ANA Needs Your Help
The American Numismatic Association needs your help.
If the ANA needs your help, then the hobby needs your help.
The ANA, like everything else, has been hit hard by the pandemic. Aside from canceling the World’s Fair of Money, the headquarters in Colorado Springs had to close. And with the number of cases rising, especially in areas that were not hit hard in the first wave, the near future is uncertain. Remember, the 2021 National Money Show is scheduled to be held in Phoenix, and Arizona is reporting one of the worst rates of COVID-19 infections in the country!
Earlier today, ANA members received an email from Executive Director Kim Kiick asking members to donate to the association.
After the note arrived, I tried to write to Kim and the ANA to make a recommendation. I received an autoresponder note saying that Kim was on furlough!
I admit that my heart sank when I received that note. Here in the Washington, DC area, furloughs have a real negative feeling. When the government was closed, and everyone was furloughed, we contractors did not get paid. Being on furlough and knowing people on furlough is terrible, especially when you know and like them.
The ANA has not reported the furloughs’ extent, but I am sure that Kim is not the only one. But the furloughs may not be enough. While the ANA is trying to maintain a presence in the hobby, the ANA is not fully operational. For example, the library is closed. I need the library for a project I have to put on hold because they have a hard-to-find book I want.
DONATE
The ANA is the voice of the hobby and must be viable to ensure numismatics has a future. For the ANA to be viable, the association has to pay the people working in the headquarters. They are the unsung heroes of the ANA. Kim and her staff have held the organization together during the pandemic. They need to be fairly compensated.
Go to info.money.org/fall-appeal to learn how to donate.
SMILE AND BUY
Did you know that you can raise money for the ANA just by shopping on Amazon? They have a program called AmazonSmile that will let you shop and support your favorite charitable organization. Just go to smile.amazon.com, find the ANA in the charitable organizations list, select it, and go shopping.
When you purchase an item marked as “Eligible for AmazonSmile Donation,” Amazon will donate 0.5% of the purchase price to the ANA.
If you buy a $30 item from Amazon, they will donate 15-cents to the ANA. But if 20,000 members buy a $30 item from Amazon, the ANA will receive $3,000!
You might say that this is not a lot of money. But when an organization is hurting, everything counts. If you are shopping on Amazon regularly, just shop on AmazonSmile. If you are a Prime member, Amazon will recognize your membership for free shipping.
Amazon has a page that provides information about the AmazonSmile program. Just click here.
You are shopping on Amazon anyway. Use AmazonSmile and support the ANA. I use AmazonSmile for all of my purchases, including business purchases, and I am a Prime member.
Summary of June 2013 Coin-Related Legislation
S. 1105: Currency Optimization, Innovation, and National Savings Act
Sponsor: Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA)
• To improve the circulation of $1 coins, to remove barrier to the circulation of such coins
• Introduced: June 6, 2013
• Referred to the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
Track this bill at http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/s1105
S. 1158: National Park Service 100th Anniversary Commemorative Coin Act
Sponsor: Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA)
• Introduced: June 13, 2013
• Referred to the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
Track this bill at http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/s1158
H.R. 2366: World War I American Veterans Centennial Commemorative Coin Act
Sponsor: Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO)
• Introduced: June 13, 2013
• Referred to the House Committee on Financial Services
Track this bill at http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/hr2366
ANA to announce election results online
On Friday, the American Numismatic Association announced that President Tom Hallenbeck will announce the results of the 2013 ANA elections online on July 3, 2013 at 4:30 P.M. Mountain Time (6:30 P.M. on the east coast). The broadcast will be over YouTube on the ANA’s YouTube channel. Walt Ostromecki, who ran for president unopposed, Jeff Garrett, who was unopposed for vice president, and the 14 members running for the remaining seven seats on the Board of Governors will participate by telephone.
For me, this will be interesting since the time is during my commute. Those who have not had the privilege of being in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area during rush hour wonders why it is called “rush hour” since it looks like nobody is rushing and it lasts a lot more than an hour. We laugh cynically at all the reports that consistently rank this area’s traffic amongst the worst in the nation even topping Los Angeles. Even though it appears that many people will take the opportunity to go on vacation, the day before a holiday always raises the traffic levels. With it being the day before Independence Day, it should make traffic more fun!
If I cannot leave my office early, I will be on the telephone from my car—hands-free as it is the law in Maryland and the District of Columbia—probably sitting in Beltway traffic. I will probably have my favorite beverage with two additional shots while driving and on the phone. This will make the commute very interesting!
For those who missed the announcement, the following is the press release issued by the ANA:
American Numismatic Association President Tom Hallenbeck will announce the winners of the 2013-15 Board of Governors election during a live online broadcast at 4:30 p.m. Mountain Daylight Time on Wednesday, July 3, 2013.
The broadcast will be available at Money.org/Elections and on the ANA’s YouTube channel at YouTube.com/AmericanNumismatic.
A press release announcing the newly elected board members will be issued to the ANA membership and the media immediately following the broadcast. Results will be posted on Money.org as well as on the ANA’s Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn accounts.
The election was conducted by Survey & Ballot Systems Inc., headquartered in Eden Prairie, Minn. For the first time ever, ANA members were given the option of voting online or with a traditional mail-in ballot.
The American Numismatic Association is a congressionally chartered nonprofit educational organization dedicated to encouraging people to study and collect money and related items. The ANA helps its 28,000 members and the public discover and explore the world of money through its vast array of education and outreach programs, as well as its museum, library, publications, conventions and seminars. For more information, call 719-632-2646 or go to www.money.org.
Will COINS be the act
Earlier this month, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) introduced the Currency Optimization, Innovation, and National Savings (COINS) Act (S. 1105) to transition the United States to the use of a one-dollar coin rather than a paper dollar. Harkin introduced the bill with Senators Tom Coburn (R-OK), Mike Enzi (R-WY), John McCain (R-AZ), and Mark Udall (D-CO) as co-sponsors. The bill was assigned to the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. Only Sen. Coburn is a member of the Senate Banking Committee.
This gang of five appears to have put a lot of thought into the bill in order to try to make the transition more palatable. The first provision of the bill is to remove Susan B. Anthony dollars from circulation within six month. Introduced with much fanfare in 1979 as the first U.S. circulating coins to feature the portrait of a woman, the Susie B.’s were an instant failure when they were mistaken for quarters. They were such a failure, some (alleged) journalists who does not know that the dollar coin was redesigned in 2000 to gristle when thinking of their past experiences.
When the coins are withdrawn from circulation (the bill calls them “sequestered”), they will be available for sale to coin dealers and can be sold to countries that use the U.S. dollar as its currency. Otherwise, these Susie B.’s will remain in legal and withdrawn by the banks when they are deposited. Although the bill does not provide explanation for these provisions, it can only be assume to prevent these coins from causing the confusion we experienced when they were released in 1979.
Aside from the circulation reporting requirements, the section encourages countries that have adopted the U.S. dollar to order coins from the Federal Reserve and for the member banks to only ship dollar coins. However, there are countries that have adopted U.S. currency as its standard that cannot afford the shipment of paper currency and have experienced a shortage of Federal Reserve notes for use in its daily commerce. The switch to coins will make shipping that much more expensive and may lead to a currency shortage in some countries.
As the Federal Reserve “sequesters” SBA dollars, the bill says that the Fed is to start replacing notes with coins but not completely. The bill allows both the notes and coins to circulate concurrently until more than 600 million coins are put into circulation or after four years, whichever comes first. Once the co-circulation trigger is met, the Fed will not be allowed to order currency for one year, thus reducing the supply of the paper note leaving people no choice but to use the dollar coin.
One interesting provision of the bill is that it does not completely eliminate the dollar note. According to the bill, the Fed may produce dollar notes “from time to time are appropriate solely to meet the needs of collectors of that denomination.” Much like the half dollar coin that does not circulate but is included in sets and made available to the collecting community, this will allow the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to produce special sets using one dollar notes in much of the same way they do with the $2 notes today.
A little noticed provision of the bill updates the handling of seigniorage that the U.S. Mint deposits into the United States Mint Public Enterprise Fund (31 USC § 5136). The revision simply allows congress to estimate the value of the seigniorage that will be deposited into the Public Enterprise Fund to be used for the budget process. Without this change, the government can only use the actual value in the account, which is the amount deposited in previous years.
It is probably not lost on these senators that since the Treasury pulled back on the production of dollar coins that the amount of seigniorage has decreased. If congress is going to force the dollar coin into circulation, it will increase the seigniorage the U.S. Mint will collect making those profits a prime target for the government to use for its own purposes. This provision will allow congress to attach those profits before being collected rather than waiting for them to be collected. Although this may not sound right, it is consistent with how congress estimates the collection of tax receipts for the current budgetary process.
Considering my recent experience in Canada using one dollar (Loonies) and two dollar (Toonies) coins, I would like to see this bill passed into law. Given the gridlock that congress has demonstrated by passing only 14 bills to this point of the 113th congress, one cannot be optimistic about congressional action.
I’m back with a story from Canada
I am back after taking two weeks off for a little travel. As part of my ventures I spent some time in Canada. My wife, whose family is from the French-speaking areas of Quebec, had me trail along while she visited relatives. Even though I cannot speak French (très peu or “very little” is my response to when I was asked) I did have a good time. My wife’s relatives are good people and it would be interesting to see some of them come to the United States to visit.
While I was in Canada I decided that it would be interesting to buy rolls of one dollar (Loonies) and two dollar (Toonies) coins and see what I can find. The process was very interesting. First, I had to find a teller who could help me in English and accept U.S. currency. Thankfully, my wife had business at a local bank and the banker she worked with introduced me to a teller I could work with.
As I was introduced to the teller, I decided to buy two rolls of Loonies and Toonies. I thought this would be a good idea since these rolls may not have many coins. After all, rolls of U.S. dollars has 25 coins and the half dollars have 40 coins. I was surprised to learn that both the one and two dollar Canadian coins contain 50 coins! Playing it cool, I pretended I was not surprised and decided that purchasing 100 of each coin would be more fun to go through.
The rolls that were handed to me were clear plastic with locking tabs to hold the coins in place. Opening the roll is as easy as pulling apart the tabs. It does not require banging the rolls on the counter or tearing apart paper. While I did not open the roll all of the way, I was able to press the tabs closed to keep the rolls together.
Since I was paying for the rolls using U.S. currency, the bank used the current exchange rate for the conversion. With an exchange rate of a fraction over 98-cents per Canadian dollar, the two rolls cost less than $150 in U.S. currency. This presented a problem trying to pay with coins. Thankfully, my wife had some Canadian currency and paid for part of the transaction and added the C$5.00 fee since I was not a customer. What was more interesting was that without one-cent coins in circulation, the change had to be rounded. In this case, the change was rounded up!
After I walked out of the bank I began to wonder how the bank balances its books? Having worked on computer systems that supports accounting with all of the auditing capabilities and the ability to balance many accounts at once, what happens when the balances do not match? Do the banks track the plus-or-minus cents in order to make the books balance?
While in Canada I had to continue with my usual coffee habit and found myself at a Tim Hortons. For the United States audience not in the northeast where there are Tim Hortons franchises, Tim Hortons was founded in 1964 by Miles “Tim” Horton, a hockey player and entrepreneur, in Ontario as a donut shop. Although Horton died as a result of a 1974 automobile accident, his namesake restaurant is the largest fast-food chain in Canada. When I am asked to describe Tim Hortons I say that it is similar to Dunkin Donuts but with a better system and better coffee. When purchasing coffee at the Tim Hortons and paid using cash, the store worker would enter the amount of money I handed over and the electronic cash register calculated the change. On the screen it noted the change and how much would be actually dispensed without the one-cent coins. When I made a $1.78 purchase and handed the cashier a toonie, the cash registers said I was owed 20-cents in change.
Even though these transactions were in my favor, I had mixed feelings about the situation. I could have paid the exact amount using a credit card, but I am not comfortable using my credit card for small transactions.
Canadians seem to be comfortable, or at least accepting, with the elimination of the one-cent coin. I noticed they are comfortable with the one and two dollar coins. In fact, I liked having the coins from change while purchasing my coffee or other items while in Canada.
I am not sure that eliminating the one-cent coin or the paper dollar is ever going to happen in the United States, but if Canadians can adapt then I do not see why we should not be able to!
Second chance to Help Fight Against Fakes
Following the failure of the House of Representatives to even consider the Collectible Coin Protection Act in the 112th Congress (H.R. 5977), Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) kept his promised and re-introduced the bill into consideration for the 113th Congress. On May 7, 2013, H.R. 1849 was assigned to the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The bill was introduced two days before the National Money Show, the current co-sponsors are Reps. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Steve Scalise (R-LA), and Henry Waxman (D-CA). Fred Upton (R-MI) is the Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee and Waxman is the Ranking Member. Both Cassidy and Scalise are members of that committee.
The bill is exactly the same as H.R. 5577 that was introduced late in the 112th congress.
Rep. Steve Scalise is a new addition to this bill. He represents Louisiana’s 1st District that covers an area north and to the west of New Orleans that includes Metarie and Slidell. Scalise attended a reception at the National Money Show where he expressed his commitment to see the bill pass.
Scalise is the newly elected chairman of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), a caucus of House Republicans “organized for the purpose of advancing a conservative social and economic agenda in the House of Representatives.” In an interview during the National Money Show reception, Scalise said that would be H.R. 1849 an effective tool to help the hobby and since it is revenue neutral, he will recommend it to the 174 members of the RSC.
Currently, the Hobby Protection Act (15 U.S.C. §§2101-2106 and 16 CFR 304) does not allow for enough protection for the buyer. Aside from requiring the word “COPY” to appear on a copy, it does not allow for buyers or the government to take action against resellers, only the manufacturers.
When the Hobby Protection Act was first enacted in 1973 and updated in 1988, the online world did not exist the way it does today. It was easier to trace the manufacturers and the overseas sellers than the distribution channels are today. By the time a counterfeit coin reaches the United States, it could have been bought and purchased several times before being noticed. Then there is no remedy for those who have been duped.
Another problem is that the counterfeiters are learning to counterfeit slabs. Both NGC and PCGS have seen their slabs counterfeited or altered holding counterfeit coins. Both NGC and PCGS have the same problems with trying to protect their brands against counterfeiters.
The introduction of the bill is the result of the work of the Industry Council for Tangible Assets (ICTA) and Gold and Silver Political Action Committee (GSPAC), and the numismatic community working with key representatives to craft an effective legislation. It is also written to ensure support from congress. Benefits of the new law are as follows:
- Include the distribution and sale of items not properly marked as being a COPY
- Expands the provisions to include “any person who provides substantial assistance or support to any manufacturer, importer, or seller” who knowingly engages in any act or practice that violates the Act;
- Expands the ability for those who were sold counterfeit items to include the counterfeiter, their agent in the United States, or anyone who knowing “transacts business” in violation of this Act;
- Extend trademark violations and remedies to help third-party certification services protect against counterfeit holders.
These new provisions will allow collectors, dealers, and grading services to bring legal actions that are much more effective, with much stronger remedies than previously existed. It will allow those harmed to work with the Justice Department to bring criminal actions, where apporpriate.
WE STILL NEED YOUR HELP
The only way to ensure that H.R. 1849 becomes law, especially since we are approaching the end of this session in an election year, is to contact your member of congress will let them know that the numismatic community supports this Act and that their support is important.
To contact your representatives, visit house.gov and enter your Zip Code at the top right of the page. When you contact your representative, you should mention that H.R. 1849 is revenue neutral and will not require additional appropriations. The bill will go a long way in combating counterfeit rare coins in the marketplace, saving collectors and investors millions of dollars in fraudulent transactions.
To read a copy of the bill and to track its progress, you can use govtrack.us. Sign up for a free account then visit this link for information about this bill and how to track its progress.
An example of a Morgan Dollar cut in half to match a date with a mintmark to have the coin appear something it is not. Coin was in a counterfeit PCGS slab and caught by one of their graders.
DISCLAIMER: I am working as Political Coordinator for the Gold and Silver PAC.
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