• Contents of this Issue
  • Notes
  • CCC Meeting Minutes
  • Anti-Money Laundering
  • Exhibits
  • Upcoming Meeting
  • Important Dates
  • Chatter Matter
  • Share This Issue!
• Other Chatter Issues
  • Prior Issue
  • Next Issue
  • All Past Issues
• Contact Editor

Chatter

Editor’s Notes

As of our January meeting, about one third of our members had not paid their 2016 dues. If your 2016 dues were not yet paid, your printed December Chatter had a dues note on the cover. If you receive an emailed link to each Chatter and your 2016 dues were not yet paid, your email for the December issue included a dues note. Annual dues are $20 for each individual member, and $10 for each junior member. Our record keeping system is able to handle payment of more than one year’s dues.

There is a correction to one of the Important Dates in the last Chatter issue: the venue for the March CICF is different for this year — it is the Stephens (Rosemont) Convention Center.

Paul Hybert, editor

Minutes of the 1165th Meeting

The 1165th meeting of the Chicago Coin Club was held January 13, 2016 in the Chicago Bar Association Building, 321 S. Plymouth Court, Downtown Chicago. President Elliott Krieter called the meeting to order at 6:45 PM with 24 members and 2 guests present, Willie Davis and Nicholas Zacny.

A motion was passed to accept the Minutes as published in the Chatter. Treasurer Steve Zitowsky gave a detailed financial report for November-December showing $4,268.00 in revenue and $3,774.99 in expenses. He also went on to report 2015 year end with $22,992 in revenue, $20,047 in expenses, and $2,945 in net income, held in Life Membership $2,490 and Club Equity $27,331. After several questions, a motion was passed to accept the report. Steve also passed out a list of upcoming coin shows where the Club anticipates manning a table.

The membership applications of Willie Davis, Jr., and Nicholas Zacny received a first reading. President Krieter announced “Portraits of Liberty: Icon of Freedom” is the theme to National Coin Week, April 17-23, 2016, and encouraged members to place exhibits. Jeff Rosinia brought up the subject of appointing a committee to plan and organize the Club’s 1200th Meeting Celebration in December, 2018. Richard Hamilton brought up the subject of reordering a supply of Club name badges.

First V.P. Richard Lipman introduced featured speakers Robert and David Greenstein who delivered a talk on Anti-Money Laundering. Following a question and answer period, Rich presented them with ANA Educational Certificates and engraved Club medals.

Second V.P. Marc Stackler announced the exhibitors. DARREN HOOPER: a magician coin made from an 1896-S Morgan dollar. BILL BURD: story of the Chicago Numismatic Society’s Nashville Medal, how a quantity of bronze medals were purchased by Virgil Brand, and recently purchased by Bill who distributed one to everyone in attendance. DEVEN KANE: coins from the Baktrian Kingdom, India, and Safavid. MARK WIECLAW: a Coin World ad, 2016 gold Chinese Panda, German gold medal, and a Roman quadrigatus 225-214 B.C. RICHARD HAMILTON: 4 world crowns. ERIC DELGADILLO: 6 high grade U.S. coins. DALE LUKANICH: Sicilian Kingdom cut coin and 2 overstruck bronze coins from Herbassos, Sicily. LYLE DALY: Celtic coinage. RICHARD LIPMAN: 6 pieces of currency, plus a Wall Street Journal article on paper money collecting. ROBERT GREENSTEIN: 2 double denomination U.S. coins.

The meeting was adjourned at 9:08 PM.

Respectfully Submitted,
Carl Wolf, Secretary

Speaker’s Wor[l]d
Anti-Money Laundering

a presentation by David Greenstein and Robert Greenstein,
to our January 13, 2016 meeting

As long as there have been laws, there have been criminals. Illegal activity can be profitable, and the profits often are in cash, so law enforcement has often “followed the money.” With cash identified as an enabler of international terrorism after the 9/11 attacks, the federal government expanded its monitoring of cash transactions, and became more interested in actions that might be useful in laundering money.

What is money laundering? It is the process of taking ill-gotten gains and making them seem legitimate. This is usually achieved by adding the ill-gotten cash to the cash stream of a legitimate business, ideally a cash-intensive business. Start a list of sources of illicite cash by thinking of the Corleone family’s businesses in the Godfather books and movies. After that introduction, David and Robert started to explain how the government’s interest affects the coin and bullion businesses.

The coin and bullion businesses are cash intensive, with most of the items untraceable because they are not unique. Bullion trades as money worldwide, is easily transported, has a low markup, and can be sold readily. Add unscrupulous dealers who make transactions invisible, and the government introduced cash compliance regulations. To guard against money laundering through financial institutions (banks, in other words) section 352 of the Patriot Act requires that financial institutions establish anti-money laundering programs that include, as a minumum, a bunch of internal policies and such, a compliance officer to ensure the policies are followed, a training program so employees know the policies, and an independent audit program to verify the policies are being followed. The banks are also supposed to know their customers, but the normal transactions by a local coin business can be unlike those by most other businesses. Accountants, regulators, and auditors do not appreciate diversity among business practices — they produce questions at best and suspicions and allegations at worst. The result is that some banks, especially the large ones with many branches, simply avoid potential issues by not keeping coin dealers as customers.

Robert stated that Harlan J. Berk, Ltd uses a former government employee, someone who had written some of the reugulations, to audit them and review their own internal policies. Yes, a coin dealer also has to have its own AML (anti-money laundering) plan; and use and follow it, and be prepared to share it with its bank! A simple plan would suffice for a small dealer — “buy from the public and sell only to wholesalers” describes many small dealers without a storefront. The government and your bank might consider you to be a coin dealer even though you do not consider yourself as such. David and Robert mentioned a number of actions of coin dealers, including: have an online store (even if just eBay), buy ads in newspapers, and conduct for-profit transactions for friends and family.

If you perform any of the actions of a coin dealer, you will be expected to meet all of the corresponding obligations. With banks being more cautious regarding cash transactions, expect questions about any of your past transactions. Instead of a bank trying to understand your business by reviewing your business policies, it is easier for a bank to look for transactions that meet the criteria of “suspicious.” They will ignore all of your other transactions, and ask you about the “suspicious” one — your records had better provide sufficient details so you can explain it away.

The government’s preferred anti-money laundering measure is the creation of a document for every transaction, enabling the government to reconstruct a trail of interest at any time in the future. The laws have increased and changed over the years, adding to the types of transactions of interest bit by bit, and resulting in a set of forms and regulations that resembles a quiltwork more than a blanket. As an example: even though the rule for you requires reporting transactions of more than X amount of dollars, the government still has a record of your transactions of less than X amount of dollars because some other party is required to report those transactions. Everything is reported by a bank or company, even if you do not think so!

What is cash? The government regulations specify different dollar amounts for different financial instruments. Robert and David provided us with some examples on a slide, but by no means a complete listing. Because the ranges are subject to change, I will not even try to provide here a partial current snapshot. Two specific government forms were mentioned by Robert and David: Form 8300, and the Suspicious Activity Report (SAR).

Form 8300 is used to report transactions over $10,000 to the IRS, and requires the customer’s ID and Social Security Number. This is used for a single or related transactions of over $10,000. This form provides a generic description of the merchandise, and is rarely read by the IRS — there are just too many of them! But if any of your future actions raise a flag, expect all records involving you to be examined. When a customer buys $6,000 of gold and $6,000 of silver and pays for it all in one $12,000 transaction, the dealer must file a Form 8300. Now consider related transactions. If that customer had paid $6,000 now and agreed to pay the $6,000 balance in a month, that is a related transaction and a Form 8300 must be filed. If the customer had bought $6,000 of gold now, and $6,000 in silver a month later without telling the dealer about this plan, no Form 8300 would have been filed for either transaction. But if the customer had told the dealer of the planned future purchase, the dealer must file a Suspicious Activity Report — and the government reads each SAR when it is filed! A coin dealer must file an SAR whenever any looks suspicious; not only is the SAR filed without the knowledge of the reported customer, it is illegal to tell someone you filed it. You can talk about a filed SAR only if you are subpoenaed about it.

Do not get cute and try to avoid the rules by being creative. Although the government can accept, as honest mistakes, a few simple errors in filed reports, actively avoiding the rules can result in fines and criminal prosecution. The US government’s anti-money laundering rules are only one type of the regulations that coin dealers face. Local governments have produced their own rules, from the second-hand dealer rules in Chicago, to the rules in Minnesota that have made some coin dealers, even if located outside of Minnesota, from doing business with anyone in Minnesota, even by mail.

There are more details and nuances to the rules than can be covered in this report, or even just this presentation. If you think the rules might apply to you, learn more about them now. Robert and David ended the program by mentioning the Industry Council for Tangible Assets (ICTA), and the work they do in support of coin and bullion dealers.

Current Advertisers

Show and Tell

Items shown at our January 13, 2016 meeting,

1. Darren Hooper showed an 1896-S Morgan dollar which was made into a box dollar. Inside was a JFK half; inside that was a Washington quarter; inside that was a Roosevelt dime.
2. Bill Burd brought a rectangular, bronze medal of the USS Nashville from the Virgil Brand Estate. Bill then explained the story behind the Brand estate and the disbursement of his collection. This medal was struck for the Chicago Numismatic Society in 1909. After initial distribution to club members in January 1910, a large group remained unsold. In April, Brand agreed to purchase 100 of the medals if the dies were cancelled. In 2015, Bill’s company, Chicago Coin, purchased 2 wooden crates containing 125 of these medals which were originally in the Brand estate. They were all in their original felt lined boxes; however, the boxes were all destroyed from water damage. Over half of the medals are in various degrees of corrosion. Bill had sorted out the undamaged medals, and gave one to each of the 26 meeting attendees.
3. Deven Kane brought 3 three coins to show:
   1. A Baktrian Æ24 dichalkon, weighing 7.03 gm, of Antimachus I, 174-165 BC. The designs are a walking elephant and and advancing Nike with wreath. SNG.ANS.294. Like most of the Baktrian and Indo-Greek Kings, Antimachus I Theos is largely known from his coins. He does appear to the first Hellenistic monarch to call himself a god (Theos) on his coins. Unlike other Baktrian kings, we actually have a document (a tax receipt housed in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford) referring to the King. This rare coin brings up memories of the Trichalkon of Demetrius I (heavier, in the 9-gram range) which displayed the head of an elephant. Elephants are very popular on Baktrian and Indo-Greek coinage (sharing the honors with Bulls and horses).
   2. A 9 gram silver dinar of Mahasamanta Sasanka Deva from Bengal, 606-619. The obverse has Siva on a bull, with Lakshmi seated on the reverse. Sasanka started as a local ruler who gradually built an Empire in Eastern India based off Bengal. His rival in the west, Harshavardhana, conquered Bengal after Sasanka died.
   3. A rectangular 5 Shahi silver coin of Sultan Husayn (1105-1135h) from the Tabriz mint 1129h (1717 AD), weighing 8.47g. The 1 and 2 shahi coins are the more common Safavid coins, while the 5 and 6 shahi coins are rarer; Persia did not have much native silver. Deven has always been fascinated with this coin design because it is very similar to the oval amulets/medallions that circulated in the region at the time. Sultan Husayn ruled for 28 years (1694-1722); they were mostly tranquil while the Safavid State rotted away until it ended in disaster. An Afghan revolt starting in 1709 gradually spread west, and ended in the capture of the capital Isfahan itself. Husyan and most of his family were killed in the aftermath. The Afghan rule lasted less than a decade, when they were expelled by a new warlord who later assumed the royal title as Nadir Shah.
4. Mark Wieclaw discussed four very different items.
   1. A full page ad from Coin World that should make members think about their collection. The ad’s caption stated “Another Lifetime Collection…” and featured a large color photo of boxes and suitcases of a collection accumulated over many years and now “for sale” (i.e. dumped). Mark noted that never once in his years behind the counter at a dealership did a collector come in to sell his collection — it was always a spouse or heir, who knew little about the coins. The lesson is to dispose of your collection yourself, given that you have the knowledge of its significance and worth.
   2. 2016 gold Chinese Panda ¼ oz., or is it? China is standardizing its bullion along the metric system, so this 100 Yuan coin is 8 grams (slightly larger than a quarter ounce). Their larger gold coins now weigh 15 and 30 grams (slightly lighter than a half and full ounce).
   3. Silver Quadrigatus (Didrachm) from Rome, circa 225-214 BC featuring a Janiform head of Dioscuri. On the reverse is Jupiter in a quadriga.
   4. A gold medal from Germany that shares the same design as an older porcelain medal and the popular alcoholic beverage Jaegermeister: a radiant cross atop a deer skull with antlers.
5. Richard Hamilton brought 4 crowns to show and tell.
   1. Panama Balboa, 1966, silver ¾ oz. 300,000 were minted but two-thirds were melted in 1970s to strike a different coin.
   2. British Crown, 1965, 28g copper-nickel, featuring Queen Elizabeth on the obverse and Winston Churchill on the reverse. 9.5 million were struck.
   3. Canadian Maple Leaf, 2016, $5 face value, .9999 silver 1 oz. The obverse and reverse motifs are atop a radial background.
   4. British 25 new pence, 1981, commemorating the wedding of Charles & Diana. 26.7 million were struck.
6. Eric Delgadillo showed 3 high-grade slabbed coins.
   1. 1864 Indian Cent, NGC MS65, S-11 (lathe lines), which is newly featured in the Cherry Picker’s Guide.
   2. 1862/1 3-cent silver, NGC MS65.
   3. 1887 nickel with the 87 of the date repunched.
7. Dale Lukanich brought 3 distressed coins.
   1. A cut coin from Sicilian Kingdom (1198-1250 AD) Frederick II, one Tari (gold coin). Coins were cut to facilitate smaller transactions, since gold and silver would be weighed anyway.
   2. Two bronze overstrikes from Herbassos in Sicily, circa 330 BC. Herbassos was often under siege and overstruck coins, in this case more than once, as its alliances shifted.
8. Lyle Daly has a long standing interest in Celtic art. After having missed an auction item, his interest has been rekindled. He brought in these items to show:
   1. Photo of Gold Stater of the Aulerci Eburovices from Northern France near Evreux. The obverse has a highly stylized head of Apollo with pellets and an inverted boar (Eburo = Wild Boar) while the reverse has a stylized horse with rider, and a boar beneath.
   2. Three low grade bronze coins showing migration of coin designs.
      1. A Macedonian coin 179–168 BC from the Kingdom of Perseus, with Strymon (river god) on the obverse and a Trident with monograms on the reverse.
      2. A transitional coin with angular representations imitating the prior coin.
      3. From Danubian Celts of 168-31 BC, with geometric designs believed to represent Strymon and a Trident.
   3. A silver stater found near Dorset, England, with the head of Apollo on the obverse and a horse with pellets on the reverse. Seaby 60/172. This coin was purchased from Clive Gibbs, a metal detectorist who is acknowledged by the Dorset Natural History and Archeological Society as instrumental in the mapping of the Northwest Farm, Winterborne Kingston.
9. Rich Lipman brought some examples of paper money.
   1. Two large Norwegian notes (500 & 1000 Kroner) from the 1960s-70s, unusual since large size notes were out of fashion by that time.
   2. Irish 10 punt (1971-75) featuring Lady Laverly.
   3. $2 bills with repeater serial numbers.
   4. Two $1 bills with the same serial numbers (different Federal Reserve districts).
10. Robert Greenstein showed 2 double-denomination mint errors.
    1. A 1979-P Susan B. Anthony dollar overstruck by dies for a 1980-P Kennedy half dollar.
    2. A 1976 Jefferson nickel overstruck by dies for a 1977 Kennedy half dollar.

Our 1166th Meeting

Important Dates

Unless stated otherwise, our regular monthly CCC Meeting is in downtown Chicago on the second Wednesday of the month; the starting time is 6:45PM.

Chatter Matter

http://www.ChicagoCoinClub.org/

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

Club Officers

Contacting Your Editor / Chatter Delivery Option

chatter_editor@yahoo.com

The print version of the Chatter is simply a printout of the Chatter web page, with a little cutting and pasting to fill out each print page. The web page is available before the Chatter is mailed.
If you would like to receive an email link to the latest issue instead of a mailed print copy, send an email to chatter_editor@yahoo.com. You can resume receiving a mailed print copy at any time, just by sending another email.

Sharing this complete Chatter issue with a friend is simple. Just let them scan this code into their smartphone!