Chatter

Minutes of the 1070th Meeting

The 1070th meeting of the Chicago Coin Club was held in their new meeting room at the Chicago Bar Association, 321 S. Plymouth Court. President Robert Feiler called the meeting to order at 7 PM with 12 members and 2 guests, Richard Lipman and Nicholas Brown, present. Following the second reading of Richard Lipman’s application a motion was passed to accept him into the Club.

The January Minutes were approved as printed in the Chatter, with a correction to Mark Wieclaw’s exhibit where “Masonic” should be “magnetic.” Treasurer Steve Zitowsky presented a printed report showing January income of $860.00, expenses of $753.10 and total assets of $12,594.10. The report was approved as presented. Steve also pointed out that two donations were received, $30.00 from William Riles and $10.00 from Margo Russell, which received a warm round of applause.

It was announced that Second V.P. Lyle Daly donated to the CCC a convention booth that would otherwise have been thrown away. The booth is made up of ten panels (23” X 47”) that snap together and form a wrap-around wall approximately 10’ wide by 8’ high, with three lights that mount to the top. Lyle received a long round of applause in appreciation.

Flyers covering educational programs, convention hours, exhibit forms, and membership applications were distributed concerning the upcoming Central States Numismatic Society Convention (Apr 16-19, Rosemont). Lyle Daly reported Jeff Rosinia and Dennis Ciechna have the Club’s souvenir banknote sheet on Lawndale National Bank for the Chicago Paper Money Expo (Mar 27-30, Rosemont) nearly ready for printing. Minor editing needs to take place so the copy can fit on one sheet.

Second V.P. Lyle Daly introduced the evening’s 10 exhibitors. DAVID GUMM: 1826-N1 U.S. large cent and a pre-1945 token; DONALD DOOL: 6 Peruvian coins from 1822-23; STEPHEN HUBER: 6 silver crowns; ROBERT FEILER: 2 U.S. cents with gunshots and a collection of cut-out coinage; ROBERT LEONARD: 2 coins, each issued by 3 minting authorities through overstriking a counterstamp or counterstamping an overstrike; MARC STACKLER: 2 early one-real Mexican coins; DREW MICHYETA: Lawndale Chapter No.243 Masonic Penny; RICHARD LIPMAN: 1857 flying eagle U.S. small cent showing a variety of unusual counterstamps; MARK WIECLAW: 6 ancient Roman coins; and LYLE DALY: 2 ancient Roman coins and a 1918 series FRBN with the battleship reverse.

Sincerely Submitted,
Carl Wolf, Secretary

Speaker’s Wor[l]d
A Millennium of Coins from the Papal States

presented to our February 13, 2008 meeting
by Steve Zitowsky

The Papal States, State(s) of the Church or Pontifical States were one of the major historical states of Italy before the Italian peninsula was unified in 1861 (the Risorgimento or resurgance) by the kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, after which the Papal States, in less territorially extensive form, continued to exist until 1870. The Papal States comprised those territories over which the Pope was the ruler in a civil (temporal power) as well as spiritual sense (ecclesiastical primacy) before 1870. The plural Papal States is usually preferred; the singular Papal State (equally correct since it was not a mere personal union) is rather used with lower-case letters for the modern State of Vatican City, an enclave within Rome. Vatican City was founded in 1929, again allowing the Holy See the practical benefits of territorial sovereignty.

The Origins
The Christian Church spent its first three centuries as an outlawed organization and was thus unable to hold or transfer property. Early Christian churches congregated in the audience halls of well-to-do individuals, and a number of early Christian churches built around the edges of Ancient Rome were ascribed to patrons who held the property in custody for the Church. After the ban was lifted by the Emperor Constantine I, the Church’s private property grew quickly through the donations of the pious and the wealthy; the Lateran Palace was the first significant donation, a gift of Constantine himself. Other donations soon followed, mainly in mainland Italy but also in the provinces, but the Church held all of these lands as a private landowner, not as a sovereign entity. When in the 5th century the Italian peninsula passed under the control of first Odoacer, and then the Ostrogoths, the church organization in Italy, and the bishop of Rome as its head, submitted to their sovereign authority while beginning to assert spiritual supremacy.

The seeds of the Papal States as a sovereign political entity were planted in the 6th century. The Eastern Roman (Byzantine) government in Constantinople launched a reconquest of Italy that took decades and devastated the country’s political and economic structures; just as those wars wound down; the Lombards entered the peninsula from the north and conquered much of the countryside. By the 7th century, Byzantine authority was largely limited to a diagonal band running roughly from Ravenna, where the Emperor’s representative, or Exarch, was located, to Rome and south to Naples. With effective Byzantine power weighted at the northeast end of this territory, the Bishop of Rome, as the largest landowner and most prestigious figure in Italy, began by default to take on much of the ruling authority that Byzantines were unable to project to the area around the city of Rome. While the Bishops of Rome, now beginning to be referred to as the Popes, remained de jure Byzantine subjects, in practice the Duchy of Rome, an area roughly equivalent to modern-day Latium, became an independent state ruled by the Church.

The Church’s relative independence, combined with popular support for the Papacy in Italy, enabled various Popes to defy the will of the Byzantine emperor; Pope Gregory II even excommunicated Emperor Leo III the Isaurian. Nevertheless, the Pope and the Exarch still worked together to control the rising power of the Lombards in Italy. As Byzantine power weakened, though, the Papacy took an ever larger role in defending Rome from the Lombards, usually through diplomacy, threats and bribery. In practice, the papal efforts served to focus Lombard aggrandizement on the Exarch and Ravenna. A climactic moment in the founding of the Papal States was the agreement over boundaries embodied in the Lombard king Liutprand’s Donation of Sutri (728) to Pope Gregory II 1.

The Donation of Pepin and the Holy Roman Empire
When the Exarchate finally fell to the Lombards in 751, the Duchy of Rome was completely cut off from the Byzantine Empire, of which it was theoretically still a part. Pope Stephen II acted to neutralize the Lombard threat by courting the de facto Frankish ruler, Pepin III Le Bref (the Short). Stephen gave church sanction to Pepin’s desire to depose the Merovingian figurehead Childeric III and take the throne himself; he also granted Pepin the title Patrician of the Romans. In return, Pepin led a Frankish army into Italy in 754 and 756. Pepin conquered much of northern Italy and made a gift, called the Donation of Pepin of the properties formerly constituting the Exarchate of Ravenna to the Pope. In 781, Charlemagne codified the regions over which the Pope would be temporal sovereign: key was the Duchy of Rome, but the territory was expanded to include Ravenna, the Pentapolis, and parts of the Duchy of Benevento, Tuscany, Corsica, Lombardy and a number of Italian cities. The cooperation between the Papacy and the Carolingian dynasty climaxed in 800, when Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne the first Germanic “Emperor of the Romans” — Augustus Romanorum.

However, the precise nature of the relationship between the Popes and Emperors, and between the Papal States and the Empire, was not clear. Was the Pope a sovereign ruler of a separate realm in central Italy, or were the Papal States just a part of the Frankish Empire over which the Popes had administrative control? Events in the 9th century postponed the conflict: the Frankish Empire collapsed as it was subdivided among Charlemagne’s grandchildren, and the papacy’s prestige declined into the condition later dubbed the pornocracy. In practice, the Popes were unable to exercise effective sovereignty over the extensive and mountainous territories of the Papal States, and the region preserved its old Lombard system of government, with many small countships and marquisates, each centered upon a fortified rocca.

According to Berman, “... papal coinage did not as much begin as evolve. Exactly when the Pope began to exercise control over mint activities has not been clearly established, but it does seem that it was a date previous to the Pope’s renunciation of Byzantine sovereignty.” The first regular series of papal coins began under Hadrian I (772-795) using the Frankish denier as his standard, not the coin standard of the Byzantine Empire. The denier, called the denaro in Italy, was introduced by Pepin III, King of the Franks (751-768). Earlier dating to Gregory II (715-731) and Vitalian (656-672) has also been considered possible. Early coins reflect debased Byzantine solidi, then, with Hadrian’s coins, more like Carolingian denari. In the 9th century, these coins featured a central papal monogram surrounded by a legend or title on one side, with the name of St. Peter, the first Pope, on the “Pope’s side”.

This series of denari, with an occasional Petrine portrait, continued through the “Dark Ages”, until a three hundred year caesura in papal coinage began after Benedict VII (974-983). The Roman economy was atrophied during the 11th and early 12th centuries — no local coinage was needed beyond what was brought into the area by pilgrims. When the need for small change arose in the 12th century, the Roman Senate in 1184 issued a billon denaro closely imitating the French feudal denier of Provins (a French market town in Champagne) circulating in Rome for a half a century. Both the French and its Roman imitation show a cross on the obverse, and a wool comb on the reverse. Note that the Popes at this time spent much of their time elsewhere in Italy due to the hostility of the city. These Senatorial denari provisini continued well into the 14th, the last issues beings struck well after the return of the papal presence in Rome. As the economy grew, along with the rest of Europe, the Senatorial coinage expanded to include denominations in silver, as well as billon, such as the grosso and its half. These coins almost exclusively exalted the city of Rome, particularly the lion, and Roma enthroned holding a globe and palm branch — with legends as Rome capital of the world, and “the Senate and the Roman people.” Gold ducats and larger denomination silver coins imitating Venetian coins were also struck with St Peter and a Senator replacing St. Mark and the Doge.

Over several campaigns in the mid-tenth century, the German ruler Otto I conquered northern Italy; Pope John XII crowned him emperor (the first so crowned in more than forty years), and the two of them ratified the Diploma Ottonianum, which guaranteed the independence of the Papal States. Yet over the next two centuries, Popes and Emperors squabbled over a variety of issues, and the German rulers routinely treated the Papal States as part of their realms on those occasions when they projected power into Italy. A major motivation for the Gregorian Reform was to free the administration of the Papal States from imperial interference, and after the extirpation of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, the German emperors rarely interfered in Italian affairs. By 1300, the Papal States, along with the rest of the Italian principalities, were effectively independent.

From 1305 to 1378, the Popes lived in Avignon, in what is now France, and were under the influence of the French kings in what was known as the ‘Babylonian Captivity’. During this Avignon Papacy, however, much of the Papal States in Italy remained only formally under Papal control; in fact, 1357 marks a watershed in the legal history of the Papal States, when Cardinal Albornoz promulgated the Constitutiones Sanctæ Matris Ecclesiæ, which replaced the mosaic of local law and accumulated traditional ‘liberties’ with a uniform code of civil law. The promulgation of the Constitutiones followed the military progress of Albornoz and his condottieri heading a small mercenary army. Having received the support of the archbishop of Milan, he defeated Viterbo, moving against Rimini, Forlì, Urbino, Ravenna, Senigallia and Ancona. The last holdouts against full papal control were Faenza and Forlì. Albornoz, at the point of being recalled, in a meeting with all the Papal vicars, 29 April 1357, issued the Constitutiones; they remained in effect until 1816. During this period the city of Avignon itself was added to the Papal States; it remained a papal possession even after the popes returned to Rome, only passing back to France during the French Revolution.

The primary mints at this time were in Pont de Sorgues and Avignon. Some gold was struck imitating Florentine florins; most were struck on the local coin standard — papal motifs in the French manner. Avignon coinage forms a unified series running without major alterations from the 14th century well into the late 17th century. Throughout the 13th and 14th centuries though, Italian mints outside of Rome struck periodic issues of billon and silver coins often bearing the same motifs as Avignon issues, with addition of the keys of Peter upright. But, these do not form a cohesive monetary system — often being the issues of autonomous cities as well as Rome. In 1367 Roman papal coinage was restored when Urban V entered Rome. Arriving with dies engraved in Avignon, the pope struck Grossi similar to the Avignon Gros. Supplementing these was smaller silver bolognono patterned after the Bolognese coin. No billon appears to have been issued, this probably provided by continued Senate issues of denari provisini.

Silver coinage remained little changed until Martin V (1417-1431) and Eugene IV (1431-1447), when the first use, outside of Avignon, of papal heraldry &mash; Martin’s Colonna family arms on the heavy Carlino with the crossed keys of Peter and papal tiaras at its crest. The column (colonna) was also used as a secondary device on other denominations. By the time of Eugene IV, heraldry was common.

The Renaissance
During the Renaissance, the papal territory expanded greatly, notably under Popes Alexander VI and Julius II. The Pope became one of Italy’s most important secular rulers as well as the head of the Church, signing treaties with other sovereigns and fighting wars. In practice, though, most of the Papal States were still only nominally controlled by the Pope, and much of the territory was ruled by minor princes. Control was always contested; indeed it took until the 16th century for the Pope to have any genuine control over all his territories.

At its greatest extent in the 18th century, the Papal States included most of central Italy — Latium, Umbria, Marche and the Legations of Ravenna, Ferrara and Bologna, extending north into the Romagna. It also included Benevento and Pontecorvo in southern Italy and the larger Comtat Venaissin around Avignon in southern France.

Saints being depicted on papal coins debuted as the improvement of the engravers’ art followed the other artistic achievements of the early Renaissance. Beautifully executed standing figures and portraits of SS Peter and Paul are among the first such iconographic depictions. However technology did not advance as fast as the engravers’ skills as many of these images were either weakly or double-struck. Gold Ducats were now added to the series of coins issued in the Pope’s name, first in Bologna, then Rome. Senatorial billon was finally superseded by papal issues.

As the Italian Renaissance blossomed, so did the skills and creativity of the die engravers. Saints were depicted in less static poses, St Peter fishes from a boat, receiving the keys to the kingdom of heaven or consigning them to the Pope. Clement VII and Holy Roman Emperor Charles V are even shown struggling under the weight of the cross together. Dozens of locally significant saints make their appearance at numerous papal mint cities, some having more than one patron. Papal legates to these cities also began to display their own family arms struck at the mints under their jurisdiction.

It is during this period that ecclesiastical and papal heraldry provide the numismatist with a record of Italian Renaissance families. Medici, Farnese, Ludovisi, Sforza and Gonzaga, among others, can be found among the shields of arms on papal coins. The coins of Sixtus IV, patron of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling, have a true portraiture realism of human depiction not produced in Rome since the 3rd century.

As the economy in the region expanded, first fueled by the Crusades, then trade with the East, and later sustained by trade with the New World, the use of coinage as a part of daily life expanded, and the diversity of denominations increased. A full range of denominations in gold and silver developed, with two or three denominations in billon not being unusual. Not until the late 16th century did copper coins begin to replace billon. But the monetary system did not evolve as a unified whole throughout the Papal States. Bolognese coinage developed with a distinct denomination system, and its own characteristic appearance, with lions rampant, or a floral cross used on larger coins. At cities which struck coins of the same name, different standards of weight and/or purity gave rise to inequalities even though struck under the name and the authority of the same sovereign pontiff. Even at the same mint, coins of differing names but only slightly different actual values were struck concurrently.

Crown-size silver was first struck at the Bologna mint in 1579, then at Rome and Montalto in 1588. A large silver ecu became a permanent coin of the Avignon mint in 1596. Silver coinage remains plentiful for most of the duration of the Papal State. Under the Barberini Pope Urban VIII (1623-1644), a new level of artistic and technical excellence was achieved. Not just the quality of the Baroque and Rococo art, but the technical improvements in the manufacture of coins produced a more uniform product, more evenly struck on regular flans, and what may be described as some of the finest examples of post-classical numismatic art. Well into the 18th century, the technical competence as well as the quality of execution of animated depictions of saints, holy figures, angels and outdoor scenes continued.

The era of the French Revolution and Napoleon
The French Revolution proved as disastrous for the temporal territories of the Papacy as it was for the Catholic Church in general. In 1791 the Comtat Venaissin and Avignon were annexed by France. With the French invasion of Italy in 1796, the Legations were seized and became part of the revolutionary Cisalpine Republic. Two years later, the Papal States as a whole were invaded by French forces, who declared a Roman Republic. Pope Pius VI died in exile in France in 1799. The Papal States were restored in June of 1800 and Pius VII returned, but the French again invaded in 1808, and this time the remainder of the States of the Church was annexed to France, forming the départements of Tibre and Trasimène.

With the fall of the Napoleonic system in 1814, the Papal States were restored. From 1814 until the death of Gregory XVI in 1846, the Popes followed a harshly reactionary policy in the Papal States, e.g., the city of Rome maintained the last Jewish ghetto in Western Europe. There were hopes that this would change when Pius IX was elected to succeed Gregory and began to introduce liberal reforms.

The temporary dissolution of the Papal States during the Napoleonic Wars brought economic chaos. At Rome billon coinage became prevalent in denominations as high as 60 Baiocchi, no gold other than the half Zecchino was struck after 1793, and large quantities of copper 2½ and 5 Baiocchi were issued — new high denominations of that metal. Many cities whose mints had long since closed began producing copper coins in these two denominations as a form of “emergency money.” In all, nineteen or more mints were functioning at this time. Soon the Northern provinces around Bologna, having seceded from the Papal States, were issuing non-papal coinage of the Bolognese Popular Government and the Cisalpine Republic. By 1795, Rome itself was governed by a Republic, while Pius VI was held as a “guest” in France. Republican coinage was not extensive — a limited quantity of silver Scudi, and copper 2 Baiocchi and lower denominations generally bearing fasces, the symbol of the ancient Roman Republic.

Italian nationalism and the end of the Papal States
After a brief annexation to the French Empire, the Papal State was restored by Pius VII. Coinage differed from that before the revolution in two respects — local types were suspended for one national series distinguished by mint marks; with steam powered machinery, the minting process was perfected with a uniformity of strike not heretofore achieved. Italian nationalism had been stoked during the Napoleonic period but dashed by the settlement of the Congress of Vienna (1814–15), which still left Italy divided and largely under Habsburg Austrian domination. In 1848, nationalist and liberal revolutions began to break out across Europe; in 1849, another Roman Republic was declared and the Pope fled the city. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, recently elected president of the newly declared French 2nd Republic, saw an opportunity to assuage conservative Catholic opinion in France, and in cooperation with Austria sent troops to restore Papal rule in Rome. After some hard fighting, in which Giuseppe Garibaldi distinguished himself on the Italian side, Pius IX returned to Rome, and repenting of certain previous liberal tendencies pursued a harsh, conservative policy even more repressive than that of his predecessors. However, Pius did continue to build railroads, telegraphs, and gas lights.

In the years that followed, Italian nationalists, both those who wished to unify the country under the Kingdom of Sardinia and its ruling House of Savoy and those who favored a republican solution, saw the Papal States as the chief obstacle to Italian unity. Louis Napoleon, who had now seized control of France as Emperor Napoleon III, tried to play a double game, simultaneously forming an alliance with Sardinia and playing on his famous uncle’s nationalist credentials on the one hand and maintaining French troops in Rome to protect the Pope’s rights on the other.

After the 2nd Italian War of Independence, much of northern Italy was unified under the House of Savoy’s government; in the aftermath, Garibaldi’s expedition of the Thousand overthrew the Bourbon monarchy in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Afraid that Garibaldi would set up a republican government in the south, the Sardinians petitioned Napoleon for permission to send troops through the Papal States to gain control of the Two Sicilies, which was granted on the condition that Rome was left undisturbed. In 1860, with much of the region already in rebellion against Papal rule, Sardinia conquered the eastern two-thirds of the Papal States and cemented its hold on the south. Bologna, Ferrara, Umbria, the Marches, Benevento and Pontecorvo were all formally annexed by November 1860, and a unified Kingdom of Italy was declared. The Papal States were reduced to the Latium region surrounding Rome, raising the Roman Question.

The last major monetary reform, before the final conquest of the Papal State by Italy, came in 1866 with the introduction of the pontifical lira struck in conformity with the standards of the Latin Monetary Union. This early European currency union provided for some reciprocal legal tender status for the coins of member states including France, Italy and Switzerland, among others.

On March 17, 1861, the Parliament proclaimed Victor Emmanuel II King of Italy. Rome was declared the capital of Italy in March 27, 1861, when the 1st Italian Parliament met in the kingdom’s old capital Turin in Piedmont. However, the Italian Government could not take possession of its capital, because Napoleon III kept a French garrison in Rome protecting Pius IX. The opportunity to eliminate the last vestige of the Papal States came when the Franco-Prussian War began in July 1870. Napoleon III had to recall his garrison from Rome for France’s own defense and could no longer protect the pope. Following the collapse of the 2nd French Empire at the battle of Sedan, widespread public demonstrations demanded that the Italian Government take Rome. King Victor Emmanuel II sent Count Ponza di San Martino to Pius IX with a personal letter offering a face-saving proposal that would have allowed the peaceful entry of the Italian Army into Rome, under the guise of offering protection to the pope.

The Pope’s reception of San Martino (September 10, 1870) was unfriendly. Pius IX allowed violent outbursts to escape him. Throwing the King’s letter upon the table he exclaimed: “Fine loyalty! You are all a set of vipers, of whited sepulchers, and wanting in faith.” He was perhaps alluding to other letters received from the King. After, growing calmer, he exclaimed: “I am no prophet, nor son of a prophet, but I tell you, you will never enter Rome!” San Martino was so mortified that he left the next day.

On September 10, Italy declared war on the Papal States, and the Italian Army, crossed the papal frontier on September 11 and advanced slowly toward Rome, hoping that a peaceful entry could be negotiated. The Italian Army reached the Aurelian Walls on September 19 and placed Rome under a state of siege. Although the pope’s tiny army was incapable of defending the city, Pius IX ordered it to put up at least a token resistance to emphasize that Italy was acquiring Rome by force and not consent. The city was captured on September 20, 1870. Rome and Latium were annexed to the Kingdom of Italy after a plebiscite held in the following October.

This event, described in Italian history books as liberation, was taken very bitterly by the Pope. The Italian government had offered to allow the Pope to retain control of the Leonine City on the west bank of the Tiber, but Pius rejected the overture. Early the following year, the capital of Italy was moved from Florence to Rome. The Pope, whose previous residence, the Quirinal Palace, had become the royal palace of the Kings of Italy, withdrew in protest into the Vatican, where he lived as a self-proclaimed “prisoner”, refusing to leave or to set foot in St. Peter’s Square, and forbidding Catholics on pain of excommunication to participate in elections in the new Italian state.

But, the new Italian control of Rome did not wither, nor did the Catholic world come to the Pope’s aid, as Pius IX had expected. Ultimately, in 1929, the papacy, then Pius XI, renounced the bulk of the Papal States and signed the Lateran Treaty (or Concordat with Rome) with Mussolini, which created the State of the Vatican City, forming the sovereign territory of the Holy See, which is also a subject under international law in its own right. Vatican City can be seen as the modern descendent of the Papal States. Papal coinage resumed at the mint in Rome with Vatican City coinage — struck on the Italian standard, with the exception of gold which continued to be struck until 1959 despite its final suspension in Italy in 1940. Papal coinage is legal tender in both Italy and San Marino.

Starting in 1300, from Boniface VIII (1294-1303), there has been a sequence of papal coins that has endured, with only four interruptions of succeeding Popes, to today’s Benedict XVI: Leo XI (1605); Leo XIII (1878-1903); Pius X (1903-1914); Benedict XV (1914-1922), who all did not issue coins. Thus, over the last millennium, coins from the Papal States have described the Western World of that age — its economy, its industrialization, its geography, its history and its art.

Bibliography & Other Useful Books

• Berman, Allen G., (1991), Papal Coins, South Salem NY: Attic Books
• Cermentini, Gino & Toderi, Giuseppe, (1969), Prezzario della Monete Coniate in Italia dal 1800 al 1969, Firenze: Gori
• Grierson, Philip, (1991), The Coins of Medieval Europe, London: Seaby
• Göbl, Robert, (1987), Numismatik, Munich: Battenberg
• Krause, Chester and Mishler, Clifford (Various), Standard Catalogue of World Coins, Iola WI: Krause
• Ryan, John Carlin (1989), A Handbook of Papal Coins: The Medieval Coinage 1268-1431, The Early Renaissance Coinage 1431-1534, Washington: John C. Ryan
• PAPAL NUMISMATIC HISTORY: THE EMANCIPATION OF THE PAPAL STATE, Berman
• A PICTORIAL CATALOGUE OF PAPAL MEDALS 1417-1942 AS STRUCK BY THE MINT OF ROME FOR THE VATICAN, Mazio
• COIN MOTTOES AND THEIR TRANSLATIONS, Mosher, (from The Numismatist, 1948)
• READING MEDIEVAL EUROPEAN COINS, Walker

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CCC Income Statement for the Year Ending December 31, 2007

Steven Zitowsky, Treasurer

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 February 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

Our 1071st Meeting

Important Dates

Birthday and Year Joined

Chatter Matter

All correspondence pertaining to Club matters should be addressed to the Secretary and mailed to:

CHICAGO COIN CLUB
P.O. Box 2301
CHICAGO, IL 60690

http://www.ChicagoCoinClub.org/

Club Officers

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