Chatter

Volume 65 No. 8 August 2019

Editor’s Notes

Trying to determine the best day to attend the ANA convention in Rosemont? Find the latest Schedule at a Glance online – just follow a link from the https://www.money.org/worldsfairofmoney page. This same page also has a link to the PDF version of the printed Show Guide.

Need a preview of the Collector Exhibit area? The latest version of the guide is at http://www.chicagocoinclub.org/events/2019/ana/ex/all_by_cl.html – this page will be updated through the convention, to show the latest details.

I welcome, for the September Chatter, reports from any of the events, meetings, or presentations that you attended — report on the details, atmosphere, or whatever struck you. The ANA will be in Pittsburgh in 2020, and back in Rosemont in 2021.

Paul Hybert, editor

Minutes of the 1206th Meeting

The 1206th meeting of the Chicago Coin Club was called to order by President Rich Lipman at 6:45 PM, Wednesday, July 10, 2019 at the Chicago Bar Association Building, 321 S. Plymouth Court, Downtown Chicago with 24 members and 2 guests: Elizabeth Shaykin and David Green.

The Minutes of the June meeting were approved as published in the Chatter. Steve Zitowsky delivered the Treasurer’s Report showing June revenue of $6,979.50 and expenses of $3,419.55. A motion was passed approving the report.

The membership application of Jeff Janis received second reading and a motion was made and passed accepting him into the Club.

The meeting was adjourned at 8:45 PM until the next meetings at the American Numismatic Association Convention in Rosemont: on Tuesday August 13 (the sold-out dinner banquet), and at noon on Saturday August 17, 2019.

Respectfully Submitted,
Carl F. Wolf, Secretary

Current Advertisers

CSNS Convention Chicago Coin Company
Harlan J. Berk, Ltd. Kedzie Koins Inc.

Show and Tell

Items shown at our July 10, 2019 meeting,
reported by John Riley.

  1. Mark Wieclaw showed some US coins.
    1. A 1955 Doubled Die obverse Lincoln cent acquired in an estate purchase. The envelope labelled the coin a “shift” error – the terminology of the mid-1950’s coin press. Mark had some additional background about how the error coins mostly came to light in upstate New York at the time – mostly in cellophane-wrapped cigarette packages to make change!
    2. A set of ten Jefferson nickels that have had gold and silver highlights added, a marketing gimmick – the coins were sold by TV or newspaper at $13.75 per coin.
  2. Bob Leonard showed five copper coins of Genoese colonies in the Black Sea area of the 14th and 15th centuries, plus a map of the area and drawings of two of the coins.
    1. Kaffa, follaro circa 1420-1453. This coin has the tamga (badge) of the Golden Horde (Juchids), descendants of Genghis Khan, while the other side shows the Genoese gateway and [C] - A - F - [A].
    2. A later follaro, 1453-1475, after the Juchids had been displaced by the Giray Khans; it shows their tamga on one side.
    3. Another follaro of 1453-1475, which omits the Giray Khan tamga, substituting the Genoese portal.
    4. A roughly contemporary follaro of Asprocastron, 1449-1456.
    5. An earlier follaro or pul (Turkish name) of modern Isaccea on the Danube River in Romania, issued 1307-1312. It has the tamga of the Batu family of the Juchids plus a Hegira date on one side, and a cross fourchée with “S (reversed) - A - C - T” counterclockwise in the quarters. Great rarity though it is, the coin was acid-treated. Bob cautioned, on ancient coins that must be curated, to use only a mild cleaner that will not strip the patina.
  3. Lyle Daly started with two Culion Leper Colony notes from the Philippines. Culion is a small set of islands located in the South China Sea just to the north of Palawan. Believing that Leprosy was transmitted by touch and therefore handling money, special coinage was minted between 1913 and 1930 for exclusive use in the Colony. Additionally, Lyle showed an English double florin in contrast to a crown. One of the shortest-lived British coin denominations ever, only being produced during four mint years, between 1887 and 1890. The coin acquired the nickname of “Barmaid’s Grief” due to its similarity to the slightly larger crown coin (worth 5 shillings, 25% more than the double florin), as neither coin was marked with its denomination and both used an identical portrait of Queen Victoria on the obverse.
  4. Rich Lipman gave a nod to the evening speaker’s topic of “One Giant Leap” by showing “giant” paper money. All would be difficult to contain in a conventional wallet!
    1. France 50 Franc note of 1933-34(Pick catalog-80b) in PMG-55 condition – vignette of Mercury and bucolic natural scenes.
    2. Belgium 10,000 Fr note of 1929(Pick-105), not certified. Note shows Ceres, the goddess of agriculture, driving a quadriga and a beautifully engraved lion with surrounding angels.
    3. National Bank of Scotland 5-pound note, 1936-56 (Pick-259d). On the reverse is a highly detailed city view of Edinburgh, including the castle.
    4. An interesting space-flown miniature flag of the state of Illinois. Was flown to the moon on board Apollo 11.
  5. Dale Lukanich showed ancient coins.
    1. A drachm of Hadrian from Alexandria, Egypt circa 138 AD.
    2. A bronze denarius of Marcus Aurelius, from Cilicia.
  6. James McMenamin showed a curious jeton, a “casting counter,” possibly 15th or 16th Century French. Of an uncertain composition, it appears to be a bronze piece (as opposed to jetons normally seen in brass). The obverse legend is Ave Maria Gracia Iesus (Hail Mary Full of Grace), while the reverse legend is Vive Le Roy Jesus Maria (Long Live the King).
  7. Melissa Gumm showed an uncancelled high grade example of Nebraska Territory obsolete currency, denominated one dollar. Listed as NE-31347 in the Haxby catalog. A beautifully executed example showing Native Americans on horseback watching a passing locomotive from a bluff. Reverse not printed.
  8. Jeff Dohm-Sanchez showed a denarius of Marcus Aemilius Scaurus and Plautius Hypsaeus, circa 58 BC and showing an image of a camel. An unusual animal to be portrayed on ancient coinage. the reverse shows a Roman-style chariot. Additionally, in keeping with the evening’s theme, Jeff showed a proposed Time magazine cover from July 1969 that was a printer’s alternative in the event the Apollo 11 mission had failed.

Reminder: You can email to John a description of what you will show at a meeting, to give him a start on this write-up. Send it to johnrriley@yahoo.com.

The President Emailed Me!

by Paul Hybert

Has your coin club president ever sent you email? Here is an email I recently received (the original text is in bold, identifying information has been replaced by descriptive text in square brackets, and I replaced the club president’s name with “George” in this article):

From: [“George”] <allison2care4@gmail.com>
Subject: Request

Hello Paul
Have you got a minute? I need you to complete a task for me discreetly. P.S: I am in a meeting now and can’t talk, so just reply.

[“George”]
President
[coin club’s name]

[coin club’s mailing address]
541-348-7301
[coin club’s website]

[coin club’s purpose and message statement]

Sent from T-Mobile 4G LTE Device

I belong to a number of coin clubs, so I sometimes receive emails from people I do not know. Some email is obvious junk email — and is the price I pay for having a public-facing email address. Some emails want me to open an attachment or follow a provided link — these might be legitimate emails, or they might be PHISHING attempts.

Phishing, pronounced fishing, refers to an attempt to trick you into infecting your electronic device, compromising its security, or giving up something. The best defence against phishing is a close examination of the received email. What would you have done if you had received the above email?

The first thing to check is the From address — this is not fool-proof because it is possible to masquerade, but this is a good place to start. The above email appears to be sent from gmail.com. I had never received an email from this club president before, so I did not know any of his email addresses — but the email address name allison2care4 had no obvious connection to “George.” There was no attachment in the email, the only clickable link showed the correct website name, and, when I moved the cursor over the link, the correct website domain name was shown. (Watch out for a domain name that is slightly different from the one you expect: transpose characters, use a digit 0 instead of a letter O, and such.)

To summarize: there were no questionable links in the email, but the email came from an account I had never seen before; so this did not seem threatening. I did not immediately hit the reply button, but that was only because I saw this email many hours after it had been received — and my email box had subsequent emails from other club members with Phishing in the Subject line!

I serve on a committee in this particular coin club, so my name and email address appear on their website. Someone (or more likely, a program) had gone through the website, collecting all the email addresses and corresponding personal names they could find. My fellow listed club members had received similar emails, identical except for the personal salutation at the top. (Such targeted phishing attempts are known as SPEAR PHISHING, and in the past were used only against high-value targets. But computers have lowered the cost and complexity of many tasks.)

After a fellow club member explained to me why there was such a large ruckus resulting from such a non-hazardous email, I decided to have some fun. So just before midnight on Thursday night, I hit the reply button and sent:

Glad to be of help, George. What do you need? Help with the little trustwave testing?

The “trustwave testing” part of my email was a bit cute. An email from the club earlier in the week had said that the club’s networking was going to be tested by a company named Trustwave, and a little voice in my head kept asking me if the club members’ ability to detect spam would be checked — don’t laugh, some companies have sent spam to their employees after a training session, to see if the emplyees had learned anything! The reply came in shortly after midnight, but I did not check email until about noon on Friday. This is what I saw:

I appreciate the swift response, I need you to get some gift cards. We have a few clients we want to send gifts in accordance with our next project. Let me know if it’s possible for you to get them right now, so I can tell you which product we would need and what amount. You will be reimbursed, Thank you

So that is what this is! A blunt scam!! I had read about naive, unsophisticated people falling for this type of thing. Shortly after noon of Friday, I sent my reply. His reply came 20 minutes later:

Yes you can go ahead and get them and what I need is a Google Play Card of $500 face value. I need 4pcs of the card. That's $500 X4. That's $2000 in total. Get the physical cards at the store, scratch the back out and send me pictures of the codes. Thank you

Sure, $2,000, pocket change, no problem! It was around this time that I found the Google site for reporting a gmail user who was sending spam. I decided to string this person along so Google could see and follow the content of this gmail account. I called the FBI late on Saturday night, and was directed to their website for reporting cybercrime, www.ic3.gov.

A few more emails were exchanged until Monday morning, with “George” becoming terser and less polished in his grammar. My mails never bounced back to me, so the gmail account was still active three days after reporting it to Google! And I never heard back from Google or the FBI. Although a $2,000 scam seems like big potatoes to me, Google and the FBI must see it as small potatoes.

Do not think you are safe just because your email address is not listed on a website. If your address was known by a business or a friend whose computer was compromised, your name and email address is out there — just hope your credit card number was not on that computer! If you know a good website for detecting phishing and scams, please tell it to your friends and family, especially the naive, trusting, and unsophisticated.

Minutes of the 100th Anniversary Committee Meeting

July 9, 2019

The Ninth Meeting of the 100th Anniversary Committee was called to order at 5:50pm.

In attendance: Chairperson Mark W., Bob F., Dale L., Bill B., Sharon B., Scott M., Dale C., Steve Z., Jeff R., Melissa G., Richard H., and Club President Rich L..

Welcome and thank you for everyone’s attendance as things wind down.

Committee reports:

Medals – Highlighted medals were delivered to Chicago Coin Company. Raw material for silver and gold medals should ship this week and once struck, Bob F. will pick them up and deliver to Chicago Coin Company. The Club has a credit of over $465 due to further discount from Mint Masters. Harlan J. Berk Ltd. has graciously agreed to place the copper oval medals in a display window for sale.

Banquet – The Banquet medals are numbered on the edge. The next deposit, $4,000, was due to Gibsons Steakhouse and Sharon delivered it. Heritage Auctions has offered $1,000 toward the Banquet appetizers. There is still a waiting list of about 8 people for the Dinner. Sharon will double check on equipment for the slide show and microphone, as well as a podium. Additionally, we will need tables for Check-in and Name tags and also for the distribution of Numismatic Treasure Bags (NTB). Name tags will include ribbons for Member, Guest, Past President, Committee Member, Club Officer, Century Club, Platinum, and Gold Patron. It was also decided that a Program of the evening’s activities will be printed for placement at each seat.

Sponsorship – Currently at 51 Century Club Members for a total of $8,400.

Booklet – Working on final review so that it can be sent to the Printer in the next couple of weeks. Have a quote for printing, $1,700 - $1,800 which included nice embellishment on front cover. NTB’s waiting on donations from Heritage, received a nice donation from Club Members.

Promotion – All is good, waiting to hear on proclamations from Chicago Mayor, Rosemont Mayor, and Illinois Governor.

Getting names for all attendees – Working off the list of paid tickets and will reach out to those who purchased two tickets and only supplied one name, expect to have preprinted name tags along with several blanks that can be hand written.

Celebrations – Saturday, August 17th Meeting time changed to Noon. Tom Uram will be the speaker. Mark is working on a Souvenir Sheet for give away. The December Holiday Party will be at Tom’s Steakhouse in Melrose Park on Wednesday December 11. A 100th Anniversary cake will be looked into.

Photographer – Scott received two quotes. After discussion it was agreed to go with the offer of approximately $750. There was a discussion on the end use of the photos. Scott also put together a list of must photo shots in addition to the candid shots. No change on Center Pieces, with several ideas being floated.

Open discussion:

Jeff R. as MC will give short welcome, Rich L. will give President’s address, Mark W. will introduce the Committee, Richard H. will give the invocation. A discussion was held as to whether or not to say the Pledge of Allegiance. If a flag is present, we will do so. We will then break for dinner prior to Cliff Mishler’s presentation. Mark congratulated everyone as this was the first meeting with Perfect Attendance.

Next Meeting:

Tuesday July 30, 5:30pm at Home Run Inn. Meeting adjourned at 7:25pm.

Submitted by Melissa G. with edits by Mark W..

Minutes of the 2019 Chicago ANA Convention Committee

July 16, 2019

The ninth and final meeting of the 2019 ANA Convention Committee met July 16, 2019 in the offices of Harlan J. Berk, Ltd., 77 W. Washington, 13th Floor, Downtown Chicago. Chairman Rich Lipman called the meeting to order at 6:30 PM with Mark Wieclaw, Melissa Gumm, Dale Carlson, Harlan Berk, Elliott Krieter, Scott McGowan, Lyle Daly, Deven Kane, Steve Zitowsky, and Carl Wolf in attendance.

The committee thanked Harlan Berk for providing the meeting space, dinner, and parking for the committee’s nine meetings and gave him a standing ovation.

Volunteer Report by Carl Wolf:

Money Talks Committee Report by Mark Wieclaw:

Page Committee Report by Dale Carlson:

Exhibit Committee Report by Sharon Blocker:

Youth Committee Report by Scott McGowan:

Report on the Club’s 100th Anniversary Celebration at the ANA Convention by Mark Wieclaw:

General Discussion by Rich Lipman: