National Money Show opens in (yawn) Colorado Springs

ANA President Dr. Ralph Ross opening the 2022 National Money Show (video screen capture)

While watching the National Money Show opening ceremony online, the speakers mentioned that it was the fifth time the show was being held in Colorado Springs.

Colorado Springs is the home of the ANA’s headquarters, and it is about 75 miles south of Denver. Colorado Springs is also the home of the United States Air Force Academy. It is a nice place, and planning a visit should be on anyone’s destination list.

While it is nice that the National Money Show is in Colorado Springs, other cities could hold the show. The ANA refuses to consider holding any show in Washington, DC.

Regulations by the city’s government and the city council’s unresponsiveness to address the issues prevented the ANA from considering Washington for one of their shows.

Times have changed.

Since Larry Shepherd stuck the ANA with keeping the World’s Fair of Money in the Chicago area, Washington has new facilities to host the ANA shows.

Even though Washington is the home of the U.S. Mint, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, and the Smithsonian National History Museum, where the National Numismatic Collection is located, the ANA cannot get past the memories of past problems to explore new opportunities.

The problem was driven home by Larry Shepherd, who said on an episode of the Coin World Podcast that Washington cannot hold an ANA show. Shepherd, who probably has not been to Washington since being dismissed as the ANA’s executive director, has no clue how his pronouncement is wrong.

The ANA can hold either show at the National Harbor, a development outside the Beltway in Oxon Hill, Maryland. Aside from being the location of an MGM Grand Hotel, the 2,000 room Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center can comfortably host the ANA.

But people like Larry Shepherd do not keep up with the present and do not know about National Harbor. Instead, they isolate themselves in their prejudices and ignorantly dismiss the ideas.

The Washington region can be a destination for collectors and their families. After all, Washington is the nation’s capital. Come for the show, stay for the history. Bring the kids. We can go to the Smithsonian American Art Museum to see the art of the artists who designed U.S. coins. Tour the city to see the statues by some of those same artists.

What if the ANA worked with the Smithsonian Institute to create exhibits around the coins and the history they represent. How fascinating will it be to take the Native American Dollar program and create a program to expand on their message at the National Museum of the American Indian?

Even though the Bureau of Engraving and Printing has brought interesting items to other shows, they can host special tours in their Washington printing center for ANA members.

When it is time to visit the bourse, it will be in the expansive convention center at the Gaylord Hotel. After the bourse closes, convention-goers can stay in National Harbor to have a good time, including a ride on the Capital Wheel overlooking the Potomac River.

Since National Harbor is in Maryland, the sales tax laws favor bringing all of the shows to the area.

Maybe Larry Shepherd is right. All Washington could do is add new educational opportunities and create family fun to increase the show’s attendance. It is not the direction it appears the ANA wants to go.

Opening Ceremony at the 2022 National Money Show in Colorado Springs

U.S. Mint Promotes Circulation of Circulating Coins

As more people come out of their pandemic bubble, some areas continue to report a coin shortage. Although it appears to be a shortage in circulating coinage, there is a reduction of coin available for merchants to give change. Although the situation has improved, the problem is that coins are still not circulating.

In a video by U.S. Mint Director David Ryder, he reports that the Mint has increased production during the last year. Typically, the U.S. Mint supplies less than 20-percent of the coin in circulation. Last year, the U.S. Mint increased production to add 30-percent of the coins in circulation.

Given the situation with the pandemic that caused the West Point Mint to shut down and pause Philadelphia, the fact that the U.S. Mint was able to produce more coins than ever is a significant accomplishment. Regardless of your opinion as to how the U.S. Mint has handled the sale of collector coins, no other mint in the world could accomplish this feat.

In 2020, the U.S. Mint struck 14.774 BILLION coins. But in 2019, a year where the economy was doing very well, the U.S. Mint produced 11.942 BILLION coins. They produced 23.7 more coins while taking precautions during a pandemic.

Nearly every industry reported a reduction in demand and the ability to produce products. And the supply chain continues to affect production in some industries, including tech, where there is a shortage of computer chips. But the U.S. Mint was able to add over 14 BILLION coins to the economy. Amazing!

VIDEO: DIY Mechanical Coin Sorting Machine

Although this video is “sponsored” by Wix, it is interesting to watch the process of making a coin sorting machine. Just ignore the Wix ads at the beginning and end of the video.

In today’s video I want to show you how to make extremly effective fully mechancal coin sorting machine that allows you to sort up to 300 coins per minute! All you need is plywood, screws and chipboard. You can use this coin sorter anywhere cause it’s quite portable!

If you want to watch the video on YouTube and see the rest of the text with the advertisement, click here.

VIDEO: World’s Largest Coin Pyramid (Almost)

This one is just for fun.

Cory Nelson and his coin pyramid

Cory Nelson poses with his World Record creation (screen grab from YouTube)

Cory Nelson of Phoenix, Arizona, built the world’s largest coin pyramid.

In an interview with CBC Radio, Nelson said that after building a coin pyramid with 41,000 coins on his desk, his coworkers asked if it was the world’s largest. He said that if it were not, he would make sure it is.

According to the Guinness World Records, the record was 1,000,935 Lithuanian one-cent coin by Vytautas Jakštas and Domas Jokubauskis. The pair built their coin pyramid in 2014 using Lithuanian Litas as a celebration before Lithuania converted to the Euro.

After three years of work on it for 20 hours per week, 45 YouTube videos tracking his work, and 1,030,315 Lincoln cents later (that is $10,303.15 worth of coins), Nelson submitted his creation to become the world records holder. It will take a while for GWR to verify the record.

Here’s the final video of Nelson’s pyramid:

Numismatic Showtime

Passing the time after 10:00 PM on Monday night, the television found its way to the History Channel for the return of Pawn Stars, the reality show about a pawn shop in Las Vegas. While the first show of the hour was just interesting it was the second show that started at 10:33 PM that was more intriguing.

Although the show was marked as “NEW” on the visual guide, it first aired last January. To make sure I was able to study the coins more, I found the episode on the History Channel website. It is also available on YouTube at https://youtu.be/yTKbcAKbQtU. (embedded below)

Opening the show, a seller name Walter walked in with two rare coins. The first coin was a 1792 Half Disme and the other a silver Libertas Americana. Two coins dating back to the earliest days of the country’s history.

If you recognize Walter his full name is Walter Husak. In 2008, Husak sold his extraordinary collection of large cents at an auction held during that year’s Long Beach Expo. For this show, he was selling the two coins.

The 1792 Half Disme was graded MS-65 by Numismatic Guarantee Corporation who lists the coin as a TOP POP, meaning no coin has graded higher. There are only two half dismes graded MS-65 by NGC and one appeared on Pawn Stars.

The Libertas Americana is one of the rare silver versions and was graded MS-61 by Professional Coin Grading Service

As with a lot of these purchases, Rick calls in an expert for assistance. This time, the expert is Jeff Garrett, the founder of Mid-American Rare Coin Galleries in Lexington, Kentucky and immediate past president of the American Numismatic Association.

Jeff Garrett stands next to Walter Husak as they examine the Half Disme and Libertas Americana on Pawn Stars (screen grab)

I noted that Garrett’s firm is in Lexington since the location of the television show is in Las Vegas. While doing a little online investigation into the prices and to see if there was more information, there was a note on the Collectors Universe forums suggesting that the segment was not a reality, but it had been staged.

According to user “cardinal,” he wrote:

Jeff Garrett is one of the experts that gets brought in to evaluate numismatic items for the show. For this specific episode, Jeff was looking for both a half disme and a Libertas medal, and Jeff was able to locate them and had the respective owners’ permission to have them appear on the show. The half disme is pedigreed to the Garrett Collection, and the silver Libertas medal was one that Jeff Garrett had sold some years back. (This particular Libertas medal has been in the Cardinal Collection for the past 6 years.)

I believe Ccardinal is the anonymous person behind the Cardinal Collection who has collected some of the finest coins in the PCGS registry.

Following a discussion on the actual Libertas Americana used for the show, he ends with:

During the show, the half disme was a no-sale. The Libertas medal was shown as sold at $150K on camera. That being said, the piece was not actually sold, even though Rick actually did want to buy it for $150K.

I have heard stories as to how some segments are real and some are staged. When I spoke with Charmy Harker about her appearance in 2012, I was under the impression that her attempt at selling a World War II-era aerial bomber camera was not overly staged. That does not seem to be the case in this episode.

My one complaint is that these two esteemed numismatists mispronounced the name of the coin. Everyone kept pronouncing disme as “DIZ-ME.” In reality, disme is pronounced as if the “s” was not included in the word. Disme is derived from the French term for tenth but pronounced dime—which is why the “s” was dropped after the first issues of 1792 coins.

Oh well… it was a fun segment to watch.

VIDEO: Coin Bridge

Time for some mindless levity. While looking for numismatic-related stories around the interwebs, I came across this video. With 200 coins that appears to be the size of a quarter, the presenter builds a bridge of coins that loops off the edge of the table.

It’s Tuesday and there is a long week ahead!

A $2 Love Story

Did you know that someone made a movie about the $2 bill?

I was looking for information about early $2 notes and an Internet search discovered the page for The Two Dollar Bill Documentary.

Basically, it is a 1 hour 43 minute documentary about the $2 bill. Written and directed by John Bennardo, who has one other film to his credits, writes on the website that he wanted to learn more about the stack of $2 bills he kept in his desk draw. A year and several interviews later, Bennardo had a documentary.

Amongst the people who appear in the documentary is Charlene Williams, Director of Manufacturing at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing facility in Fort Worth, Fred Bart, owner of Executive Currency, and Ben Cohen who is the “Ben” in Ben & Jerry’s.

I do not know how I missed this because it was the Kickstarter campaign written about in CoinWeek, and I am a regular reader. Also, filming began at the 2013 FUN Convention, a show I attended.

It does not appear that the documentary had a wide distribution since I did not find anything about its showing. But for the low sales price of $9.99 you can by a DVD through their online store. It might be worth spending the $10 just to check out the documentary.

The Two Dollar Bill Documentary teaser trailer

All images courtesy of “The Two Dollar Bill Documentary.”

Stolen Ancient Coins and Art helps fund ISIS

Amateur photos of stolen coins — like this, taken from a cache of images held by a middleman — are sent from phone to phone in the underground trade.

If counterfeit Canadian currency or badly made British pound errors were not enough, the focus is now being placed on antiquities stolen by ISIS from captured areas in Syria and Iraq. The proceeds have been used to fund their activities.

A Wall Street Journal report said that Swiss authorities have been investigating Ali and Hicham Aboutaam, owners of the Phoenix Ancient Art Company with offices in New York and Geneva. It is alleged that items that they have been trading in artifacts looted by ISIS.

In one famous video, ISIS militants were shown destroying artifacts with the voice-over declaring, “These idols and pagans for people in the past centuries were worshiped instead of Allah. When Allah ordered to destroy and remove them, it was an easy matter. We don’t care, even if it costs billions of dollars.”

That may have been a ruse by only showing a few items destroyed since it is estimated that ISIS generates $100-250 million per year selling looted antiquities on the black market.

While art and statues are easy to trace, coins are a different story. Coins can be carried easily in pockets, wrapped in clothes, or just “innocently” thrown into luggage and smuggled anywhere in the world. Detection is difficult and without documentation, they may be difficult to trace.

Reports in the international media note that weak laws and the lure of significant profits have kept the sales of artifacts and looted coins moving through the system. Looted coins have been sold on sites like eBay and Etsy without fear of reprisals because their provenance cannot be proven.

Even though the 1970 UNESCO Convention was agreed upon to stop archaeological pillaging and trafficking of cultural property, the way it is implemented in most countries is to recover the item at its final destination and not in transit. An unsuspecting collector or dealer could be in the position of one of these looted coins but have to face the consequences if they are caught.

The sale of these coins supports ISIS and their terrorist activities. Even after the coins have changed hands several times, they could circulate through the industry and be used by dealers down the like who will continue to trade the coins and using the profits to help fund ISIS.

It would be easy to say to resist buying ancient Syrian or Persian coins, but there are coins that were not stolen and can be legitimately owned. This might be an area that the Ancient Coin Collectors Guild should weigh in on behalf their community.

Until then, try to limit your purchases to reputable dealers and dealers you know.

Wall Street Journal Video

Image courtesy of BuzzFeed News.

Using coins to spread protest messages

As I am working on a manuscript about counterfeiting coins and currency, I started to search the internet for the location of some information when I stumbled on The British Museum’s website. Rather than find something about counterfeiting, searching the term “defacing coins” lead me to the most recent Curator’s Corner blog entry by Thomas Hockenhull, the curator of Modern Money for The British Museum.

For this entry, Hockenhull found a 1903 large penny with the words “VOTES FOR WOMEN” engraved over the head of King Edward III. It was done as part of the suffragist protests in England prior to World War I. Although not much of a presenter, The British Museum recorded a video featuring Hockenhull describing the coin and his research into how it might have come into existence. Rather than rehash what he said, you can watch the video here:

I have not to been to London for many years, but I remember spending a day at The British Museum was a highlight of the trip. It is one of the great museums of the world and worth setting at least one day touring the museum. There is so much to see that if you love to see the living embodiment of history, consider spending more than a day.

In for a pound

The old Round Pound and the new 12-sided £1 coin

By the time the sun rises on the east coast of the United States, the Royal Mint, on behalf of HM Treasury, will have released the new 12-sided £1 coin. Billed as the most secure coin in the world, the Royal Mint touts the following security features:

  • 12–sided — its distinctive shape makes it instantly recognisable, even by touch.
  • Bimetallic — it is made of two metals. The outer ring is gold coloured (nickel-brass) and the inner ring is silver coloured (nickel-plated alloy).
  • Latent image — it has an image like a hologram that changes from a £ symbol to the number ‘1’ when the coin is seen from different angles.
  • Micro-lettering — it has very small lettering on the lower inside rim on both sides of the coin. One pound on the obverse heads side and the year of production on the reverse “tails” side, for example 2016 or 2017.
  • Milled edges — it has grooves on alternate sides.
  • Hidden High Security Feature — with a patented High Security Feature to protect it from counterfeiting into the future.

Of course, the Royal Mint is offering collectibles for the new pound that includes a “farewell” to the one being replaced nicknamed the “Round Pound.”

Design and production of the new pound coin have been nearly three years in the making following the discovery of a large number of counterfeit £1 coins. Sources estimated that about 3-percent of the £1 coins in circulation are fake amounting to more than 45 million counterfeit coins. These fakes are so convincing and very well constructed that they can be successfully used in vending machines for payment including in London’s Underground.

The coin-operated businesses in Britain began complaining three years about the changes with reports that only a small fraction of all vending machines will be able to accept the new coin. Each coin-operated machine will have to be reprogramed and recalibrated to detect a coin that will have a different weight, specific gravity, and the electromagnetic signature.

Amongst those systems not ready include the London Underground and several major supermarkets.

While watching the news, I found that British supermarkets charge for people to use their trollies, which are called shopping carts on this side of the pond. I do not know if it is a deposit similar to the carts available at the airports, but could you imagine having to pay to use a shopping cart at your local supermarket? I do not think that would go over well in the United States!

Back in October 2016, the Royal Mint published education material and test coins that the coin-operating machine companies could use to test their equipment. Some of these test coins have appeared for sale on websites like eBay. Since then, there have been weekly stories about the new coin and stories have appeared daily in the British media.

Now that the new £1 coin has been released, it will co-circulate with the round pound through October 15, 2017. Banks will only distribute the new £1 coins while stores and other businesses will be allowed to accept either. During that time, it is expected for coin-operated equipment to be converted as soon as possible.

On October 16, 2017, the round pound will be demonetized and lose all legal tender status. Once the round pound loses legal tender status, they may be exchanged at some banks and the Post Office. The plan is to end the exchange of the round pound by March 27, 2018.

For collectors, this is an opportunity to collect something that was once a real circulating coin. The current round pound came into existence in 1971 when the UK transition from the pounds, shillings, and pence (£sd) system based on the power of 12 to a decimal system, called decimalization. Of course, when this happened in 1971 the web did not exist and real paper newspapers were the primary means of spreading the information about the new currency. Based on reports, there were some issues during the one-year transition but there were no stories of tragedies once the new money was issued.

Somewhat like the end of the Canadian cent, this is the end for a significant circulating coin. Except the Canadians did not replace the cent while the British are exchanging coins.

The Trade Dollar

Before you write to me to explain about the Trade Dollar, I know it was demonetized in 1876. However, it gained legal tender status again as part of the Coinage Act of 1965.

For those concerned over proposals that the United States change composition of various coins, including the one-cent coin that costs 1.5-cents to produce, watching how the UK handles the change will provide an insight as to how it might be handled here. Except for one problem: The United States does not demonetize coins (see the note in the box to the right). Every coin produced by the U.S. Mint can be used as legal tender at their face value, although it would be foolish to spend a Saint-Gaudens Double Eagle for its $20 face value since its gold content would be worth more!

It will be interesting to see how stiff those proverbial stiff upper lips hold up during this transition.

All images, videos, and British-style English text courtesy of the Royal Mint.

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