Collectors are taking advantage of many opportunities, but their interest has waned in some areas

by Dom Yanchunas

Profiles in Coinage: Gold Dollars

One of our nation’s smallest coins came out of the California Gold Rush, but its roots went back to the Southeast

by Ed Reiter

The “411″ on the America the Beautiful Bullion

The Mint’s new product has been making headlines for months, but its story is really just beginning

by Tom DeLorey

Coin Capsule: 1991

Coin collecting, rather than investing, was the focal point for numismatists throughout this year

by John Iddings

High Fives

High-denomination Federal Reserve Notes command strong premiums on top of  their face value

by Ron Meyer

Money of British Monarchs: The Coinage of George IV

The volatile King had a short reign, but he left a fine numismatic legacy to be enjoyed by collectors for all time

by R.W. Julian

Prizes for the October quiz have been sent. We’ve posted the answers here anyway, just in case you were curious.

1. When did Columbus set foot in the New World, and when is his day observed?
October 12, 1492; October 12

2. When did the Age of Exploration begin?
The early 15th century

3. President (Thomas) Jefferson sent a group led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the recently acquired Louisiana Purchase.

4. Do a little more research: Leif Ericson was a Viking. Where was he believed to have been born?
Iceland

5. Which two state quarters pay tribute to the space program?
Ohio and Florida

The correct answers are posted here.

1) Who is the current U.S. Treasurer?
Rosie Rios

2) How many planes were hijacked, and where did they ultimately crash?
Four (4) planes: Two into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, one crashed into the Pentagon and the fourth in Shanksville, Pennsylvania

3) President Barack Obama signed the National September 11 Memorial & Museum Commemorative Act on August 6, 2010.

4) What does the water on the medal’s reverse symbolize?
Peace and the continuity of life

5) Did anyone who was on the flights survive?
No

6) Who designed and sculpted both sides of the medal?
Front: Designed by Donna Weaver, sculpted by Phebe Hemphill
Back: Designed by Donna Weaver, sculpted by Joseph Menna

1. The reverse of this classic commemorative bears an accurate likeness of the Liberty Bell.
1926 Sesquicentennial of American Independence

 2. The portrait of the president on this coin faces right and takes up more than half of the design field.
2005 Jefferson nickel 

3. If you placed this silver coin’s obverse and reverse side by side, the symbols on this would have their backs to each other.
Peace dollar

4. The American flag is the background for another design element on the obverse of this commemorative.
1992 clad Olympic half dollar (gymnast)

 5. Independence Hall in Philadelphia is the central device on the reverse of this circulating commemorative.
1976 Bicentennial half dollar 

6. With Liberty on the obverse and the American eagle on the reverse, this coin’s design was later used on a silver bullion coin.
Walking Liberty half dollar

 7. Designed by Chester Beach, this 1925 coin commemorates two famous battles fought in 1775.
1925 Lexington-Concord Sesquicentennial 

8. Adolph A. Weinman designed the version of Liberty that appears on this coin. Rumor has it that this coin’s design will be used on a palladium bullion coin.
Winged Liberty, “Mercury,” dime 

9. The Liberty Bell on the reverse of this coin is superimposed over an image of a cratered moon.
1776-1976 Eisenhower dollar 

10. A small eagle was placed to the right of the Liberty Bell on this coin’s reverse in order to fulfill legal requirements.
Franklin half dollar

COINage Contributing Editor presents Beth Deisher with an award from the Numismatic Literary Guild. Deisher won this year's Zerbe Award.

AWARD TO THE WISE
by Ed Reiter

The American Numismatic Association chose wisely and well in selecting Beth Deisher, editor of Coin World, to receive this year’s Farran Zerbe Award, the national coin club’s highest honor.

The Zerbe Award recognizes long and dedicated service to numismatics, and Beth meets that standard superbly. To some, though, her qualifications probably seemed more obvious afterward than beforehand. That’s because she’s so low-key about her contributions to the hobby.

Beth took the helm of Coin World, the hobby’s weekly newspaper of record, in 1985. It was a tumultuous time in the world of coins. Overgrading and overpricing were serious concerns. U.S. commemorative coinage had recently resumed, but major problems already were raising doubts about its future. And a movement was afoot to authorize U.S. gold and silver bullion coins, even as skeptics voiced grave reservations about the idea.

The challenge was formidable, but the new editor soon made it clear she was up to the job. Her straightforward manner, attention to detail and workaholic habits set very high standards for others on the staff.

Beth had joined the Coin World staff in 1981, working under the dynamic Margo Russell, who had been the paper’s high-profile editor since the early 1960s. When Margo retired, the daunting task of filling her shoes went to Beth.

Looking back today, it’s clear that both women have been enormous factors in Coin World’s development and success. And both have become extremely important figures in the hobby–as evidenced by the fact that collectors far and wide refer to both by just their first names.

In a number of ways, however, they’re a study in contrasts.

Margo, now 90, was a whirling dervish during her editing days. She was outgoing and effusive, and made many friends both within the hobby and at the U.S. Mint. Her entrée at the Mint built a useful new bridge between the federal government and the nation’s coin collectors. At one time, it is said, Margo was the single most influential person in the hobby.

While far from aloof, Beth is more reserved and more likely to be seen in professional–rather than social–settings, camera or notebook in hand as she takes copious photos or notes for yet another <i>Coin World</i> story. Like me, she comes from a journalistic background, and I sense that she shares my drive to get every detail just right in every story.

Beth took over at Coin World in 1985, the year before I became COINage senior editor. We have been friendly competitors for a quarter-century now, with strong emphasis on “friendly.”

Beth has led the way in giving hobby news a sharper focus and harder edge. She was in the forefront, for example, in exposing apparent transgressions by a high-ranking ANA official who eventually stepped down in the face of mounting outrage by many members.

In 1995, her testimony before a congressional subcommittee helped bring about reforms in U.S. commemorative coinage, which was suffering at the time from numerous abuses, including overproduction and inappropriate themes. She was also influential in gaining support in Washington for the 50 State Quarters® Program.

My admiration for Beth stems not from her ability to score important “scoops,” although she’s had plenty of those. Rather, it’s based on her impeccable judgment, firm commitment to fairness and unfailing professionalism in bringing every story to her readers.

Others might boast that their presentation of news is “fair and balanced”–but without any fanfare, Beth’s actions speak far more loudly than their often-empty words.

 Beth was characteristically modest when I sent my congratulations after learning of the award.

“I was astounded when ANA staff informed me,” she said in her e-mail reply.

The award came as no big surprise to me and many others. After decades of quiet excellence in covering hobby news, Beth Deisher richly deserved a headline affirming how vital she has been in putting that news in perspective for everyone else.

Good designs are, so far, few and far between in the America the Beautiful Quarters™ Program.

A CLASH OF SYMBOLS
by Ed Reiter

Symbolism.

To critics of the U.S. Mint’s uninspired coin designs, it’s an element sorely missing from the nation’s new coinage in recent years.

Members of both the federal Commission of Fine Arts (CFA) and the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee (CCAC) have urged the Mint to return to the allegorical portraits of Liberty and other powerful symbols that graced the greatest U.S. coins of the past, such as Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ stunning double eagle and eagle.

To the U.S. Mint, however, “symbolism” seems to have a whole ’nother meaning. This hit me as I pondered the Mint’s curious claim of trademark protection for the phrase “America the Beautiful” as it pertains to the new Washington quarters honoring national parks and historic sites.

Mint officials have brandished this claim like a club, threatening to bludgeon any dealer or seller of supplies who dares to use the expression “America the Beautiful Quarters” in packaging and marketing the coins.

The only symbols that matter, from the Mint’s point of view–or so it would appear–are ™ and ®, the symbols for “Trademark” and “Registered Trademark.”

If this is the case, why not just stamp one of these symbols on each and every “America the Beautiful” quarter or similar insipid creation? It would be at least as artistic as the fancy outdoor bidet on the Hot Springs quarter or the high-rise molehill on the Grand Canyon coin.

While they’re at it, the crack Mint artists might consider labeling key elements of the designs, so people who get the coins can tell, for instance, which jagged lines are supposed to be mighty mountains and which flat spaces are limpid lakes. As things stand now, one bad design blends into the next like so many ramshackle buildings along Skid Row–hardly the beautiful America they’re intended to depict.

Good designs were few and far between in the 50 State Quarters® Program. The six quarters issued for the District of Columbia and five U.S. territories ranged from tolerable to terrible. But as we near the end of the first year of the America the Beautiful Quarters™ Program, it’s evident already that far from being an American Idol, this is the Biggest Loser.

Not one of the six coins issued or previewed so far is remotely beautiful. Ghastly, garish, god-awful, yes. But it’s hard to imagine any beholder whose eye would find beauty in these.

Come to think of it, there is one group that might find this “artwork” worth a closer look: archaeologists who study the scratchings on the walls of ancient caves.

Mint officials declined a request to be interviewed about the trademark issue. But in a written response, a spokesman told COINage that the Mint applies for trademarks to “protect the integrity and image of its intellectual property, build and enhance its brand identity, clearly distinguish its products from those of private mints and other businesses and identify itself as a component of the U.S. government.”

I’m having trouble figuring out just what “intellectual” has to do with this particular property. And given the dismal designs on recent U.S. coins, I can’t imagine why any private mint would want to be confused with Uncle Sam’s.

Perhaps the Mint’s ineptitude is, itself, a symbol. A sign that in modern society, the overwhelming emphasis is on meeting tight deadlines, not high standards. A sign that with so many different coin programs being authorized, some involving dozens of new issues, quantity is pushing quality out of the picture.

I guess that’s one big reason I view the trademark dispute with especially jaundiced eyes. At a time when it should be focused on creating better designs, the Mint is wasting time and effort playing legal chess games straight out of Alice in Wonderland.

Could it be that the Mint’s lawyers, rather than its artists, are the biggest culprits here? If they used fewer resources tilting at legal windmills, would the artists be more inspired to reach beyond the bland and the banal?

Whatever it is that led us to this unhappy pass, one thing’s undeniably true:

A mint is a terrible thing to waste.

It’s official: The Realm of Coins has a new heavyweight champion—with a seven-figure price tag to back its claim to the title.

A 2007 Canadian Maple Leaf containing 220.5 pounds of gold (that’s 100 kilograms to you metric-minded nerds) changed hands (or forklifts) for $4 million at an auction held in late June in Vienna, Austria. Put another way, it sold for 3.27 million euros.

That’s among the highest prices ever paid for a single coin. But most single coins are designed, of course, with people’s pockets—not flatbed trucks—in mind.

More to the point, the price appears to be an all-time record for a single bullion coin—for that’s how the auction bidders seem to have viewed this behemoth.

The coin is .9999 fine—essentially pure gold—and contains 2,646 troy ounces of gold. With the yellow metal trading for about $1,250 an ounce at the time of the sale, that translates into a bullion value of roughly $3.3 million.

Austria’s Dorotheum auction house, which conducted the sale, concluded–correctly, it appears–that bullion value, not rarity, was the primary motivation of the buyer, a Spanish precious-metal trading company called Oro Direct.

Dorotheum sold the coin as part of its liquidation of assets belonging to the previous owner, AvW Group, an Austrian investment firm that went bankrupt.

 The coin is 21 inches (53 centimeters) in diameter and 1.2 inches thick, carries a face value of 1 million Canadian dollars ($960,000 U.S.) and bears the same design as the regular 1-ounce Maple Leaf, with the standard coinage portrait of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II on the obverse and a (very large) likeness of the maple leaf, Canada’s national symbol, on the reverse.

Why make a coin weighing more than a tenth of a ton? As a pocket piece for Paul Bunyan … a teething ring for Godzilla?

It was produced by the Royal Canadian Mint (presumably with great difficulty) in what seems to have been a high-profile game of “Can You Top This?”

In 2004, the Austrian Mint celebrated the 15^th anniversary of its Philharmonic gold bullion coin by producing 15 super-size examples of the coin, each containing 1,000 troy ounces (68.57 pounds) of pure gold and carrying a face value of 100,000 euros. This earned the giant Philharmonics a spot in Guinness World Records as the largest gold coins in the world.

 Canadian officials—green with envy and flush with gold—set about rewriting the record book by coming up with an even more mammoth Maple Leaf. The RCM made just five examples of the 2007 coin, one of which reportedly found its way to Queen Elizabeth.

Obviously, being one of only five pieces known doesn’t do nearly as much for the value of a 220.5-pound gold coin as it does for a 5-gram base-metal five-cent piece. Five, of course, is also the number of known examples of the 1913 Liberty Head nickel. One of those sold for $4.15 million in 2005—making it more valuable than the huge Maple Leaf, as well as much more portable.

With all these gold gargantuans floating around, who can blame the U.S. Mint for seeking its “pound of flash” by offering 5-ounce silver versions of the (dare I say those trademarked words) “America the Beautiful” quarters depicting national parks and historic sites. These, after all, are every bit as impractical as the Austrian and Canadian manhole covers. And having intrinsic worth of about $100 each, they seem even more foolish with their statement of value inscribed as QUARTER DOLLAR.

What’s more, the Mint’s “hockey puck” silver coins should give certification services a chance to stretch their new “Plus” grading to the limit. With all the king-size slabs that could be required, in fact, this might be the best time to get into plastics since Mister McGuire gave that advice to Benjamin Braddock in “The Graduate.”

If this keeps up, British coins won’t be the only ones whose value is measured in pounds. And everyone’s pay will be based on scale.

Then again, the whole idea may end up going over like a lead balloon.

We’ll just have to weight and see.