Volume 65 No. 7 | July 2019 |
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Only one month until ANA will be in Rosemont! Most deadlines have passed, with the only thing we are still accepting is applications to work as a volunteer. Get a free parking voucher for the day you work 4 hours! Everything looks set, so I will spend most of July in Canada — the August Chatter will be issued a few days later than usual, and I will not respond quickly to emails.
Paul Hybert, editor
The 1205th meeting of the Chicago Coin Club was called to order by President Rich Lipman at 6:45 PM, Wednesday, June 12, 2019 at the Chicago Bar Association Building, 321 S. Plymouth Court, Downtown Chicago with 29 members and 2 guests: Jeffrey Janis and Elizabeth Shaykin.
The Minutes of the May meeting were approved as published in the Chatter. Steve Zitowsky delivered the Treasurer’s Report showing May revenue of $7,144.00 and expenses of $421.34. A motion was passed approving the report.
Jim Ray’s membership application received a second reading, and a motion was made and passed accepting him into the Club. The application of Jeff Janis received first reading.
The meeting was adjourned at 9:05 PM, until the next meeting Wednesday July 10, 2019.
Respectfully Submitted,
Carl F. Wolf,
Secretary
by Dale Carlson,
presented to our June 12, 2019 meeting.
I first became interested in coins when my Uncle gave me some type coins and a silver certificate as a Christmas present when I was ten years old. When I was 12 years old in the early 1970s, I started passing newspapers. When going to customers to collect money they owed for papers, I received a lot of silver and type coins. Customers who knew that I collected coins saved coins they found and gave them to me. I now had some funds to buy coins and started to buy Proof sets. In the early 1970s, silver was low priced and proof sets from the late ’50s and early ’60s sold for little more than issue price. I bought one or two every couple of months. For the next 8 years these sets and type coins were all I collected.
In 1980 I was 19 years old and started working for Commonwealth Edison. I met a fellow worker who also collected coins. He was a member of the Will County Coin Club, he invited me to one of their meetings, and I joined. This one act, joining a coin club, was the BEST thing that ever happened to me as a coin collector. My knowledge of coins and grading increased immensely. There were older members and novice collectors who were happy to guide and mentor me, a young collector.
After joining the WCCC, many members had good advice about what to collect, how to acquire or buy coins, and about grading. I started to go to coin shows and it opened my eyes to all the different coins and possible collections. I came to the realization that I could not afford to collect everything. You have to find what you really like. I found Morgan dollars, and for the next 20 years collected them almost exclusively. Fast forward to the year 2001. I was 40 years old. I was, and still am, married. Have two kids. My son was into Scouting which met on the same night and time as the coin club. For the next four years I didn’t make many coin club meetings or buy or sell many coins. I still had the interest, but not the time.
Then life smacked me in the face! I had a serious accident in which I was almost killed. I was laid up at home and off work for 6 months, and was told it could be a lot longer. The year was 2005 and I was 44 years old. I needed something to do besides therapy, so I took out my coin collection and started going through them. They were mostly Morgans and older proof sets. I decided to sell some, to upgrade some, and to have some of them professionally graded.
I was pleasantly surprised at the grades and the prices some of my coins were selling at. After upgrading many of the Morgans, I came to the realization that I was never going to have a complete set of Morgans in the grades I like. Now we finally come to the title of my talk tonight, Flying Eagle and Indian Head Cents — The Journey to a Collection.
A lot of you out there will say “I have not heard anything yet about Indian Head Cents” and you would be right. As I have stated before I mostly collected Morgan Dollars. I totally credit Kevin Daily, a member of this fine organization with my decision to start a collection of Indian Head cents. After an ILNA show where I won second place with a Morgan dollar exhibit, Kevin stated “You only collect Morgan dollars and the coins you have are nice, but I think Morgan dollars are boring and would not collect them!” Thanks Kevin.
The year was 2006 and I was back at work after the accident. I went to my first coin club meeting in a year, and I decided to start an Indian Head cent collection. I thought it was a set that, in extra fine, would be affordable and would not take more than a couple of years to complete. HA! I finally – after 12 years, at least 50 coin shows, 8 ANA shows and many dealer shops – completed this set. A journey in which I met some very nice dealers and collectors, and made many new friends. I joined the Fly-In club, which is dedicated to Flying Eagle and Indian Head cents. I learned a lot about these coins and the history of the years they were minted. I also became a life member of the American Numismatic Association and the Chicago Coin Club.
Now let’s get down to Flying Eagle and Indian Head cents. The set consists of coins from 1857-1909, a total of 61 coins. I have also included in my album some Civil War tokens and nicer Indian Head duplicates to fill the blanks. The composition of coins from 1857-1864 is 88% copper and 12% nickel. Because of their appearance and the nickel in them, they were called nics. The composition after 1864 is 95% copper and 5% tin and zinc.
The Indian Head cent in 1859 replaced the Flying Eagle cent because the die life striking the eagles was short. The head and tail of the Eagle were directly opposite the wreath on the reverse, which created bad metal flow. The “Indian Head Cent” is not really an American Indian, but “Liberty” in an Indian headdress. The 1859 cent is a one year type as it has no shield on the reverse, and it has a laurel wreath. The production of cents that year set a record for all United States coins up until that time. The 1860 and later cents have a shield and oak wreath on the reverse. The key dates are 1877, 1908-S, 1909-S. The 1909-S is the lowest mintage in the series, but the 1877 is the most valuable. The 1877 is not an impossible coin to find – I don’t think I have ever been to a coin show that didn’t have a couple. When buying key date coins, it is a good idea to buy only slabbed coins as there are many cleaned and counterfeit coins out there.
The 1870, 1871, and 1872 cents are very hard coins to find, with the 1872 being the hardest in the whole series in a properly graded extra fine, in my experience. A good explanation of this scarcity is the mint act of 1871 which authorized the mint to redeem all coins previously minted in copper and nickel alloy, five cents and below. The mint took in millions of these coins and melted them all. Up until 1874, the replacement coins were newly minted cents. In 1874, someone decided that the redeemed cents could just as easily be reissued without being melted and recoined. The coinage of cents during the 1870s was heavily influenced by this decision. In 1877 alone, enough cents were redeemed and reissued to make the mintage of new cents almost unnecessary. Now you can see why this is one of the key dates. The 1870, 1871, and 1872 cents had low mintages to start with. The ongoing recoinage effort created a crazy situation. As soon as the new coins reached the bank, many were piled on top of older coins that were scheduled to be shipped back to the mint. As a result, most of these issues were melted soon after production.
Here are a few historical notes that I discovered while doing some research for this presentation. In 1872 the United States economy’s dependency on horsepower became evident when the nation was struck by The Great Epizootic – this was the death of 4 million horses. In Philadelphia and New York city, men were hitched to street cars and carts to haul passengers and cargo. A fire in Boston devastated more than 750 buildings in part because most of the horses used to pull fire engines had died. The epizootic was also recognized as a factor in the “panic of ’73,” which is what they called a recession back then.
It has been an honor to give this presentation, something I envisioned doing ever since I completed this collection. I did much research and learned much about the coins and history while completing this collection. I hope you found the history and facts as interesting as I did. I have attempted to complete a collection that is properly graded and with coins that are fairly matched. This collection was an interesting journey and one that took me to places and people that I never would have imagined when I started on it.
presented by Robert Feiler,
to our May 8, 2019 meeting.
To get our attention, Bob started the presentation by placing an assortment of the more common items on some trays, identified two or three items on each tray with the overhead camera and projector, and then passed the trays around. Then he showed us the better items. And he mixed in some great items. This article can cover only some of the varied items we saw.
First up was a belt made of 75 silver Mexican 5 centavos, which Bob wore as a neck chain during the program. Three lighters were shown next: one was made of large British pennies of the 1937-1948 type, another was made of British half pennies (one was dated 1921), and a 1945 25¢ was mounted onto a flip top lighter. Maybe these are trench art from World War II, but there is no way to tell for certain with these unique pieces.
A large British penny, made into an elaborate tea pot with handle and a separate lid, was followed by items made from Lincoln cents by penitentiary prisoners; we saw a tea pot, mug, ladle, candle stick, frying pan, and canteen. A more commonly encountered type of item is a Love Token. Love Tokens are found made on a wide range of coins, and we saw a number of U.S. nineteenth century coins where one side had been smoothed and then had initials carved into it. Another example of metal moving on a coin is what are called popouts (or repousse); we saw a 1907 dime made into a ring, and a few other individual items; then there was a Lucite block with five U.S. popouts: a dollar, half, quarter, dime, and cent. A more extreme example of metal moving is a cutout, where the central motif from one side is cut out, shaved thin, and has some type of pin mounted on the back. We saw examples from a Franklin half, Standing Liberty quarter, Morgan and Peace dollars, a Columbian Expo half, and a half Balboa from Panama.
After some coins had a side smoothed, a scene could be painted on. These pieces are not found in large quantities due to the time and expertise needed to do this well. A 1930s Chilean peso with an elaborate village scene was followed by a number made on Mexican coins: a 1984 50 Peso had a sunset over a river, a 1982 20 Peso had a desert landscape, and a 10 Peso had Acapulco cliff divers. Some coins have had enamel applied to design elements or the field to make a bold and colorful piece. These coins had to be fired after each color of powder was applied. We saw a number of nineteenth century silver British coins with five or six colors: florin, crown, half crown, and double florin were shown. Sometimes enameled coins were made into pins, but we also saw some U.S. Morgan dollars with enamel on both sides.
Taking a break from purely decorative pieces, Bob showed us examples of functional items incorporating coins, starting with cigar cutters and coin knives. These large items were so popular that the inner, working part was produced by a few manufacturers who supplied the crafters, who made the finished items. Many mechanisms were made in France, so it is no surprise that many French 5 Franc coins were used on these, but we also saw some U.S. silver dollars. The quality of the mechanism is evident in the pieces which still can hold a sharp edge.
Lockets and boxes form another type of functional items incorporating coins. The finer ones still appear as the original coin at first glance, requiring some effort in determining how to be opened. Sometimes, especially with the finer pieces, the inner frame and hinge mechanisms were mass produced and supplied to the final artisan, who would use real coins to produce the final piece. Pieces incorporating coin inspired design elements were likely mass produced at one site, and did away with the time consuming steps to carefully alter and mount real coins; and maybe they skipped some of the precious metal.
Lockets usually were intended to contain a thin object, such as a photograph. Bob showed us a number of pieces with old photos of unidentified, serious looking people whose identities are forgotten. We also saw a piece containing a picture of Bismarck. Box dollars could be made from a thick medal or coin, such as the British 1797 two pence coin, while others were made to appear as a stack of coins. We saw a compact or pill box with mirror made of a 1702 French ecu, and also a souvenir “IV shilling” box dollar from the 1920 New England Tercentenary, borrowing the design of a 1652 Pine Tree coin.
Bob showed us many souvenir box dollars and medals from the 1893 Columbian Exposition, some empty, some with a single photo, and some with a multiple color scenes of the fair. We saw a Napoleonic box medal with 10 images of famous battles, and we saw some box medals with World War I people, images, and scenes.
Bob concluded the program by showing items made from gold coins of the U.S. and around the world. We saw love tokens, a watch fob of three 2½ gold coins (1912/1913), a tie clasp of six California round and octagonal pieces (1852/1853), a 1948 Mexican 5 Peso enclosing a Russian watch movement, an 1887 U.S. $20 coin enclosing a Swiss watch movement, and more. There are few references in this area; Bob showed two thin books, on Love Tokens and Popouts, and his folder of accumulated articles. If you can imagine it, someone probably has made it – and Bob hopes to find it!
CSNS Convention | Chicago Coin Company |
Harlan J. Berk, Ltd. | Kedzie Koins Inc. |
Items shown at our June 12, 2019 meeting,
reported by John Riley.
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.
June 11, 2019
The Eighth Meeting of the 100th Anniversary Committee was called to order at 5:45pm. In attendance: Chairperson Mark W., Melissa G., Bob F., Dale L., Dale C., Bill B., Sharon B., Scott M., Steve Z., Jeff R., and Club president Rich L.
Welcome and thank you for their attendance and promptness so that the meeting could begin earlier than usual.
Committee reports:
Medals – Bob Feiler announced good and not so good news, 200 copper medals are now on hand and 50 more sent for highlight addition. Will bring an example to Wednesday’s Club meeting for all to see, but members will need imagination on highlight version. Due to a miscommunication there were 50 more copper medals struck than ordered. What to do with the extra medals. Laura, at Harlan J. Berk, Ltd., offered to showcase the medals in their storefront windows. This is an excellent opportunity for the Club. The writeup for the insert was discussed and is moving forward.
Scott has been shipping Red Book orders; Chicago Coin Company will ship medal orders. Numismatic News Express had an article on the Club’s 13oz gold medal.
Banquet – Hot and cold hor d’oeuvres will be served during Cocktail hour. There was discussion about how to handle the distribution of the Numismatic Treasure Bag (NTB); several suggestions, but will likely include special ticket in with souvenir ticket received that evening when checking in and receiving name tag. Seating was discussed and it was agreed that no Head table and with unassigned seating. Clifford Mishler, the featured speaker, and all others who will be speaking should sit near the podium. Dale L. will be seated near where the NTBs will be given out at the end of the evening. Members from the NYC Club will have at least one table exclusive to their members.
Richard H. will be asked to give the invocation before dinner is served. There was a possibility that the event would be video taped in exchange for a dinner ticket; unfortunately that did not work out. The video prepared by Lyle Daly, which had been used at the 1200th Meeting, will be updated and shown during Cocktails and Dinner. Will contact Gibsons about a microphone and podium. The Banquet medals have been received. Center piece ideas were discussed along with distribution at the end of the evening.
Sponsorship – Currently there are 49 Century Club members for a total of $8,300. There is a promise of a $1,000 donation from a Club member. We did receive the $250 check from ILNA to be used toward the cost of one of the medal dies.
Booklet – Patron cutoff date for inclusion in the booklet will Monday, July 1, 2019. Booklet is in good shape and waiting for a few details and President’s Message. Still working on contents for the Numismatic Treasure Bags.
Promotion – Under control with several things going on/out in the next few weeks. Good coverage in E-Sylum.
Invited Guests – 7 of 8 accepted our invitation and several purchased an additional ticket for a guest. The Evening will begin with introduction of honored guests, past presidents, and 100th Anniversary Committee. The business portion will be abbreviated and will then be suspended until Saturday. The invocation will follow, dinner served, and then introduction of the featured speaker. At some point a Medal of Merit presentation will take place, TBD.
Celebrations – The Saturday meeting at the convention has been moved to Noon. The December Banquet will be on Wednesday, the 11th. A $500 donation has been promised to provide dinner for the speaker and guest, as well as YN and parent. Any extra will be used for special cake, champagne toast or other end of the year celebration.
Photographer – Scott has sent information to two photographers for quotes; any suggestions for additional quotes are appreciated. Looking to purchase a reusable photo backdrop so that it can be used at shows for coming years. Lanyards for name tags are out, a pin/clip tag will be used. Various ribbons were discussed for attachment to the name tag. Centerpieces will likely be Banquet medal and Club logo with a few flowers.
Open discussion – Exhibit of Club medals is coming along thanks to Bill, Jeff, and Steve. Competitive or non-competitive? Clifford Mishler will speak on “Joining the Select Legacy of Leadership. ”
Next Meeting – Tuesday, July 9, at 5:30pm, same location, Home Run Inn Pizza on Archer.
Adjourned – 7:38pm.
Submitted by Melissa G.
June 18, 2019
The eighth meeting of the 2019 ANA Convention Committee met June 18, 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 6:00 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 gave a warm round of applause and thanks to Harlan Berk for providing the meeting space, dinner, and parking.
Volunteer Report by Carl Wolf:
Money Talks Committee Report by Mark Wieclaw:
Page Committee Report by Dale Carlson:
Exhibit Committee Report by Lyle Daly and Deven Kane:
Youth Committee Report by Scott McGowan:
Report on the Club’s 100th Anniversary Celebration at the ANA Convention by Mark Wieclaw:
Treasurer Report by Steve Zitowsky:
General Discussion by Rich Lipman:
The meeting was adjourned at 6:57 PM.
Respectfully Submitted,
Carl Wolf, Secretary
Chicago Coin Club
Date: | July 10, 2019 |
Time: | 6:45 PM |
Location: | Downtown Chicago
At the Chicago Bar Association, 321 S. Plymouth Court, 3rd floor meeting room. Please remember the security measures at our meeting building: everyone must be prepared to show their photo-ID and register at the guard’s desk. |
Featured Program: | Jeffrey Rosinia
— One Giant Leap
Mankind has been dreaming about space travel since the beginning of time. The rockets that eventually made space travel possible date back to the Chinese in the thirteenth century. In less than one century after the Wright brothers’ first flights, millions of people watched American astronauts land on the moon. The speaker will present highlights from his ANA exhibit “One Giant Leap” celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon and the Space Dreamers, Inventors, and Explorers who led to that historic accomplishment on July 20, 1969. |
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.
July | 10 | CCC Meeting - Featured Speaker - Jeffrey Rosinia on to be announced |
August | 13-17 | ANA in Rosemont, at Donald E. Stephens Convention Center. Admission is free for ANA members — for details, see http://www.worldsfairofmoney.com. |
August | 13 | CCC 100th Anniversary Banquet -
An Evening Dinner in Rosemont (no downtown Chicago meeting in August).
Featured Speaker - Clifford Mishler |
August | 17 | CCC Meeting - 1pm at the ANA Convention,
which is held at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center, 5555 North River Road, Rosemont, IL.
No admission charge for our meeting.
Featured Speaker - to be announced |
September | 11 | CCC Meeting - Featured Speaker - Deven Kane on to be announced |
September | 12-14 | ILNA 60th Annual Coin & Currency Show at The Mega Center Pheasant Run Resort, 4051 East Main Street, St. Charles, IL. Details, including hours and events, are available at http://www.ilnaclub.org |
October | 9 | CCC Meeting - Featured Speaker - to be announced |
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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
Payments to the Club, including membership dues,
can be addressed to the Treasurer and mailed to
the above address.
Renewing Members Annual dues are $20 a year ($10 for Junior, under 18). Annual Membership expires December 31 of the year through which paid. Cash, check, or money order are acceptable (USD only please). We do not accept PayPal. Email your questions to Treasurer.ChicagoCoinClub@GMail.com Members can pay the Club electronically with Zelle™ using their Android or Apple smart phone. JP Morgan Chase customers can send payments to the Club via Quick Pay. To see if your Bank or Credit Union is part of the Zelle™ Payments Network, go to https://www.zellepay.com Please read all rules and requirements carefully.
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