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| Volume 71 No. 1 | January, 2025 |
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There was no Show & Tell section during the December meeting, so the usual reminder for Show & Tell appears here:
The 1271st meeting of the Chicago Coin Club was called to order by President John Riley at 8:01 PM CST, Wednesday December 11, 2024 after the 6pm cocktail hour and 7pm dinner. This was an in-person meeting held at the Capri Italian Restaurant in Palos Heights, Illinois for the annual holiday banquet. 46 people were in attendance, including seven guests with one applying for membership.
President John Riley called for an abbreviated meeting agenda due to the holiday banquet occasion. John gave a grand welcome to Capri Italian Restaurant and a toast to an outstanding 2024 year for the club and CCC’s grand role in the August ANA meeting. John gave a shout out and huge thank you to the Secretary, Treasurer, Chatter Editor/Webmaster, Archivist, and all Board Members for outstanding work.
John made brief mention of what to expect in 2025 with meetings, special events the Club may be in, and helping others at the local and at ANA shows.
Club Meeting Minutes and Treasurer’s Report
The November club meeting minutes were approved as published in the Chatter, both in print and on the CCC website. November treasurer’s report will be presented in January due to the abbreviated agenda.
New Members
Secretary Scott McGowan completed the second membership application readings for Frank Gross of Streamwood, Illinois and Zachary Filis of Fairfield, Virginia with the club approving both. Scott did a first reading of the membership application for Lily DeCosta, a Young Numismatist.
Old Business
New Business
John Riley then ceremoniously presented the president’s gavel to incoming president Melissa Gumm. Following the election, club past president 1989-1992 Bob Leonard issued the oath of office asking all to faithfully execute the duties of their office, with all elected and appointed responding, “I Will.”
Featured Program
Chicago Coin Club 2024, A Year in Review. First Vice President Melissa Gumm presented a program featuring the best of 2024, including many of the activities the club participated in over the year. Melissa opened the presentation with 2024 being another year of excellent featured speakers at our club meetings. Our club motto “We Learn By Teaching” was fulfilled with 12 speakers teaching us about a wide range of Numismatic subjects plus 85 Show and Tell presentations over 10 club meetings. Melissa highlighted each month’s presentation title and speaker with an image of their program.
Club highlights discussion included our club’s Jeff Rosinia receiving the Numismatic Ambassador Award at the FUN show, Bob Leonard’s attendance and report on The New York International Numismatic Convention, calling it the best show for Ancient and foreign coins. Melissa highlighted club member Andrew Michyeta’s calendar of club medals he created and distributed at meetings, CCC helping educate potential new Young Numismatists with John Kent and Scott McGowan supplying materials and support to the Latin School of Chicago’s week of education on coins, currency, medals, and coin grading to nine high school students.
Melissa described the magnificent May meeting and CCC booth at the Central States Numismatic Society annual convention, including the amazing program on Operation Bernhard, the counterfeiting operation in a WWII concentration camp, and the issuance of another CCC souvenir card of “May the Fourth Be With You” given to meeting attendees and created by Mark Wieclaw. Melissa reviewed the Chicago Coin Club position as Host Club for the 2024 American Numismatic Association’s 133rd World’s Fair of Money in Rosemont, Illinois, the club’s 20th time hosting the convention in Chicago.
CCC member Dale Lukanich was host chairman – 50 members volunteered as Ambassadors to assist with the convention. A joint dinner was held with the New York Numismatic Club, with 73 in attendance. A souvenir card featuring likenesses of currency with ties to both Illinois and New York. The CCC meeting at the ANA convention was attended by 49, with an amazing presentation by Dr. Nathan Elkins, Deputy Director of the ANS, on Coins and the Colosseum. A souvenir card designed by Mark Wieclaw, featuring likenesses of coinage for each of the 20 years the CCC hosted the convention, was given to meeting attendees.
Melissa highlighted the club welcoming 14 new members in 2024, then paid tribute to recently deceased members John Connolly, James Patrick Flannery Jr., Robert “Bob” Weinstein, and Kermit Wasmer.
Melissa’s presentation thanked the banquet planning team…
Bill Burd – Planning
Richard Hamilton – Invocation
Sharon and Kevin Blocker – $500.00 Donation and sponsor of YNs
Chicago Coin Company – Pre-dinner Hors d’oeuvres: Fried Calamari and Bruschetta
Katie DeCosta – Menu design and printing
Melissa recognized two long time CCC members who reached milestones in their service to their club positions. Bill Burd – 20 years as the club archivist Paul Hybert – 25 years as editor of the Club newsletter, the Chatter, and as webmaster
Melissa wrapped up the presentation with a transition to the annual club awards program overseen by outgoing president John Riley.
Club Awards
Cabeen Award presented to CCC members for excellence in presenting
show-and-tell items during the 2024 club meetings.
First Place Gold: Mark Wieclaw
Second Place Silver: Deven Kane
Honorable Mention: Noah Graf, Tyler Rossi
Chicago Coin Club Medal of Merit presented for meritorious action
to the club
Dale Lukanich
John Riley
Chicago Coin Club Past President’s Award presented to
outgoing club president
John Riley
President John Riley adjourned the meeting at 9:01pm CST.
Respectfully Submitted,
Scott A. McGowan,
Secretary
December 4, 2024
In attendance: Elliott Krieter, Rich Lipman, John Riley, Mark Wieclaw. Not in attendance: Jeff Rosinia, Carl Wolf.
Meeting called to order at 6:02 pm by Mark Wieclaw.
Several topics were discussed, with the main focus on improving the experience of our hybrid meetings for both in-person and online attendees. We need to contact someone with experience in Audio/Visual equipment. Elliot offered to check into using the building’s A/V equipment to see if their equipment might be adequate and at what cost.
Scholarships to the ANA Summer Seminar for both Adult and Junior members was discussed. Since several other organizations currently offer them, the subject was tabled.
Sponsoring Educational Exhibit Awards was also discussed. If a valid opportunity arises in the future to do so, it will be considered.
Grants for reference books written by club members was discussed. Setting a monetary limit would have to be decided, and only as a reimbursement once the reference has been published.
A one day educational seminar conducted by CCC members was proposed. This could be in conjunction with a numismatic convention or a separate space.
Finding speakers for Club meetings can be difficult. Do we offer to pay outside speakers to attend in person? If they present virtually, would they still be compensated? Should Club members be offered compensation to spark more interest?
Although not related to this committee, putting a portion of the club’s funds into an interest bearing account was discussed. That is something already in motion.
Meeting adjourned at 7:05 pm.
Respectfully Submitted,
Mark Wieclaw
| Chicago Coin Company |
| Harlan J. Berk, Ltd. |
| Kedzie Koins Inc. |
| Classical Numismatic Group |
by Paul Hybert
NOTE: This article has a few URLs shown explicitly; the online version of this article has clickable links to mentioned websites; in the printed version of this article, the reader does not see these links or their URLs. Skimming this article in the printed Chatter is fine, but try the online version to get the full effect.
One of the older but lesser-known parts of the club’s website has documents concerning the first hundred years of US coinage. This page is an ongoing effort, with some documents added every year. The original documents were printed by Congress and are from many sources, including the Mint Director and committees of Congress. Although not strictly considered as “source” documents, they provide generally accurate (if incomplete) views of contemporary matters.
Each document is presented as a text-only file with some formatting; corrections are limited to the small typos and similar errors (some corrections are made silently while others are marked). By offering text instead of images, these files are easily searched and processed by Google and other search engines. The files for documents added in recent years end with a small block giving webpage revision dates as well as a link to a webpage where the original document is presented as an image (in PDF, TIFF, or other format) – a number of websites have offered images over the years. The first that I had encountered was a webpage at the Library of Congress (LOC) presenting all volumes of American State Papers along with some other important documents — it was very useful, and a link to the five Finance Volumes in American State Papers has long been provided on this project’s main page.
Unfortunately, that link now leads to a page on the LOC website that is so far removed from American State Papers that using the search box on that page could not find American State Papers! It seems that the LOC “updated” their website by throwing out the old site structure and creating a new structure, effectively destroying all links that had been saved as bookmarks or placed into webpages over the past 25 years. An archived version of the old, familiar main page for American State Papers is at https://webarchive.loc.gov/all/20211113040250/http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwsplink.html while the new style main page for American State Papers is at https://www.loc.gov/item/97080286/ – I prefer using the old style main page because I am familiar with it and my process to convert a document into an HTML file is based upon the provided files.
Another website where I found congressional documents was the Newman Numismatic Portal (NNP). They scanned many books and documents, from public and private libraries and collections, and made them freely available on the Internet Archive website. They offer each document in multiple formats, but I have used only the PDF and the plain text files; I use the PDF image for reference while manually converting the plain text into HTML.
A recently-found website offers the Congressional Serial Set that contains all the thousands of volumes containing all Congressional documents since the 15th Congress (1817-1819). This complete set is a highly anticipated offering, after years of seeing it mentioned as a future goal. It is possible to download two versions of each document: as an image in a PDF file, and as plain text. Putting two versions of every document on the website was a major effort, so the lack of a wide assortment of available formats is understandable. I look forward to adding documents from here, starting in the near future.
The question of whether the United States would be on the gold standard or silver standard was a major topic in the late 19th century. Numismatic artifacts remind us of events in that period: the Coinage Act of 1873, the Bland-Allison Act (1878), the Sherman Silver Purchase Act (1890), and William Jennings Bryan’s Cross of Gold speech at the 1896 Democratic convention. But the varying relative value of gold and silver has a long history, reaching back to ancient Rome. It was present at the birth of our country and its coinage, and in the early 19th century.
Back on the http://www.chicagocoinclub.org/lib/us/usmnt/mr.html document webpage, look at the reports from the early 1830s. Among the typical annual reports on mint production, mint financials, and assays of foreign coins which were accepted as legal tender, you will see reports requested by Congress and reports by Congressional committees. One underlying concern was, “What happened to all the gold and silver coins produced at our mint?” Read these documents, and see the contemporary “opinions” and “facts” that were earnestly passed back and forth for years, until some consensus was reached. (Warning: a document from 1830 has 118 pages!) That period also saw the first gold rush in the US; some of the documents cover it in varying amounts of detail.
| Date: | January 8, 2025 |
| 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. |
| Featured Program: | Dale Lukanich —
The Last Coinage of the Last Roman Emperor
The last vestige of the Roman Empire was the Byzantine Empire, which ended in 1453 with the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire. Constantine XI Palaiologos was the last emperor, serving from 1449 to 1453. Not many items from his reign survive to this day; join us to see what Dale will show. |
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.
| 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 - Steve and Ray Feller on to be determined |
| April | 9 | CCC Meeting - Featured Speaker - Tyler Rossi on to be determined |
| April | 24-26 | 86th Anniversary Convention of the Central States Numismatic Society at the Schaumburg Renaissance Hotel & Convention Center, 1551 North Thoreau Drive, Schaumburg, IL. There is a $15 per day admission charge, a 3-day pass for $30, free for youth (17 and under), and free for CSNS Members. For details, refer to their website, https://www.csns.org/ |
| April | 26 | CCC Meeting - 12pm at the CSNS Convention,
which is held at the Schaumburg Convention Center.
No admission charge for our meeting.
Featured Speaker - to be determined |
| May | 14 | CCC Meeting - Featured Speaker - Richard Hamilton on to be determined |
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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
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.
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