Chatter

Minutes of the 1059th Meeting

March 14, 2007

Session I of the 1059th meeting of the Chicago Coin Club was held in conjunction with the Chicago Paper Money Exposition, Crowne Plaza Chicago O’Hare Hotel in Rosemont. President Robert Feiler called the meeting to order at 1 PM with 26 members and 24 guests in attendance. A motion was made and passed to conduct an abbreviated order of business.

It was announced that the traditional souvenir banknote card was not issued for the show. Upcoming featured programs at the Chicago Coin Club were announced, including the speaker for the upcoming Chicago International Coin Fair on April 28th. Clifford Mishler was introduced as the Chairman of this summer’s American Numismatic Association Convention in Milwaukee. He reported all the planned activities associated with the event and invited everyone to attend.

In the introduction of Chet Krause, his colleague and friend of 55-years, Mishler announced that Krause’s Wisconsin Paper Money collection will take up 160 exhibit cases at the ANA convention. It’s believed this collection is the largest single state collection of paper money every assembled.

Chester Krause shared his experiences while building his collection and related stories on competing with others at currency auctions over the years. The Santa Claus bank notes were cited in particular. The exhibit at this summer’s convention will be broken down into territorial notes, certificates of deposit, statehood, obsolete, scrip, and large and small size nationals.

President Feiler presented Mishler and Krause ANA Educational Certificates and engraved Club medals.

The meeting was called into recess and will resume on Wednesday, March 14th at 7 PM at the regular meeting site 131 S. Dearborn, 6th Floor Conference Room, Downtown Chicago.

. . . . . . .

Session II of the 1059th meeting of the Chicago Coin Club was called to order by President Robert Feiler with 16 members and 3 guests: John Baeckelandt, David Gumm, and Leroy Gayden.

The Minutes of the February meeting as published in the Chatter were approved as read. Treasurer Steve Zitowsky reported February revenue of $220.00, expenses of $364.92 and a balance of $11,868.38. A motion was made and passed to accept the report. Following the second readings of the membership applications of Robert W. Wallace and Kurt Hyde, motions were made and passed to accept them into the Club. The application of David G. Gumm received first reading.

Richard Hall was presented with an ANA Educational Certificate and an engraved speaker’s medal for his January featured presentation on U.S. Type I Liberty Head $20 Gold Coins. Future featured programs with brief overviews were announced. Chicago Financial Firsts was the topic of the evening’s featured speaker, David Baeckelandt. The program covered the array of financial innovations, modern accounting, modern investment banking practices, underwriting and stock evaluation techniques that started in Chicago. David supplemented his talk with documents and certificates from his own collection. Afterwards, he was presented with an ANA Educational Certificate and an engraved speaker’s medal.

The exhibitors for the evening were: STEVE HUBER – 19 crowns from Great Britain; JOHN CONNOLLY – a $1 U.S. commemorative coin & a 1000 kronor Icelandic commemorative coin both struck in 2000 honoring Leif Ericson, and $1 U.S. commemorative coins honoring Eisenhower (2000), Jamestown (2007) and John Marshall (2005); JEFFREY ROSINIA – the newly discovered error 2007 Washington $1 without edge markings; ROBERT WEINSTEIN – 6 copper coins from the 3rd century B.C., struck in the Indian cities of Pushkalavati and Taxila ROBERT LEONARD – newly published ANS book Money of the Caribbean, and modern monarchs with military headgear shown on the coins of Prussia 5-mark (1901), Italy 20-lire (1928), Albania 2-lek (1939), and Romania 50-lei (1938); ROBERT FEILER – a coin from the Macedonian Kingdom of Phillip V (221-179 B.C.) and 2 counterfeit ancient coins; MARK WIECLAW – Will County Coin Club medal honoring Will County’s 150th year (1981), colorized silver U.S. Eagle, an as of Roman Emperor Trajan struck in Rome for use in Syria (116 A.D.), a bronze follis of Heraclius overstruck on a follis of Tiberius Constantine, a cistophori (tetradrachm) of Mark Antony shown with his wife, Octavia; and LYLE DALY – coins bought on a recent trip to the Cayman Islands including a 1770 Pillar Dollar, silver cobb from the 1600s, 1805 8-reales with multiple counterstamps, and five current uncirculated pieces of currency.

Under business separate motions were made and passed authorizing the Board of Governors to order and set a selling price of 10X & 4X magnifier-flashlights, and to pay World Conversions.com of Elk Grove Village a sum not to exceed $400 to convert onto DVD the Club’s video tape (28) interviews with long-time members recorded in 1984.

The meeting was adjourned at 8:45 PM.

Respectfully Submitted,
Carl F. Wolf, Secretary

Speaker’s Wor[l]d
Wisconsin Paper Money

A presentation by Chester Krause
to our March 10, 2007 meeting.

Clifford Mishler used his introduction of Chester Krause to describe some of what has been planned for the ANA’s Annual Convention to be held in Milwaukee in August. The previous Milwaukee conventions were in 1950 and 1986, and the theme of the 2007 convention is “Collecting Coins Captures Time.” The convention medal features the Allen Bradley four-faced clock tower on the obverse, and the addition to the lakefront art museum on the reverse.

For the 1986 convention, a number of Wisconsin-related collections were displayed. Some of those collections have been incorporated into Krause’s 160-case exhibit of Wisconsin paper money that will be at this year’s convention. Among the attractions outside of the convention center, the largest numismatic one will be at the Milwaukee Public Museum; among the pieces from their 40,000 item numismatic collection that will be displayed at their building are one gold and two silver life saving medals.

Chet’s exhibit will include seven types of Wisconsin paper money:

• Territorial — starting in 1836 and extending to statehood in 1848. Includes Certificates of Deposit from the early 1840s
• Obsolete — from the start of banking in 1853 to the Civil War. Includes two different Santa Claus notes.
• Scrip — from the 19th century starting in 1862; mostly from the Civil War depression.
• Advertising — printed on the back side of obsolete uniface Confederate notes due to the scarcity of paper. Some later issues were printed on other paper sources.
• Large size nationals — built upon one of the collections shown at the 1986 convention.
• Small size nationals — another collection built upon one of the 1986 exhibits.
• 1933 depression scrip — virtually complete; missing only one of the acknowledged types.

With more than 50 years spent collecting this material, he has been able to add information to the Numismatist article by Wismer from the 1930s. He has produced a small booklet upon each of the above topics, and he showed a few that he had not given away yet.

He also plans to show two cars with ties to Wisconsin financials at the convention. The Mr. Kissel who signed a banknote also owned the Kissel car company, and the Case company did not make just farm machinery in Wisconsin — Chet has been working on one of their cars for the last six years.

The start of his Wisconsin paper money collection was probably the purchase of a bundle of 15 obsolete and scrip notes from a coin shop in Appleton. Travelling on business was a great advantage; he could see what was available over a wide area. Although all kinds of Wisconsin material could be found in the Northeastern states, California collectors were more interested in gold and world coins.

When asked, he admitted to collecting raised notes, and a few had walked into his office just the other day. A raised note is a note with the denomination altered to a higher value, typically by taping a denominated corner from a larger note onto a smaller note — usually a one dollar note. Instead of raising all four corners, one corner often was torn off; notes are fragile, so a missing corner was not unusual.

When you are known as a serious collector people you know often set material aside for you, and strangers will approach you with interesting pieces — as was the case after this talk.

Speaker’s Wor[l]d
Chicago Financial Firsts

A presentation by David Baeckelandt
to our March 14, 2007 meeting.

David started his presentation by showing the classic New Yorker map cover where not much is located west of the Hudson River. Then he showed Hennepin’s 1683 Flemish map of North America, the first map to depict “Chekagou.” Dave has worked in the financial industry for a number of years, and during that time he has collected items relating to financial firsts of Chicago and Illinois. That theme has led him to many interesting aspects of Chicago history.

Chicago started as the center of a huge land boom, the biggest speculative bubble in North America. The Illinois Michigan Canal connected the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River system, and Chicago was at the east end of the canal. The Canal Commissioners made the first land plat, and sold the first lots. A lot that sold for $33 in 1829 sold for $100,000 in 1836, the year that Chicago was incorporated. The expression “canal term” stood for ¼ down and the balance over three years. The 999 year lease was introduced under the mistaken idea that 1000 year leases were illegal. Dave showed a newspaper clipping that referred to the Berlin real estate bubble of 1870-71 as “Chicago on the Spree.”

In addition to speculative excessives, there was outright fraud. Soon after taking office in 1857, Governor Matteson discovered a virtual gold mine in his office. When canal scrip was redeemed, it was supposed to be cancelled by tearing off a corner; but that step was skipped during some busy times. The governor had access to the redeemed scrip, and he redeemed the uncancelled pieces for his own benefit. After being found not guilty, he and the money left Illinois for Europe. The resulting state bond float was the first to pay for the mess left by a corrupt politician.

But most of Chicago’s financial firsts were legal and were for the good of investors and consumers. Norman Wait Harris started the Harris Bank, and in 1882 it listed buy and sell prices for bonds; it also institutionalized such investment banking practices as reviews by “disinterested experts” and other aspects of due diligence. Their analysis of municipal bonds was also applied to corporate securities.

The 1906 IPO of Sears was the first based upon goodwill future potential earnings instead of just the current assets. The first utility holding company was formed in the late 19th century by Samuel Insull, an associate of Thomas Edison. The original local electric service was for just a building or two, but larger generating stations and the resulting distribution systems provided efficiencies of scale. In 1930 Insull was the first to use a poison pill defense, but his leveraged companies failed in the depression. (People to this day are split in their strongly held views of Insull: robber baron or just unlucky?) The unravelling of Insull’s 360 interlocking companies fell to Arthur Andersen who had started the first deicated accounting firm. How ironic that that firm would end in the collapse of a later utility company, Enron.

Near the start of the 20th century, Henry Marsh and Donald McLennan introduced such concepts as an insurance broker and thorough research in assessing risk. Soon, State Farm was the first to offer lower rates to the less-risky demographics; they excluded risky areas such as Chicago and Cook County! Allstate was the first to sell auto insurance by mail (1931), and the first to tailor rates to the characteristics of cars and their owners (1939).

Chicago’s various markets and exchanges have been the first to offer a number of products, from various future contracts on agricultural products in the mid 19th century to futures on currencies and interest rates in the 1970s, to the first options on a stock index in 1983. And let us not forget the many Nobel prize winners in Economics whose ideas might be result in future products.

Although some of the firsts are well documented and accepted, some of the firsts that David presented are just the earliest local newspaper reports of which he is aware. Are you aware of any complaints of “cold calling” earlier than a 1928 letter to the Chicago Tribune?

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Show and Tell

Items shown at our March 14, 2007 meeting.

1. Steve Huber passed around an assortment of Great Britain crowns along with an 1801 taler from Hanover with a portrait of George III; in addition to being the British monarch, he was the ruler of Hanover. Among the coins were a crown and half crown of Cromwell from 1658, a 1687 crown of James III, and an 1804 silver dollar of George III (this was a trade dollar).
2. John Connelly concentrated on some recent U.S. commemmoratives:
   • The 400th anniversary of Jamestown just received that day; 3 figures are on the obverse, with the reverse showing the three ships that spent 5 months sailing from London with the first colonists.
   • Two Leif Ericson commemmoratives: a U.S. coin from 2000 along with a 1000 kronur coin from Iceland.
   • A 1990 coin for the centennial of Eisenhower’s birth.
   • A John Marshall 2005 coin returned from a grading service graded as MS-70.
3. Jeff Rosinia showed a recent purchase: from Harlan Berk’s shop, a new Washington dollar coin that had been found locally in a roll.
4. Robert Weinstein started with his usual ancient items, and concluded with something not even 200 years old.
   • The two great cities of the 3rd century BC in northern India were Pushkalavati and and Taxila. Their coins bear symbols common to both Buddhists and Hindus. Pushkalavati, a city of one million people near modern day Peshawar, made coins from rolled out bars of copper that were clipped to the proper weight. The first coin bears a svastika and the symbol for a sacred mountain on one side, and is blank on the other. The hooked cross svastika occurs in nearly every ancient culture, and it is associated with the sun. The mountain is an ancient revered symbol to the Hindus; their great height and vastness, the echo, and the strange sounds of the winds in their canyons all impressed the early peoples. They were also considered as the home of many gods and spirits.
   • A coin with coarse images of an elephant on one side, and a lion, svastika, and sacred mountain on the other.
   • From Taxila, a city with two million people, a coin on a round flan bearing an elephant on one side and a sacred mountain on the other.
   • A coin bearing a sacred mountain and a taurine, a symbol associated with the bull. It was widely used by ancient fertility cults and the cult of the Hindu god Siva. It is also thought to represent a combination of the sun and moon symbols.
   • A coin bearing a tree flanked by taurines, and a sacred mountain. The tree is also an ancient sacred symbol; sacred trees occur in the literature of the Hindus and Buddhists.
   • A coin bearing many symbols, including a taurine, a svastika, a holy mountain, and a trident-shaped symbol known as the srivatsa, the significance of which is uncertain.
   • The Niles’ Weekly Register, Baltimore, dated Aug 22, 1818. Bob pointed out some interesting articles: a coin of Antoninus Pius as Augustus with reverse of Marcus Aurelius as Caesar, found in Fayetville, Tennessee by a farmer digging a cellar; a 3-page article on counterfeit bank notes; and a biographical sketch of San Martin, along with the latest news from Buenos Aires after the revolution.
5. Bob Leonard just received his Money of the Caribbean book from the 1999 Coinage of the Americas Conference. Then he showed coins featuring modern monarchs modelling military headgear:
   • A 1901 5 mark from Prussia with Wilhelm II.
   • King Victor Emanuel III on a coin dated 1928 for the tenth anniversary of the end of World War I, bearing a quote from Mussolini.
   • A 1939 coin for occupied Albania, featuring Victor Emanuel III now as Emperor.
   • A 1938 Romanian coin featuring King Karol in a tasselled helmet.
6. Bob Feiler showed some apparently ancient coins:
   • Purchased a few years ago at CICF, but only recently identified, was a genuine coin from the Macdonian kingdom of Phillip V featuring a pacing horse on the reverse.
   • Two recently acquired ancient coins that the seller assured him were genuine because they had been acquired in Italy during World War II. Their look was off, and we saw the casting line on the edge of the Athenian Owl and Legionary denarius.
7. Mark Wieclaw showed some items saved from the melting pot: a one ounce 1986 Will County sesquicentennial silver medal from the Will County Coin Club, and a colorized 2000 silver eagle with Santa Claus in a sleigh with reindeer. Then came an assortment of ancient coins:
   • An as of Trajan (116 AD) struck in Rome for use in Syria, as the Parthian War military payroll.
   • A bronze follis of Heraclius struck over one of Tiberius Constantine (the original struck in Nicomedia, restrike in Constantinople).
   • A cistophoric from 39 BC with conjoined busts of Marc Antony and his wife Octavia; Dionysius is on the reverse.
8. Lyle Daly spent some of the previous week in the Cayman Islands, where just about every jewelry store advertised treasure coins. According to the book he bought there, the heyday of pirates started in 1713 with the Treaty of Utrecht and ended in 1739. He did purchase a few silver Spanish colonial coins, but they were outside of that date range. He also acquired four uncirculated pieces of the current notes, honoring the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ sighting of the islands in 1503; their denominations were 1, 5, 10, and 25 while he passed on the 50 and 100.

Our 1060th Meeting

Important Dates

Birthday and Year Joined

Chatter Matter

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