Miami Valley Coin Club

Coin Show Safety

The world seems to get a little more dangerous every day. When attending a coin show these days, it’s smart to be a little cautious and avoid becoming a criminal’s next victim:

1. Assume you are a likely target. Stay alert to people who are around you.
2. Never leave any coins that you have brought or coin show purchases in your unattended vehicle.
3. Know the location of security and emergency services offices.
4. If you are a dealer, make sure to keep display cases locked.
5. Use your phone to photograph/video suspicious persons.
6. Remove any show credentials before leaving the building.
7. If you are accosted, stay calm, and never chase after the thief.

Seriously!

Yes, that’s right! No October meeting. It’s too dangerous for us to act like responsible human beings and meet in a safe manner…

STILL!

Not Again…

First it was on then it is off…AGAIN!! Mr. Dewine thinks we may just cause another increase in the pandemic if we get together as a group for an evening of coin collecting fun. So, that said, there will be no September club meeting.

Maybe October. Maybe next year. This is beginning to look like a one meeting year with (maybe) a Christmas get together. It’s a real shame that we are not smart enough to meet without exposing ourselves to covid-19 (or so our State Government says).

Will It Ever End?

Once again our club meeting has been cancelled due to Covid-19 concerns.

Maybe some day we will be able gather again and swap coin stories.

Treasure Hunt Ends

Ten years ago, art collector and dealer Forrest Fenn, claimed to have buried a treasure worth a considerable amount of money somewhere in the western United States. He was diagnosed with kidney cancer, and told he wouldn’t survive.

Forrest loved the great outdoors and nature and felt that to encourage people to explore the outdoor wonders of America, he needed a way to get them out there. So he said he buried a treasure chest in the Rockies, then wrote a poem giving a series of clues to reveal the location of the treasure.

Not The Actual Chest

As the years past, people began to doubt whether or not there really was a treasure or maybe this was just an old man’s hoax.

Surprise, surprise! A man from the eastern U.S. has finally found the treasure chest. He sent Fenn, who survive his bout with cancer, pictures and a description of where he found the chest. Fenn said that it hadn’t moved since the day he had buried it.

The chest’s contents weighed 42 pounds and contained:

• Pre-Columbian animal figures
• Ancient Chinese jade carvings
• Jars of Alaska gold dust
• Antique jewelry
• Gold coins numbered in the hundreds
• 2 gold nuggets weighing more than 1 pound each
• Various gold objects worth their weight in bullion

The treasure ‘s worth is estimated to be over one million dollars

Forrest Fenn is a Vietnam Air Force vet with 328 combat missions flown, a Silver Star recipient, and was shot down twice. He is currently a healthy 89 years old.

July Club Meeting… NOT!!

Once again the pandemic has reared its ugly head and caused our club meeting to be cancelled.

We need to find a location that does not have to play by our government’s social distancing rules. Everyone should start looking for new possible meeting locations.

Attention World Paper Money Collectors

A town in central Italy began printing its own banknotes during the Coronavirus outbreak. Castellino del Biferno, 158 mils southwest of Rome is putting out “Ducati” notes for their citizens to use for essential goods at shops in the town.

The notes are worth about one Euro each. Every two weeks, a store that accepts the notes can return the notes to the town and receive the equal amount in actual Euros. Each note features a town landmark, ranging from a church to a public swimming pool.

Wouldn’t one of these notes be a neat addition to a world paper money collection?

NO JUNE MEETING

The church says (following advice from Governor DeWine), “No groups larger than 10 allowed!”

Time to seriously search for a new club meeting location so that we, the group, can decide when to meet and how many. Social distancing is getting very boring!

Can’t have a “club” if we’re not allowed to meet!

Designer of the Sacagawea Dollar Passes

New Mexico artist and Sacagawea golden-dollar designer Glenna Goodacre died of natural causes on April 13, 2020. She was 80 years old. Besides the dollar coin, she created several large scale sculptures including the Vietnam Women’s Memorial on the National Mall in Washington D.C., the Irish Memorial at Penn’s Landing in Philadelphia, and the Puddle Jumpers in Montgomery, Alabama.

Although for the most part, the American public has shown little affection for modern day U.S. dollar coins, if you travel outside the country, particularly in Ecuador, you will find that the Sacagawea coin is vastly popular with the its citizenry.

The numismatic community has lost a great artist.

May Meeting Cancelled

Once again the Coronavirus has struck our club! Because only 10 of us would be able to gather at one time (Thank you Mr. DeWine) we will once again hold off, until June this time.

Hope everyone is well and staying safe. Can you image the looks if we all showed up in facemarks for a coin club meeting. They’d call in a swat team! LOL!

The Great Toilet Paper Panic of ‘73: History Repeats Itself Yet Again!

We all could use a little humor in our lives in these crisis times. This will relate back to the PSA-graded sheet of toilet paper that was shown on our website a few weeks back.

It seems the 2020 toilet paper “pandemic” isn’t the first one in our country’s history. It happened before, in 1973, along side the OPEC Oil Embargo. Most of our members (except for all you younger members) remember the lines for gasoline but most of us were not responsible for doing the grocery shopping. We don’t recall (no jokes about memory loss, young people) lining up for toilet paper. But it did happen!

Check out this humorous video of those oh so ancient days.

Coronavirus Affects All of Us

Auctions and coin club meetings aren’t the only things being affected by our country’s shutdown. The Mint announced that it was closing two mint facilities. The West Point Mint was shutdown for just a few days after an employee tested positive for Covid-19. The San Francisco Mint was closed indefinitely. The S.F. closure stopped production of the 2020-S Enhanced Uncirculated Basketball Hall of Fame half-dollar.

Wouldn’t it be great if you were a Mint press operator and you had to “work from home”? You’d have money out the wazoo at your house!

Interesting “Variety”

A person recently posted a photo of his coin on a coin blog. The coin’s owner wanted to know if anyone could help him identify it by variety.

Someone quickly replied that it was known as the “Luna” variety.

The owner said that he had never heard of the “Luna” variety and asked what distinguished that variety.

The answer came back just as fast that it is called the “Luna” variety because it looked like the surface of the moon.

Ha, ha!

Coin Collectors Have a Great Sense of Humor!

April Meeting Cancelled

Concerns about the Covid-19 outbreak have caused us to cancel our

April 9, 2020 meeting.

Stay Safe! Stay Healthy! See you in June (we hope)!

March Meeting Tonight!

Our club is getting bigger and bigger with great presentations and exciting club auctions with no buyer’s or seller’s fees. Join us and let’s talk

MONEY!!

Paper Money Trivia

Let’s have some fun with U.S. currency trivia. The answers will be revealed at our next club meeting, Thursday March 5th, 2020.

How many “1’s” are on a Series 1935 $1 Silver Certificate?

What was the first U.S. paper currency to have the motto “In God We Trust” on it?

How many paper notes does the Mint print every year? You don’t have to be exact, just close!

Which U.S. colony was the first to issue paper money?

“In God We Trust”: How Much Longer?

I’ve read on an Internet coin forum lately about whether we should keep the motto “In God We Trust” on our coins. Some are of the opinion that the motto should be removed and they have been putting forth legal challenges to do just that. So far these challenges have been unsuccessful. But is it a matter of time before this happens?

The courts so far have decided to write this off as a “tradition” and say that the motto is not really a religious message.

I think one of the real problems is that people want the American way of life as long as it fits their beliefs, traditions, and lifestyles instead of conforming to what American is: the land of the free and the home of the brave. I think that there are many more problems in our country, things like homelessness, quality education, and hungry children. We don’t need to worry about “offending” someone who has nothing better to do than complain about the motto on our money!

It’s just my opinion. Maybe it would be interesting to discuss this topic at our next club meeting on March 5th.

2020 MVCC Coin Show

A Cashless Society?

Will digital commerce spell the end to coins and paper currency? As collectors we certainly hope not. The Wall Street Journal doesn’t think coins and paper money will go away either. Below is an excerpt from last weekend’s edition:

“It turns out that good old-fashioned cash has a constituency—and investors may regret ignoring it. Shares of companies whose fortunes are tied to physical cash in a major way, such as ATM providers like Cardtronics or Diebold Nixdorf, or companies that transfer or protect cash, like Western Union or Brink’s, soared last year. Over the past year through Thursday, those four stocks on average are up 83%. That easily tops the average 39% gain for Mastercard, PayPal, Square and Visa.

Only two countries, Russia and Sweden, had a net substitution of cards for cash from 2007 to 2016, with cash in circulation shrinking as card payments grew…In other countries tracked, including the U.S., both cash demand and card payments have grown.”

Warning to all you online only shoppers:

If and when a major power outage occurs you may as well go to bed because you wont be able to spend your electronic money. And If the power does go out, where can you go shopping anyway? And another thought; do you really want all of your money to be stored digitally on a piece of silicon, one that could be hacked and stolen?

George H. W. Bush Dollar Coin?

In a second attempt, Congress may authorize a coin to be added to the Presidential Dollar Series, that of George H. W. Bush. Last year a bill for the coin was introduced in legislation but neither house of Congress passed the bill. This year a bill for the coin was once again introduced and has been passed by the Senate. We’ll have to wait and see if the bill is brought in front of the House of Representatives and then sent to the President’s desk for signing.

Just when you think you have completed a coin series, a new coin is added.