explored, including the Julio-Claudians, coin denominations and the purchasing power of coins in ancient times.
	Although the $5 show admission charge covers the bourse for all three days, admission to the club meeting is FREE. Parking is another matter; a free parking check-out voucher is available at the show.
Date:	April 12, 2000 (session #2)
Time:	7:00 PM
Location:	Bank One Plaza Building (formerly the First National Bank Building) 18th Floor, on Dearborn between Madison and Monroe. Enter the building at the South entrance of the Dearborn side, sign in at the security desk and take the elevator to the 18th floor.
Featured speaker:	Don Dool - X-Ray Analysis as Applied to the Composition of Coins
	How he became involved in the subject, how it works, test results of a selection of coins and what conclusions, if any, can be drawn.

Important Dates

Birthday and Year Joined

A Special Offer from Krause

If you subscribe to any of the Krause Publications magazines, then you have the opportunity to receive a "magic" coffee mug and make an indirect donation to the Club. Krause Publications has shipped me a small supply of these mugs which are to be given to any member who takes a two-year subscription to any of their magazines. This would be NUMISMATIC NEWS $60.00; BANK NOTE REPORTER $61.00; COINS MAGAZINE $48.98; COIN PRICES $34.98; WORLD COIN NEWS $34.98; AND WORLD COINS NEWS $48.98.

When you do this, the club receives a donation of approximately $10.00 per two-year subscription and you receive a "magic" mug. This mug is not the usual 11 oz., but the larger 15 oz. size and it has an overall forest green appearance. But when hot coffee or tea is poured, the green color vanishes to reveal a four-color printed answer to the statement "Everything You Wanted to Know About Coins and Paper Money."

This offer also applies to you if you are a current subscriber to any of the above. If you want to extend your subcription by two years, then please bring in the mailing label from the magazine.

Carl Wolf

Chatter Matter