Chatter

Minutes of the 1074th Meeting

The 1074th meeting of the Chicago Coin Club was held June 11, 2008 in the Chicago Bar Association Building, 321 S. Plymouth Court, Downtown Chicago. President Robert Feiler called the meeting to order at 7 PM with 21 members present.

Treasurer Steve Zitowsky presented a printed report showing May income of $520.00, expenses of $195.09 and total assets $12,809.38. The report was approved as presented. Steve also announced the donation of 300 first-class stamps for Chatter postage. A motion was passed to accept Robert Kulys’ application to convert his membership status to Life Member.

Robert Leonard announced that Robert J. Leuver, former Director of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, would speak at the July 9th meeting. The topic will be U.S. Government’s Tryst with a Plastic Substrate for Currency. It was also announced that in 3 days, Dr. Roger Bland, an expert on ancient Roman coinage at the British Museum, would speak at The Field Museum on A British Approach to Antiquities and Buried Treasure.

President Feiler was the evening’s featured speaker on Changed Coins.

Lyle Daly introduced the evening’s exhibitors: MARC STACKLER: 5 books on Mexican revolutionary coinage; WINSTON ZACK: a new coin magnifying device of 55-200X; DAVID GUMM: 3 love tokens & an 1849 seated dollar; ROBERT LEONARD: a current presidential dollar & 5 oversize copper coins; ANDY PLIOPLYS: a 1918 Russian lottery ticket with Lithuanian insignia with 25,000 rubles in prizes; SHARON BLOCKER: 1936 California Pacific International Exposition half dollar received at the bank for 50-cents; ROBERT FEILER: 1798 Norwegian 1/15 specie daler; MARK WIECLAW: 1921 counterfeit Peace dollar, 1882 French 100-franc in gold, 2 distaters & bronze ancient Roman coins; DONALD DOOL: 4 San Martin medals modeled after monuments; RICHARD LIPMAN: Liberian $12-gold and $5-bronze coins, and a Morris ‘Moe’ Berg medal; ROBERT WEINSTEIN: 8 billon tetradrachms of Indo-Parthian and Apracha kings.

It was announced that all four advertisers for the Chatter had renewed for the year, and Mark Weiclaw is the chairman of the Club’s 90th anniversary celebration.

The meeting was adjourned at 9:15 PM.

Respectfully Submitted,
Carl Wolf, Secretary

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Show and Tell

Items shown at our June 11, 2008 meeting.

1. Marc Stackler showed books on Mexican Revolutionary coins, of both wide and narrow focus:
   • Howland Wood’s The Mexican Revolutionary Coinage, 1913-1916, 1921, ANS Numismatic Notes and Monographs #4.
   • Neil Utberg’s The Coins of the Mexican Revolution, 1960, self published.
   • Hugh Guthrie’s Mexican Revolutionary Coinage, 1913-1917, 1976, Superior. Over 450 varieties are detailed.
   • Leslie & Stevens’ Coinage of the Mexican Revolutionist Zapata.
   • Joe Flores’ Coins of Oaxaca. A good numbering system.
2. Winston Zack brought a small microscope that connects to his PC. Under the Dino-lite name, this one of three available at PCgear.com that retail from $200 to $600. With the provided software, the PC displayed images at magnifications from 55 times up to 200 times. Pretty good images of coin details.
3. David Gumm showed U.S. 19th century coins; the first were Love Tokens:
   • An 1876 Seated quarter.
   • A Seated dime with an engraved data of 1886.
   • An 1862 Indian Head cent.
   • An 1849 Seated dollar.
4. Bob Leonard showed us a recent James Madison presidential dollar. Many people prefer to carry paper dollars than these light dollar coins. What wimps we are! Then Bob showed us some large, heavy coins that did circulate:
   • A 42 mm bronze drachma of Ptolemy, with head of Zeus on one side and an eagle on the reverse.
   • A Byzantine 40 nummi of Emperor Justinian, from year 12 of his reign.
   • A Swedish one ore of Queen Christiana, dated MDCXLV (1645).
   • A 1797 “cartwheel” tuppence of George III, weighing 2 ounces.
   • Usually a token is lighter than the corresponding coin, but not this 1813 copper three pence from a Birmingham workhouse. The legend includes: 80 tokens for a pound note.
5. Andy Pliopolys showed a lottery ticket with Russian and Lithuanian content. Dated April, 1918, three months after Lithuania declared its independence, this one ruble ticket to a lottery offering 25,000 rubles in prizes was printed at the Russian miltary center of Pskov. Widows and orphans had been sent to that city, out of the way of the war, and Andy thinks this might have been a last-ditch effort to raise needed funds. Andy will continue his research.
6. When Sharon Blocker goes to a bank, she asks the teller for halves and anything unusual. She showed us a 1936 San Diego commemorative half dollar in AU condition that she recently obtained. But she refused to tell us the name of the bank. Another member mentioned that another one of those coins had appeared in the area within the last few months.
7. Bob Feiler showed a 1798 Norwegian 1/15 Specie Daler (also worth 8 skilling).
8. Mark Wieclaw showed a range of items:
   • A counterfeit 1921 Peace dollar — three grams light and struck in low relief. It is good enough to fool some collectors, especially when a real coin is not next to it.
   • Mark likes the design of the 20 francs French Angel coin. He showed an 1882 100 francs that is similar.
   • A Roman Provincial piece from Cilicia of Caracalla, with his estranged wife, Plautilla, on the reverse.
   • A distater of Lucania Thurium (330 BC) with a bull and a tiny fish on the reverse.
   • A distater of Lucania Metapontum with both sides well centered and struck, something hard to find on ancient coins. A quadrigga appears on the helmet of the bearded obverse figure, while the reverse has letters of Metapontum.
9. Don Dool showed medals issued for the inauguration of monuments to San Martin, and compared each to his recent photograph of each monument:
   • He is holding a hat, but he holds it higher on the medal.
   • Wrong — look at the horse.
   • The monument in Ciudad San Martin is beautiful, but not like the medal.
   • The photograph and medal are similar, just not quite the same.
10. Rich Lipman showed some coins and a medal:
    • Two Liberian coins with different topics but similar arrangement of design elements: the small $12 coin shows Jesus surrounded by the twelve apostles, while the large $5 coin copper piece is for the World Cup (soccer).
    • A medal for Moe Berg led into a review of the life of a man who is in the CIA hall of fame, but not the baseball hall of fame. He spoke many languages, played for a number of baseball teams, graduated from Columbia Law School, played for more teams including the White Sox, started a law firm in 1928, toured Japan with an American touring team (Babe Ruth, those guys), and coached the Red Sox until 1941. For the OSS (CIA precursor), he went to South America, then parachuted into Jugoslavia as part of an effort to determine progress of German and Italian nuclear efforts.
11. Bob Weinstein started by showing a map of southwest Asia to show the origin of his coins from last month, the kingdom of Apracha. After Gondophares returned to his homeland, he left his nephew Abdagases in charge. Except for Abdagases, all following rulers used Gondophares as a title. Bob showed eight billon tetradrachms from a series of Indo-Parthian kings, with some coins not indicating the ruler by name or mark. The coins follow the same general design: one side shows a man on horseback, while the other side shows Zeus.

Trip Report — Field Museum

Approximately 50 people attended Dr. Roger Bland’s presentation at The Field Museum at 1 PM on Saturday, June 14, titled A British Approach to Antiquities and Buried Treasure. The history and traditions surrounding the discoveries of buried treasure in England were covered, including which objects qualify as treasure. The Portable Antiquities Scheme was explained. This is a voluntary program to record every archaeological object found by the public. When recorded, these finds have the potential to tell us much about the past. Bland also spoke of how they educate the public to know when they should leave a discovery untouched and call in professional archaeologists. An example included a kettle full of coins and jewels brought in to authorities untouched. Since the treasure was probably the result of years of hoarding, this allowed experts to dismantel the discovery in layers, revealing the newer items near the top and the oldest at the bottom.

A photograph of a metal detectors club in England looked much like one of our local coin club meetings. Our meeting, however, lacks the pints of ale and ashtrays!

Literature handouts of discussed subjects included:

• Codes of Practice for Responsible Metal Detecting
• Conservation Advice on preparation, recording & storing finds, cleaning, etc.

Sincerely, Carl Wolf

Our 1075th Meeting

Important Dates

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CHICAGO COIN CLUB
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CHICAGO, IL 60690

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