| Volume 70 No. 11 | November, 2024 |
|---|
The 1269th meeting of the Chicago Coin Club was called to order by President John Riley at 6:45PM CDT, Wednesday, October 9, 2024. This was an in-person and online meeting, held at the Chicago Bar Association. Attendance at the meeting in person was 20 members and two guests, with one applying for membership; and online attendance of 21 members and two guests, with one applying for membership; for a total of 45.
Club Meeting Minutes and Treasurer’s Report
The September meeting minutes were approved as published in the Chatter, both in print and on the CCC website. Treasurer Elliott Krieter was not in attendance to present the September period treasurer’s report.
New Members
Secretary Scott McGowan completed the second membership application reading for George Marks, and the club voted to approve. The first membership application readings were completed for Julie A. Block of N. Uxbridge, Massachusetts, a collector of Silver Eagles, ancient Roman, Greek and Judean, plus 1800s US Coinage; and Jack Kohn of Chicago, Illinois, a collector of US Coinage. The secretary noted we are still holding off on the first readings of four membership applications received during the August ANA convention, pending the applicant’s attendance at a meeting, per club by-laws.
Old Business
New Business
Featured Program
James McMenamin on The Ubiquitous “H” — A Numismatic overview of possibly the World’s finest private mint. After the presentation, First VP Melissa Gumm presented James with a CCC Speaker’s medal and an ANA education certificate. Melissa also reminded club members we still need Featured Speakers for 2025. Contact Melissa to signup.
Show and Tell
Second Vice President Deven Kane announced there were 11 Show and Tell presenters.
Next meeting will be Wednesday, November 13, 2024 at 6:45pm CST at the Chicago Bar Association and online. Note this will be the club auction — no featured program and no Show and Tell. Bidders for the auction items must be present, or arrange a proxy bidder for them. All items must be paid for and removed the night of the auction.
President John Riley adjourned the meeting at 8:37pm CDT.
Respectfully Submitted,
Scott A. McGowan,
Secretary
by
James McMenamin,
presented to our October 9, 2024 meeting
Many months ago I asked Melissa Gumm if I could present a paper this year. She said yes, and I then immediately forgot the matter, as I so increasingly find myself doing with advancing age. At our May meeting, however, she reminded me of my commitment and I panicked, not having any idea as to what the subject of my presentation should be. But much to my relief, our speaker that evening, Laurence Edwards, provided the answer.
I had made a point of attending his talk on the Soho Mint: first because one of my most prized possessions is a two-ounce copper tuppence, or two-penny “cartwheel” of 1797, bearing the Soho mintmark as seen in close-up, below Britannia’s shield on the coin’s reverse; and second because just a few weeks before, a fellow member of The Chicago Literary Club, which at 150 years of age is an even older organization than the Chicago Coin Club, had given me three beautiful ha’penny Conder tokens after learning of my interest in coins. She had purchased them over 40 years ago from Harlan Berk to feature at a Jane Austen Society event. The idea was to showcase coinage that would have been in use during the author’s time.
The pieces she gave me, from Macclesfield, Liverpool, and Hull, are well executed specimens dating to 1791 and 1792, the heyday of the Conder token period. At that time, the Royal Mint was so overwhelmed coining gold and silver currency for the rapidly expanding British Empire, that it ignored the exploding demand for high-quality small-denomination copper coins driven by the needs of the Industrial Revolution, by population growth, and by the preponderance of shabby counterfeit circulating coins. By some estimates, upwards of 80% of low-denomination coins circulating in Britain at the time were underweight counterfeits, a situation the Conder tokens would largely remedy. They seem the exception that proves the rule in relation to Gresham’s Law that ‘bad money chases out the good!’ In this case, the opposite seems true. During my early years of collecting, however, I never came across Conder tokens, perhaps because they are nowhere mentioned in my reference book of the time, the 3rd edition of British Commonwealth Coins, published in 1971.
Laurence stated in his paper that Boulton’s Soho Mint produced a number of so-called Conder tokens, though I have so far failed to determine whether mine were produced there. One of their features I especially like is the incuse lettering found on the edge of all three. The words read variously: “Payable at Macclesfield,” “…at the warehouse of Thomas Clarke,” or “…at the warehouses of Ionathan Garton & Co.”
Laurence ended his May paper by observing that the third generation of the Boulton family wound up the Soho coining business in 1850, and that “the equipment was purchased by Ralph Heaton & Son, which eventually became the Birmingham Mint. It has its own history.” There was my subject!
I would continue Laurence’s story and present an overview of the Heaton family’s Birmingham Mint. Fortunately, I had at my disposal a book purchased some 40 years earlier, A Numismatic History of the Birmingham Mint, written by James O. Sweeny and published by the coin-making firm itself in 1981. It came into my collection because of my desire to know the background and history of the “H” mintmark found on so many of my coins after I started collecting in 1963. A main focus then were the British Colonial and Commonwealth coins found in the previously mentioned 568-page compendium, the 3rd edition of British Commonwealth Coins, 1649-1971. That earlier book was very well researched and illustrated, but held no substantive information about the Heaton Birmingham Mint or its ubiquitous mintmarks.
According to James Sweeny, there are eleven Heaton mintmarks, and three so-called quasi-mintmarks. Two of the former are worth noting. The first is the ‘m2’ mintmark, a simple upper-case letter “H”. It is the most common, as found for example on many of the coins of Guernsey. The second noteworthy mintmark is ‘m10’, used solely for a short period of time in the 1850s and then exclusively on the coins produced by the Imperial Mint in Marseille, France. As Sweeny writes in his book:
“For five years … the firm of Heaton began executing a coinage contract for the French Government producing bronze 1, 2, 5, and 10 Centimes using Heaton personnel, Heaton equipment, and Heaton methods. The mintmark on this coinage was a monogram made up of the first two letters (MA) of the word Marseille, entwined. At the conclusion of this contract, the Heaton personnel packed up and went back to Birmingham. The equipment was sold to a private firm. The mintmark was retired – it has not reappeared on French coins to the present time [i.e. 1981]. Because these coins were in every case Heaton products, the MA [mintmark] is included here as a legitimate Heaton mintmark.”
Heaton’s Marseille adventure is significant for another reason, because the French Mint was re-introducing bronze coinage at a time when a major change in the metal used for making low-denomination coinage was about to begin worldwide: a switch from copper to bronze. It occurred because of bronze’s greater resistance to corrosion, wear, and tear. The Marseille contract gave the Heaton firm valuable experience, instant credibility, a proven track record, and an important head start in winning foreign orders for bronze coinage, coining blanks, and bronze minting methods.
Before we move on to the main topic of this presentation, it should be noted that the title of this paper is itself borrowed from Appendix V to Sweeny’s book entitled, The Ubiquitous “H.” Sweeney writes: “[b]y no means did Heaton enjoy a monopoly on the use of the letter H on coins.” Several other mints had used the letter. Sweeney lists them as including those of the 18th century Holy Roman Empire, plus the mints of Geneva (Switzerland), Hermosillo (Mexico), La Rochelle (France), Saxony, The Netherlands, Germany, and Finland.
The firm that was to become known world-wide as The Birmingham Mint was founded in the city after which it was named circa 1817 by Ralph Heaton II as a brass founding, stamping, and piercing business. Located in the West Midlands of England, Birmingham was a rapidly growing city. Its success was due to small scale improvements and innovations to existing products or processes, as well as to major developments that lie at the heart of the emergence of industrial society. Examples of these include those used by Matthew Boulton’s Soho Mint to industrialize the production of high-quality coinage, as Laurence Edwards recently observed.
With the purchase of coining presses and other equipment from the defunct Soho Mint in 1850, the firm of Ralph Heaton and Son not only acquired a distinguished pedigree. It also began coin production. The firm would be managed by three succeeding generations of the Heaton family, by Ralph Heaton II, Ralph Heaton III, and Ralph Heaton IV until 1920, when brother-in-law William E. Bromet assumed leadership. Renamed Ralph Heaton and Sons in 1853, it would change its name later to The Mint, Birmingham, Ltd., and later still to The Birmingham Mint. All three names will be used interchangeably during this presentation.
Over many subsequent decades, Heaton’s mint would win contracts worldwide to produce coining blanks, trade tokens, advertising pieces, minting presses, and national currencies struck in silver, copper, bronze, and other metals for governments such as those of Italy, of Jersey, and of Russia, amongst dozens of others. Heaton’s mint could play this crucial role in global coin production because the Royal Mint was forbidden from accepting any orders of foreign governments and was itself challenged to mint sufficient volumes for Britain’s vast Empire.
Because minting is such a volatile business, it occurs to me that one of the reasons the firm lasted so long must be that for the greater part of its existence it was a highly diversified undertaking, with a product range that included ammunition, gas fittings, medals, metals, ornaments, plumbers’ fittings, tubes, and wire, as seen in a mid-19th century catalogue. Indeed, during times of economic upheaval it was not unusual for the firm to produce only 10-15 percent of its revenues from minting or, during wartime, zero percent, as seen in the production figures for 1862-1889. In large measure, what made the success of those years possible was the 1860 purchase of a site on Icknield Street, Birmingham. The business relocated there two years later. The proprietorship of another generation, Ralph Heaton III, then began and under his leadership the Icknield plant would be greatly expanded to employ some 300 workers. When Ralp Heaton III retired in 1889, the firm became incorporated and its name was changed to The Mint, Birmingham, Limited.
At its height, the firm’s production surpassed that of even the Royal Mint. As others have written, the Birmingham Mint was for a time the world’s largest privately-owned mint and the producer of coins for dozens of nations. Despite the ups and downs of war, depression, and other challenges, it persevered, until its sad, ignominious demise in 2003. It is not possible in this evening’s presentation to summarize adequately the storied numismatic history of The Birmingham Mint, as the Heaton firm came to be known, so I will concentrate on a few highlights and curiosities from the firm’s history before moving on to my main thesis, that The Birmingham Mint should be ranked as the world’s finest private mint ever.
In a sense, the growth of The Birmingham Mint’s business is the story of the Soho Mint rewritten on a larger, imperial stage, a global stage. Where Boulton’s firm started coining British “Conder” tokens, Heaton’s first order came from Australia for trade tokens, for the same reason Conder tokens had been needed 60 years earlier in Britain: a dearth of good quality low-denomination local currency. In 1853 the Royal Mint was overwhelmed producing silver and gold coins, so the Birmingham Mint won its first contract to strike finished coins for Britain – 500 tons of copper, struck over the course of the next three years, with another contract to follow. These coins had no mintmark to identify them as from Birmingham. Of note, during peak operation, the four original Bolton screw presses used by Heaton were striking about 110,000 coins per day. A similar story played out internationally. The Royal Mint could not produce enough currency for Britain’s rapidly expanding empire. The Heatons saw an opportunity and seized it.
Under the direction of Ralph Heaton III, The Birmingham Mint expanded production of metal currency, tokens, minting equipment, and metals. The company struck silver coinage for Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island in 1872, and at about this time supplied a complete mint, including presses and other machinery, to Burma, and considerable minting machinery to the Osaka Mint of Japan. The Birmingham Mint’s greatest engineering achievement, however, was the building of a mammoth mint for China at Canton in 1887. The design and construction of this mint was left to The Birmingham Mint engineers under the direction of Edward Wyon, and included the installation of 90 coining presses.
During its continued expansion, the firm resupplied machinery to the Royal Mint, to the mint at Bangkok, Thailand, and to another mint at Nanking, China. Since at least 1875, coins struck at The Birmingham Mint, including English coins, had a letter H (for Heaton) placed either under or to the left of the date. This custom continued with foreign coins unless the firm was asked not to do so by the ordering government.
In 1911-1912 the Birmingham Mint lost a monopoly position it had held contracting coinage for the Royal Mint. Henceforth, it would have to share contracts with King’s Norton Metal Company, which in 1918 became part of Nobel Industries. Later that firm would become Imperial Metal Industries (or IMI) as a result of mergers. Remember these names, IMI and Kings Norton, because we shall come across them again. Between 1910-1915 several Australian bronze and silver coins were issued with the H for Heaton mintmark. These include Australian silver shillings in 1919.
Another blow fell in 1923 when the almost monopoly position of The Birmingham Mint to supply coinage to foreign, non-empire countries was lost because the Royal Mint was given permission to supply to the world market, although The Birmingham Mint men continued to supply the Royal Mint itself.
During World War I, The Mint’s coining volumes stopped growing as the company turned its focus to supporting munitions production. When leadership transferred to William E. Bromet, a Heaton brother-in-law, the company went into a steady decline lasting until 1935. This period marked the nadir of the firm’s fortunes until then. Annual volumes dropped from just under 50 million pieces to nil during the 1933 depression year. Bromet was a champion rugby player for Oxford but had much less success in business. By 1935 he was no longer with the firm and the Heaton family had lost ownership control.
The years 1935-1960 were marked by uneven performance. In between 1940 and 1964, coin production only counted for 10 to 20% of the entire business. Interestingly, though, between 1949 and 1955, The Birmingham operation coined more than 3 million Maria Theresa thalers, still dated 1780, as is the custom for that coin. That in itself is a curious saga, richly deserving of a presentation all to itself.
Sometime at the beginning of the 1960s, the Royal Mint concluded an agreement with the Birmingham Mint. It stipulated that, on the one hand, The Birmingham Mint was to receive a specified percentage of all overseas orders contracted with the Royal Mint. What the Royal Mint received for this generous courtesy, on the other hand, is not known, but The Mint’s volumes skyrocketed to almost 300 million pieces per year in the late 1960s.
More changes came in the 1970s. In 1977, the company’s name became The Birmingham Mint and a new logo was introduced, to include the uppercase “H”, seen to the left of a mint worker. To note, the 1794 date at bottom is a bit of a stretch, though it does bear a connection to the Heaton family. Ralph Heaton I had begun his button operations around that date, but that was well before Ralph Heaton II commenced his coin making business.
In 1991, IMI acquired a controlling interest in the company and renamed it IMI Birmingham Mint Ltd. The firm logo was changed accordingly and the ribbon at the bottom modified to include an “H” on the left, and “KN” on the right. The former being a reference to the Heaton mint and the latter to the Kings Norton Mint, which IMI owned and folded into its IMI Birmingham operation. A final change came in 1998 when the company’s name was switched back to The Birmingham Mint. But notice that the “H” mintmark has disappeared from the logo.
2001 was a bad year for the Royal Mint. With £5 million in trading losses, it achieved the worst result in its eleven hundred years of existence. Responsible for this was not just a decline in orders, but also high restructuring costs and inefficient operations. As part of a reorganization, it ended its special order-sharing arrangement with The Birmingham Mint. An order for Euro coins was unable to save the company. Worse, it was ordered to destroy specimen Euros it had minted because they were deemed counterfeits by the authorities. The firm managed to repossess most of the samples it had distributed to be destroyed, but it appears that some dozen or so presentation sets were never accounted for! Worse lay ahead.
In March, 2003, the Birmingham Mint was put under administration, due to an acute cash deficiency; two months later it closed. But the imposing 1862 mint building survived. In 2007, the local municipality hoped to convert the structure into a working museum. The effort came to nothing, however. Earlier this year, it looked much as it has during the last 160-plus years, though it has been redeveloped into a housing complex.
According to my numismatic Record Book, which I began keeping in 1973 and use to this day, in 1975 I purchased for $6.95 at Marshall Field’s, Old Orchard – of happy memory – a book entitled, The Coin Makers, by Thomas Becker. It is an account of the development of coinage from earliest times. On page 168, Becker writes: “In Europe, the finest example of a private mint is the Birmingham Mint…” I beg to differ with Becker’s assertion. It is the contention of this paper that The Birmingham Mint is the finest example of a private mint to have ever existed, in relation not only to the scope of its products, the quality of its coins, the duration of its existence, but most particularly to the profuseness of its output for so many countries and governments. My argument for this is as follows:
Copyright © 2024 James M. McMenamin
(All Rights Reserved in All Media)
| Chicago Coin Company |
| Harlan J. Berk, Ltd. |
| Kedzie Koins Inc. |
| Classical Numismatic Group |
Items shown at our October 9, 2024 meeting,
reported by Deven Kane.
Reminders:
Here are the lots in our member auction. The auction will be held near the start of the November meeting, after a short time for lot examination.
The auction will be called from our in-person meeting room, and all lots must be picked up when the auction ends – that is when all accounts must be settled, too. If you wish to bid but will not attend in person, please make arrangements with a fellow member: to bid for you, to pick up your won lots, and to pay for you. We do not know how well the remote-support capabilities of our meeting room would support remote bidders.
Donation from John and Nancy Wilson
Consignment from John Riley
Donation from Rich Lipman
Consignment from William Burd Part I
Club Material
Consignment from Bob Feiler
Donation from Blockers
Consignment from Nick Weiss
Consignment from William Burd Part II
Donation from Bob Feiler
Donation from William Burd
Consignment from William Burd Part III
Donation from Phil Carrigan
Donation from Brett Irick
| Date: | December 11, 2024 This meeting is in-person only. |
| Time: | 6:00pm (cash bar),
with complementary hors d’oeuvres.
7:00pm Dinner. 8:00pm Meeting called to order. |
| Location: | Capri Italian Restaurant, 12307 S. Harlem Avenue, Palos Heights, IL 60463. |
| Details: |
The cost is $45 if paid by December 5, and will be $50 if paid
after.
Early commitments and payments are greatly appreciated.
Make your reservation by mailing your check (payable to Chicago
Coin Club) to P.O. Box 2301, Chicago, IL 60690; or by paying
electronically (see the Chatter Matter page for details).
• Our dinner will start off with Fried Calamari and Bruschetta, followed by a House Salad. • The family-style dinner will be Mostaccioli with Marinara sauce, Chicken Capri, and Vesuvio Potatoes – special dietary requests can be honored. • Dessert will be Italian Ice and Mini Cannolis. |
| Parking: | Free parking – Valet parking available. |
| Program: | The program will be a 2024 Chicago Coin Club Year-in-Review. Who were our speakers? What were the accomplishments of the club and club members? What did Chicago Coin Club do in 2024 that was new and different for the club? Who were the Members we had to say goodbye to? |
| Agenda: | Award Presentations.
Election of Club Officers. |
| Date: | November 13, 2024 |
| Time: | 6:45PM CST (UTC-06:00) |
| Location: | Downtown Chicago
At the Chicago Bar Association, 321 S. Plymouth Court, 3rd or 4th 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. |
| Online: | For all the details on participating online in one of our club meetings, visit our Online Meeting webpage at www.chicagocoinclub.org/meetings/online_meeting.html. Participation in an online meeting requires some advance work by both our meeting coordinator and attendees, especially first-time participants. Please plan ahead; read the latest instructions on the day before the meeting! Although we try to offer a better experience, please be prepared for possible diifficulties. |
| Member Auction: |
There is no commission charged to either the buyer or seller.
Auction lot viewing will be held before the meeting starts, and
again briefly before the auction starts.
The auction will be called from our in-person meeting room, and
all lots must be picked up when the auction ends – that
is when all accounts must be settled, too.
We will not accept real-time bids from remote attendees; they
should make arrangements with a club member, who will attend
in person, to act as their agent during the auction.
Please find elsewhere in this issue of the Chatter a listing of all auction lots that were known to us by Sunday, October 27. |
Unless stated otherwise, our regular monthly CCC Meeting is in downtown Chicago, and also online, on the second Wednesday of the month; the starting time is 6:45PM CT.
| November | 13 | CCC Meeting - Club Auction - no featured speaker |
| November | 20 | CCC Board Meeting - online only - contact club secretary for access instructions. |
| December | 11 | CCC Meeting - Annual Banquet - Program: 2024 Chicago Coin Club Year-in-Review |
| January | 8 | CCC Meeting - Featured Speaker - Dale Lukanich on The Last Coinage of the Last Roman Emperor |
| February | 12 | CCC Meeting - Featured Speaker - Mark Wieclaw on to be determined |
| February | 27 | to March 1 – ANA’s National Money Show at the Cobb Galleria Centre, Atlanta, Georgia. Details at https://www.money.org/NationalMoneyShow |
| March | 12 | CCC Meeting - Featured Speaker - to be determined |
http://www.ChicagoCoinClub.org/
chatter_editor@yahoo.com
The print version of the Chatter is simply a printout of the Chatter webpage,
with a little cutting and pasting to fill out each print page.
The webpage 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.
| |||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
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
Or email the Secretary at
Secretary.ChicagoCoinClub@GMail.com
Payments to the Club, including membership dues,
can be addressed to the Treasurer at the above
street 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.
|
Sharing this complete Chatter issue with a friend is simple. Just let them scan this code into their smartphone! |