Buffalo Numismatic Association Inc.

Transcription

1 B. N.A. NEWS Sim # Buffalo Numismatic Association Inc. JULY 2009 BOARD OF DIRECTORS OFFICERS PRESIDENT Edward Blowers VICE PRESIDENT Brian Delmont TREASURER Jim Gerstung SECRETARY Theresa Hjalmarson BOARD MEMBERS Joe Cartonia John Curr Rolf Hjalmarson Hal Folckemer Jr. Louis Resofsky Member # C NEWS EDITOR T. Alan Tomilo buftat@verizon.net President s Message Hello Everyone!! It's time for the short summer break as the June show has come to a close. This year, the summer picnic will be on Sunday, September 6th at Stiglmeier Park, same shelter as previous picnics, from 12:00 to 5:00 pm. The BNA will provide food and soft drinks. All we ask is that you bring a small dish to pass, either salad or desert. We are revamping our web site to make it easier to navigate. The goal is to have more info on it for both the members and dealers. Jim Bucki has completed it, CHECK IT OUT. I would like to send Jim Schichtel a huge thank you for taking on the project of creating our original site. He took on a task that nobody else wanted to attempt. Jim has had some health problems that set him back and was unable to keep up with the maintenance of the site. The BNA has been purchasing some of the old club medals, the set is near completion. According to the info I currently have, many of the medals are one offs or test strikes. I will check with Norm Peters and Scott Douglas as far as how accurate our info is. We may be restarting the medal program soon, info will be provided as it becomes available. We may be doing a special medal auction at one of our meetings, this will give members a chance to add pieces to their set. The club s set will be on display at the September show so everyone can see some of the material that they were struck on. I want to thank Eric Foersch, Rick Craig, and Norm Peters for helping us rebuild our collection. Enclosed in this news letter are two raffle tickets for the October show for a chance to win gold and/ or silver coins. The tickets can be mailed to our P.O. Box with a check made out to the BNA or you can bring them to the summer picnic or the October show on October 3rd and 4th. We are only selling 1,000 and with gold being high and silver between 14 and 15 dollars an ounce it's worth the $5.00 chance. We have never sold all 1,000 tickets. I thank you for taking a chance and for supporting the club. We also want to send our prayers out to the members who are ill, including Bob Weber and all others, hopefully they will be feeling better soon. If you are a member of the ANA, remember to mail in your ballot and to support Patti Finner for president, she has been a tremendous help to our club and our merit badge and educational class. Have a fun and safe summer! -Thanks Eddie- Membership News May 2009 by Rolf Hjalmarson (B.N.A. Member #230-F1) WEBSITE Since the Gold & Silver Show in April many members have renewed their dues and we ve added three new members as well. A hearty welcome to Herbert Hough, Michael Serwon and Charles Telford.

2 Page 2 N.F.C.C. SCHEDULE July by Theresa Hjalmarson (B.N.A. & N.F.C.C. Secretary) July 20th is the date for the next meeting of the Niagara Frontier Coin Club. Join us for a relaxed fun evening. Some of the members set up their coins, etc. to offer for sale. A very brief business meeting will get underway at about 7:15 P.M. or so, followed by a coin auction. Three or four numismatic prizes will be awarded to lucky ticket holders in a special drawing. There is an opportunity for members and guests to come earlier to view the auction material or stay later to socialize. We meet every third Monday of the month at the B.P.O. Elks Club located behind the Outlet Mall in Niagara Falls, NY at 1805 Factory Outlet Blvd. which is just off the Thruway directly behind the Mall. Subsequent meeting dates are: August 17, September 21. New members may join at any time. Stop in and check us out. You may want to consider joining the N.F.C.C. Before summer is over, our sister club will host their N.F.C.C. Collectors Show during weekend of August 1st and 2nd 2009 the only numismatic summer happening in the Western New York area. The bourse will be held at the same location as the Club s meetings B.P.O. Elks, 1805 Factory Outlet Blvd. in Niagara Falls, N.Y. Hours will be Saturday, 10:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. and Sunday, 10:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. Hope to see you there! Morin Post Coin & Stamp Bourse The Morin Post Bourse at 965 Center Rd, West Seneca, has concluded its spring dates. The season starts again after summer break. Bourse times are 10AM 3PM, for info or table rentals, contact Glenn Annalora ( ) or Victor Drajem ( ) fall dates as follows: September 27 October 25 November 22 December 6 B.N.A. Summer Picnic The picnic will be September 6th, a Sunday at Stiglmeier Park in Cheektowaga. If you plan on attending please call Louis Resovsky at (716) or (716) If get the answering machine please leave a message and let him know how many will attend. You can also contact Ed Blowers at (716) The club will provide hot dogs, hamburgers, condiments and drinks. If you are coming we ask that you bring a small dish of something to pass either a salad or desert. We will be at shelter #1. The hours will be noon until 5:00pm Take a Trip Around the World March by Don Rupp Did you ever want to visit Italy, Greece, China, Thailand, Egypt, along with 190 other interesting countries of the world? Unless you have a Bill Gates type income you may think this is impossible. Well, I can t physically send you to each of these locations but, through coins, you can experience a little bit of the culture from these destinations. A growing field of collecting in World Numismatic is the One From Every Country (OFEC) collector. This is an inexpensive way to visit countries and a collector can see as many as he wishes. The goal is to acquire one coin from every country in the world. This collection can be as basic or as extensive as one wishes. A basic collection will consist of countries currently on the map. The majority of people can complete at least two countries with the change they have at home: the US, Canada and, possibly, Mexico. So, you already have a good start. Get a map of the world and start by collecting just one coin from every country. It s as simple as that. Some numismatists like to collect coins that have approximately the same size (diameter) while others just try for any coin from that country. This OFEC collection is also excellent for Young Numismatists (YN). As a country is added the YN can cross off the country on a list or, better yet, on a map. Learning where a country is located is both an exciting and educational endeavor. One of the most common ways to organize an OFEC collection is alphabetically. An equally effective way is by continents. North America would consist of a Canadian, US, and Mexican coin. If you want to get more in-depth, the Island Nations can be added. Finishing a continent can be a very reachable goal for an YN. The OFEC collection also leaves room for a lot of growth. Once the current countries are obtained, the collection can be expanded to add countries which no longer exist, such as coin issuing entities, like the German States of the 17 th and 18 th centuries. I know of a collector who is trying to obtain one coin from every country listed in the Krause catalogs. I believe he is up to 300+ coins. So your possibilities are almost unlimited. You may be asking, Where will I be able to find these coins and how much will it cost? Excellent places to start are at the local coin shows we have in Western New York (WNY). Look through a dealer s 3/$1.00, 4/$1.00 or 5/$1.00 bargain bins. You ll be amazed as to how many different countries you can find for 20c 33c each. So start searching, bring an YN along and travel the world through coins, learning a little at the same time.

3 B.N.A. Calendar Sept. 6 - Sept Sept Oct. 3 & 4 - Oct Oct B.N.A. Summer Picnic at Stiglmeier Park, 12:00 5:00 PM Third Sunday Bourse & Coin Auction at Knights of Columbus in Cheektowaga Meeting at 7:30 at Polish Falcons in Depew/ Auction/ Refreshments/ Mini-Bourse B.N.A. Fall Convention at Knights of Columbus in Cheektowaga Third Sunday Bourse & Coin Auction at Knights of Columbus in Cheektowaga Meeting at 7:30 at Polish Falcons in Depew/ Auction/ Refreshments/ Mini-Bourse Page 3 Buffalo Hard Times Token June by Bill Groom The pictured token is but one example of hundreds of socalled Hard Times tokens that circulated between and beyond. It is a storecard or merchant advertising token, issued by brothers, John and James Patterson, in the mid to late 1830's. Located at the western end of the Erie Canal, Buffalo was a major gateway to the west; particularly for those who sailed the Great Lakes. It's likely that the Patterson brothers had a thriving hardware business that supplied pioneers who were westward bound. How I Got Started. March by Mark Waller, B.N.A.# 497 On a trip to the United Kingdom and Ireland in 1964 with my mother and father, my paternal grandparents gave us some U.S. and Canadian change and a 1953 Crown or Five-shilling piece. This 1953 Crown was in a plastic holder, slightly larger than a Silver Dollar, it featured a lettered edge, something I had never seen before. The coin was put away in our home, out of sight and out of mind. For a number of reasons, we lived in the United Kingdom from September 1970 to November This was a transition period from pre-decimal Pounds-Shillings- Pence over to decimal Pounds and Pence. Dealing with the coinage, I was amazed to encounter the pre-decimal penny in change. About the size of a halfdollar, several such coins would weigh a lot. Several silver and copper-nickel coins would be seen in change as well. As to dates, I remember in November 1970 in Bodmin Cornwall receiving in change an 1870 penny with a portrait of Queen Victoria on the obverse and Britannia on the reverse. The earliest dates seen in change were on the sixpence, shilling and two shillings. The decimal coinage dated no earlier than It should be noted that the fifty-pence is seven-sided. It may be interesting to observe that the currency was of a different size for each denomination, with the one pound note of a size similar to U.S. small currency. My friends at school showed some interest in U.S. and Canadian coins and currency. Such items are to be found at club meetings, dealers and auctions throughout the country. Although I have been here in North America since November 1975, the five years of residence in England is when I would have an interest in Numismatics. This is a fairly common token, although the great majority of coin collectors will never see or own one. There are doubtless many more specimens of say the 1909-S VDB cent or 1916-D dime available in the marketplace than there are of this token. If you doubt or question this, see how many of each are available at the next coin show you attend! In the event that you may find one of these to be purchased, an average specimen in F-XF condition may cost between $15-$30. Not a bad price for a historic piece of Americana. Most Hard Times tokens circulated alongside large cents of that era. They contained virtually a cent's worth of copper, so were worth their weight, so to speak. Generally, they can be divided into two categories, storecards and political tokens. The political tokens often spoke on behalf of or in opposition to the presidents in office and candidates running. Most political tokens of the era offer such sentiments about Andrew Jackson and Benjamin Harrison. There were many bank failures during those years, and paper money was then highly suspect and traded below par. People wanted hard money to circulate, and it was often hoarded. The Philadelphia Mint was making large cents, but the production numbers were insufficient to meet trade demands. Thus, the tokens proved very useful for making change and as an advertising medium. As the tokens tended to circulate far and wide, uncirculated specimens of even the more common token bring three figures on up. I have personally never seen an uncirculated example of this particular, Buffalo token; this, despite over twenty years of searching. Anyone who owns a Redbook, or "Guide Book to U.S. Coins" can look in the index under Hard Times tokens. Various examples are pictured. One of each, a storecard and a political, will make a nice addition to a collection of large cents or even a U.S. type set. >>> Happy hunting!

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