Chatter

Minutes of the 1068th Meeting

The 1068th meeting of the Chicago Coin Club was held at Marcello’s Restaurant, 645 W. North Ave. The annual banquet meeting was called to order by President Robert Feiler at 7PM with 37 members and guests in attendance.

Joel Reznick, a long-time member visiting from Florida, delivered the invocation. President Feiler thanked Steve Zitowsky for his work as Banquet Chairman; the sponsors of the evening: Mark Wieclaw and Bill Burd for complimentary hor d’oeuvres; Sharon & Kevin Blocker for the room deposit and complimentary dinner for the speakers. All were given a round of applause.

Elliot Krieter was also thanked for obtaining a document reader for the Club. A big round applause followed President Feiler’s recognition of Paul Hybert for his exemplary work as Chatter editor since January 2000.

The application of Leonard Augsburger received first reading.

Carl Wolf gave a brief history of the Richard Cabeen Award and gave a brief overview of the best exhibits given by each 2007 recipient. Recipients were: First Place — Mark Wieclaw; Second Place — Robert Weinstein; Honorable Mention — Lyle Daly, Robert Leonard, Steve Zitowsky, Don Dool, Robert Feiler, Eugene Freeman and David Gumm. Winston Zack was also an Honorable Mention recipient, but was not in attendance.

First V.P. Jeff Rosinia introduced the evening’s featured speakers Leonard Augsburger and Joel Orosz. Following their program “First Mint: The Numismatic Legacy of Frank H. Stewart” Jeff presented each with an engraved Club medal and ANA Educational Certificate. Jeff also conducted a coin flipping game. Ten paddles showing coin obverse/reverse were sold to members for $2.00 each. Each member chose one side to hold up and remained standing only if the flipped coin agreed with their paddle. After 5 coin tosses, David Gumm was declared the winner.

President Feiler thanked Paul Hybert and Jeff Rosinia for their technical assistance with the evening’s equipment set-up and smooth operation. He also asked for second round of applause for banquet sponsors Mark Wieclaw, Bill Burd, and Sharon and Kevin Blocker; and Banquet Chairman Steve Zitowsky.

The meeting was adjourned at 9:10 PM.

Sincerely Submitted,
Carl Wolf, Secretary

Speakers’ Wor[l]d
Pictures of the First United States Mint: The Numismatic Legacy of Frank H. Stewart

presented to our December 12, 2007 meeting
by Leonard Augsburger and Joel Orosz

The United States government owned the first mint from 1792 to 1832; no contemporary images are known. In their program, Leonard and Joel showed many renditions of the first mint that can be traced to two paintings commissioned in the early twentieth century by Frank H. Stewart.

Born Frank Steward in 1873, he changed his name to Stewart to match an error on his business cards; the middle initial was also his creation. The program started with the first photograph (from 1854) of the former mint, accompanied by an 1868 quote from the American Journal of Numismatics, “...it still remains, a dilapidated and unsightly monument of the past, it will doubtless soon pass...” It was not until 1907 that the Frank H. Stewart Electric Company bought the property to expand its own facilities. A 1910 postcard shows the company headquarters at 35 N. 7th St., to the right of the old mint’s administration building at 37 and 39 North Seventh Street. Failing to find anyone interested in moving the building to a different site, demolition was inevitable.

Dismantling the building provided an excellent opportunity to make measurements and notes upon the construction; demolition was completed in 1911. Many souvenirs were produced from salvaged timbers, and we were shown pictures of some: from the Rowan University’s Stewart Collection, a gavel and paper weight; from the ANS collection, a gavel that was not commissioned by Stewart. Various sources were also searched in an effort to gather as much information as possible. Stewart’s First United States Mint — Its People and Its Operation was published in 1924.

Losing hope of finding an old print or sketch of the mint, Stewart commissioned Frank H. Taylor in 1913 to make a sketch. A commission to the painter Edwin Lamasure for a painting based upon the sketch and collected information soon followed. Lamasure created many calendar artworks for the Osborne Company, including the 1915 calendar for the Stewart Electric Company. Known as Ye Olde Mint, this idyllic, almost pastoral, scene of three mint buildings shows a few small city buildings in the distance, beyond brick walls. Next to the company’s name is a logo incorporating their Old Mint trade mark. Leonard and Joel continue to search for information on adjacent buildings. Aside from the setting, this iconic painting has many details that surfaced during research — such as the woman selling molasses and a local dog.

Next to be shown were some of the many uses of the design, including an advertising card from the Chicago Gravel Company, a 1967 20th anniversary medal from the Main Line Coin Club, Chris McCawley’s 1993 personal medal, a 1992 Christmas ornament from the Treasury Historical Society, a winter scene from the 1969 dedication program for the fourth U.S. mint, and assay commission medals from 1930 and 1952 (the reverse of which was reused in 1977). After 1916, Frank H. Taylor painted his own version, with added figures and removed historical tidbits. Other artists also have made their own slightly different versions &mdash it was pointed out that the white picket fence appears and disappears.

The second noted painting commissioned by Stewart was by the historical artist John Dunsmore and is titled Washington Inspecting the First Money Coined by the United States. We were shown pictures of the ANS’ lithographic reproduction, as well as a 1916 Stewart Electric Company calendar. Did all of those people really gather for such an event? Probably not. But the painting is filled with small verifiable details, such as the chairs and small press mounted on a bench that are in the mint collection. The bench matches a photograph down to the braces reinforcing the bench legs. There followed some pictures of pieces inspired by this painting.

The original paintings by Lamasure and Dunsmore are in the Philadelphia mint, and Leonard and Joel hope to personally inspect them. Congress Hall in Philadelphia was given Stewart’s artifacts, but they were never cataloged; many pieces are on loan, and some of those are reported lost. Many more details on this area and their experiences will be covered in the book that Leonard and Joel are writing. We hope to see it soon.

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Exhibit at the Central States Numismatic Society Convention

The Central States Numismatic Society (CSNS) will hold their 69th annual convention April 16-19, 2008 at the Donald Stephens Convention Center, Rosemont. Chicago Coin Club members are encouraged to participate by building an educational exhibit or two. There are eight categories and every first, second and third place winner will receive a gold coin. Exhibit applications received before March 1 will be placed in a drawing for a ¼-ounce U.S. gold eagle! The absolute deadline for submitting an application is March 15th. You must be a member of CSNS ($10/year). Membership forms, exhibit applications, exhibit rules and regulations can be found at www.centralstates.info. Forms will also be available at the January meeting.

If you need help and advice on exhibiting, then speak to experienced exhibitors who attend most Club meetings, including Don Dool, Jeff Rosinia, Mark Wieclaw, Carl Wolf and more.

Carl Wolf, Secretary

A New Project

Although the club’s web site has been home to a small numismatic library for some years, it had been minimally publicized while it went through some redesigns. Other sites have publicized links to certain works in the library, so we now have a link to the library from the club’s web site.

The library is small and eclectic, holding works not readily available elsewhere. The library will hold copyrighted works only with the author’s permission; works that are no longer under copyright also will be included. Although some other sites present each work as a collection of images, each holding one page, this library will be in HTML so any browser can display the works; this also permits the text to be searched by a search engine. The goal is to present numismatic information to a large audience.

Are you interested in adding a work to the library? You will need access to a PC with a scanner and program; we can provide some hints on the scanning, conversion to text, and final formatting before you start.

Club E-Mail Blasts Going Into Spam or Junk Folders

Recently, several members on our group e-mail have not received notices. In each case, they were using a corporate address. Even though my name and address were in their address book, the company’s spy sweeper and virus scanners withheld it from their inbox. All the mail goes out as blind carbon copy (bcc), but newer software can still detect the mail is going to multiple recipients. That’s enough for the gatekeeper to put it into the spam or junk mail folder.

In the future the Club may institute software that can work around this, but until then it’s recommended you open a personal e-mail account and send it to carlwolfco@msn.com for group e-mails from the Chicago Coin Club.

Don’t ignore your junk mail folder. Opening the folder will not download a virus. The folder will open and list mail that may contain a virus. You will be surprised to sometimes see legitimate mail from friends and associates. Most of the mail in this folder is junk and you can easily identify them. Ignore them and don’t click on any of their attachments. Look in this folder several times a day and empty it when you finish. Don’t let it build up because it’s taking up storage space on your server. Also get into your e-mail “help and settings,” “options,” etc. and familiarize yourself with all the different features that can be turned on or off.

Carl Wolf

Our 1069th Meeting

Important Dates

Birthday and Year Joined

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CHICAGO COIN CLUB
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CHICAGO, IL 60690

http://www.ChicagoCoinClub.org/

Club Officers

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