Latest / Worth Its Weight / Live from Pittsburgh with a Panel of Numismatic Experts!

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Live from Pittsburgh with a Panel of Numismatic Experts! · Worth Its Weight

• 0:34
  SPEAKER_08: Welcome to the live premiere of Worth It's Weight, a brand new podcast from the AA's Edward C.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_08: Rochette Money Museum.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_08: I'm Caroline Turko, and I have the honor of being your host.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_08: Worth It's Weight is designed for anyone curious about money.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_08: Whether you're a lifelong collector or completely new to the world of numismatics, each Tuesday we will explore history and culture through the lens of money.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_08: And on Fridays, with our weekly weigh-in, we will keep you up to date on what's happening in the market and the field right now.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_08: To start this wonderful podcast journey, I could not ask for a better group of panelists to help me kick things off.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_08: Joining me today, we have Jeff Garrett, Dennis Tucker, John Cravin, Doug Mudd, and Shannon Schmidt, who I must say is not quite how I remembered her.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_08: I love the new look.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_08: Unfortunately, travel has a way of rearranging even the best laid plans.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_08: So Tyler Rossi has graciously stepped in for Shanna today.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_08: He works closely with Shanna, and we're extremely happy to have him here with us today.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_04: You're welcome.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you for having me.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_08: Panelists, thank you for taking the time out of your extremely busy schedules.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_08: This is meant to be a conversation.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_08: So disagree, jump in, follow a tangent, and we'll see where it takes us.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_08: I'm gonna start with a deceptively simple question.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_08: What does an expert see when looking at a coin or other numismatic object that an ordinary collector doesn't?
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_08: And Jeff, since you're next to me, you're in the hot seat.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: I've been doing this for 50 years, and I can walk up to a showcase and kind of look in and into the case and like, what is something a coin that's special that stands out?
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I think what a normal collector, he just like sees a catalog and has a list of coins.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: If I were like walk up to a case and I see a beautifully struck 1924 S piece dollar, I know that coin's special.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: So it's my experience that gives me that opportunity to kind of filter out when I look at a group of coins, and it really is a, it's like a I think it's kind of by intuition we learn how to do it.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I think someone new to the hobby doesn't understand a coin is special that I've learned over 50 years' experience, and that that's I think that's the big difference.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_08: I like the idea of a filter.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_08: I think that's a really great way to describe it.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_02: Jeff, you probably don't remember this because for you it was one of a million transactions.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_02: But I was sitting with Jeff Garrett on the borse one time, and we were chatting.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_02: Somebody walks up with a gold coin, it was raw, uh an older piece.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_02: He shows it, hands it to you, you held it almost at arm's length, looked at the obverse, flipped it, looked at the reverse, and you said it's bad, it's counterfeit.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what he wanted to know.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_02: And and it was just amazing, it blew me away.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's my experience.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, but it's the experience.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_02: That's insane.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_08: That's wonderful.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_08: Well, do you agree with his assessment that it's about that filtering process and really being able to yes?
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: I I think uh, you know, it brings to mind something that uh Ken Brissett says there are three things you need to be a good grader.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you need uh a good overhead light, you need a good magnifying glass, and you need 20 years of experience.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_08: Oh, just those three things.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_02: You can buy them all, right?
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_08: John, what do you think?
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_03: My favorite definition of expertise is everything that I don't have expletive time to teach you.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_03: And that's kind of what we're talking about here.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_03: When we look at a coin, it's like muscle memory, it's like a rep for an athlete or practice for an actor or whatever else.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_03: Every time we look at a coin, whether we like it or not, that data gets filed away.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_03: And when we look at a coin like Jeff said, we're essentially ranking that coin where in our library of mental images it falls, and that's all grading is.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_03: Grading is just ranking things from finest to worst in our minds, and we just happen to lay that in a 70-point scale.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_03: But when I encounter an object, I can recall all of those things that I've seen, like muscle memory, because I do it all day, every day, and have for decades, and you're using that expertise, that experience that's impossible to teach, to basically compare and contrast to everything you've seen and rank it among it.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_03: So I think we just have more ability to instantaneous, like Dennis said with with Jeff and the counterfeit gold coin, to sort of instantaneously recall everything we've seen and relate the object in our hands to what we've seen previously, whether it's counterfeit detection or grading or whatever else it might be about that coin.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: And especially what you do, you you see things that are so rare that when you're making a purchase decision, you're like, I've never seen one of those.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: And it may seem overpriced, but you know that, hey, if I don't buy this, I'll never see another problem.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's right, so it's really about that.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_08: If you haven't come across it.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: If you haven't seen it in 25 years, it's pretty rare.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_08: Very fair.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_08: In ancients, would you agree with that assessment?
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_04: I I do uh agree in in principle and with the majority of what you guys are saying, but I would fall closer to John's point about the totality that numismatists and people who do this professionally over a long period of time generally have the have the more well-rounded knowledge of the uh the series of whatever they're looking at.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_04: So you can read the ticket and say see that as the pedigree and it has the has the the grade and whatever reference, but it may not say it's one of two, one of whatever.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_04: And then in addition to that, you have the different types are are graded in different ways, and a numismatist who has been studying it for a uh a decent amount of time can can basically pick that up at at sight, and uh it's it's it's more of a collective process with numismatists where where you can we can just see the whole series.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_04: Whereas a collector is more focused on a single single aspect of a coin.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_08: I would love to know from the museum side of things too.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: Everything that has been said so far is very true.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: You develop an eye.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: I I use it that way.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think visually, I remember visually.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: I can't remember names to save my life, but I did photography for a very long time with coins, and that really uh created a focus, and so when I see coins in the areas that I know, the specializations that I have, I know immediately have I seen that before?
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: Have I not seen it before?
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: Is it rare because I've studied the coins?
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then when I look, the first thing I see is I look at the whole coin and I go, okay, is this popping for some reason?
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Is there something about it that's wrong or right?
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then I start looking at the details a little bit more, and this is all part of a built-up catalog in my mind, much like John was saying, it's it's something that you it's muscle memory, it's it's visual memory that that comes into play, and so it's almost like you're overlaying the things you've seen before and then comparing them.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so I can go up to the table and look at the coins and see, I've never seen one of those before.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I, you know, so it's probably unusual, probably rare, and then I try to find out more information from there.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_08: All of you have kind of touched on this idea, and it brings me back to ancient orators that would have a memory palace where they would be able to section off places in their mind to remember long speeches.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_08: And it seems to me like you guys have memory catalogs.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_08: I think that's an amazing talent, and certainly would take at least 20 years, not to insult Ken Percent.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_08: Piggybacking on that.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_08: What makes someone a numismatist rather than simply a coin collector?
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_08: And uh, oh, you got an answer?
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_08: You can't raise your hand and think you're not gonna talk.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think a numismatist it's it's pretty obvious as someone actually really studies what they what they collect.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: So a collector, you know, to start with, I mean how I started and so many other people started, you get an album and you're filling holes.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: So a numismatist will, instead of filling the Lincoln Penny holder holes, filling those albums, then want to know more about the series, um, you know, Victor D.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: Brenner and you know when they started making them, and that's just like a beginning step.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, there's you know you could do it every every level, but uh the the big big difference of a numismatist is really taking a deep dive, learning about this, uh what they're collecting and understanding them and appreciating them.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: And rather than just filling holes or trying to win a set registry competition or just buying one coin, it's uh it's finding about the stories of the coins.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_04: I would like to add that first off, there's nothing wrong with being either a numismatist or a collector.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_04: And if we're going strictly by definition, in my book, a collector is basically just an accumulator.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_04: Um, someone who, for whatever reason, just wants to possess the item.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_04: A numismatist would be someone who has more of a passion for the study, whether it's for business or for academics.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_04: Um but in my mind, uh a numismatist has more of a passion for the story of the items.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_04: Whereas a collector is simply an accumulator.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_08: Okay, so let me ask you, what's the difference between an accumulation versus a collection?
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_04: So I I know many collectors who are basically just hoarders.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_04: Again, nothing wrong with that.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_04: I tend to fall in that category, unfortunately.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_04: Um my other half is not the happiest of that with that.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_04: But a collection is also an accumulation of items, but it is guided with a an overarching theme or vision of what you want it to be.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_04: Whether it's the tyrant collection, which in its totality is an accumulation, but he has taken the time to split it into sections, or it's someone who uh collects dolphins on coins, or collects pedigrees, or but whatever it is, there is a focus, whereas a uh whereas it could also just be an accumulation where it's just I like I like nice coins.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: Along those lines, as Jeff said, many people, many collectors have started by taking the book and filling in their holes.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: That is a start.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: You can become a numismatist from that, but that that is not what makes a numismatist eventually, because especially as a museum person, to me it's always been about the stories.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't care if the machine hiccuped at some point and did something with a coin.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: I want to know where that coin was, why it was made, and who held it.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, who was involved in its production.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I think when you go down that line, rather than a pre-printed book that you have to fill the holes in, which tells you what you need and all that, you have to engage yourself in a way that whether you collect it doesn't matter what you collect that's numismatic, if you start studying it, if it's bus tokens and you start studying the bus tokens in depth, you become a numismatist.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's that bringing the research, the eye, not because you want to fill every single hole, but because you know something about this piece that makes it special, that it has a connection either to you or to history or to individuals.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that to me makes the difference.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_04: And I just want to add on to what Doug said because it sparks something for me.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_04: I actually consider most museum collections to just be accumulations.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_04: It's the museum curators who turn it into a true collection and do the study on it.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_04: If you're just going into the AS vaults or the ANA vaults or whoever, it's just coins in a cabinet and there's so many of them.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_04: There is no overarching theme.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_04: It takes the curator to put together a display and an exhibition that does have a theme.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: And there's it is interesting, you're you're correct.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Museums very rarely, except for perhaps the Getty, and a very few, have the ability to purchase and choose their collections.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: They're based on donations.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: So you get an eclectic group.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: For example, the Smithsonian, one of the things that was an amazing, unusual donation was the Chase Manhattan Collection.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: This was a collection that was put together by the Chase Manhattan Bank in the 1940s, and they literally spent the money and had a curator who knew what they were doing to put the history of money together in a single collection.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then in the 60s and 70s, banks decided they this was no longer something they wanted to do, and they actually donated that collection to this miscellaneous.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: But that's extremely unusual for a museum.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: It takes dedicated curators that are in place long enough in a collection that start to form something that's more than just an accumulation by accident into something that can actually tell real stories and become a research tool as opposed to just a bunch of coins.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I've I've said, Doug, but people before that the Smithsonian is actually a collection of collections.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's because they've had all these great collections that have ended up there, and then they get to work with that, but that's the origins of most of their coins.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_08: John and Dennis, do you have anything to add to that?
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_02: I I like stamps.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_08: I'm interested in stamps, but we have a philatelist, don't run away, folks.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_02: That's what I'm getting at.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_02: I don't consider myself a philatelist.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_02: Because I have not studied to that extent.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_02: I like what I like, I'm interested at a very surface level.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um I'm not an active collector, but I'm taking baby steps, so I don't consider myself a philatelist.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_03: I think with the numismatist versus collector question, it's not a binary question.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_03: There are collectors who aren't numismatists, of course.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_03: There are numismatists who aren't collectors.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_03: There are plenty of people who study things without having that acquisitive drive to actually own possession.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_03: Roger Burdett.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_03: So I think it's just a question of your acquisitiveness.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_03: If your primary acquisitiveness is information, you're a numismatist.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_03: If your primary acquisitiveness is possessing objects, you're a collector.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_03: And there's a lot of room for crossover, but I think a numismatist is mostly guided by that spirit of curiosity and inquiry, whereas a collector maybe just wants to buy stuff and put them all together.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_08: So when I was putting these questions together, I was speaking with Doug, and he said that someone had told him once that you weren't a numismatist unless you knew the values of the items in your collection.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_08: And I wonder if you would agree or disagree with that idea.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, it's definitely part of it.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_08: Is it an essential part of it?
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, but I think it also it takes, just because you know the values of of the people who produced the item when it was produced, doesn't necessarily encompass all of the academic rigor around uh numismatics.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_04: It is the core of it, yes.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_04: But I think you need the ancillary studies and all the all the other research that goes into But you would put value as an innate aspect of being a numismatist, even if you don't know.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: That was something that I was I disagreed very strongly with that in the sense that, well, to use Ken Brissett as an example, he he bought things so long ago, he doesn't keep up with the values.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: And literally he he's brought things in at to our Henderson Club, and somebody was like, Well, you know that's a$2,000 coin.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, you know, no, I I got it in 1955 or whatever, and this this is a coin that I thought was really neat, and this is great to have, and if I sell it sometime, yeah, it'll be important to me, but that's not why he collects.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_02: There's no price guide for Yapstones.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: No, yes, yeah, there is no, but it it it's important to have a relative sense.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: As as you're a collector, you need to know that.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, but to be a numismatist, you just need to have a sense of relative value, I guess.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_04: Let me rephrase.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_04: First off, I thought you meant the values of the people striking the coins, not the actual cost of the coins.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_04: No, you meant the denomination.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_04: No, no, no, no.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_04: Like the like the actual imagery and what they what they were thought the coins were portraying.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_05: So it's a very different thing, but I love that.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_05: I love that.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_04: But also numisticists also need to know the the the value of coins uh as in the price of coins, but I fall more with you what you just said, Doug, as in its relative value, both denominationally, but also the the cost and the rarity.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_04: But I thought we were talking about the actual like political and social importance of the coins and they were.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_08: I just wanted to make that clarification.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, we can still be friends again.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_08: Well, they're still friends.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: I would say one thing.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_02: I I would say if the only thing you know about a particular coin is its price, then you're not a numismatist.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_03: I would think that's accurate.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_03: To me, I have absolutely zero interest of what my collection is worth.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_03: I don't care what my house is worth until I sell it.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_03: When I sell my house, I'll care what it's worth.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_03: When I sell my collection, I'll care what it's worth.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_03: Until then, it's what can it do for me?
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_03: A house gives me shelter, my collection teaches me lessons, helps me contextualize history, gives me something to talk about with my friends, helps me engage with other humans in an interesting fashion.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_03: But in terms of the price of my collection, it's immaterial until it's for sale.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'd like to add one thing about value with collecting that I think is so important to become an educated collector because it doesn't, you might want to collect something, you don't care what it's worth, but someday it's going to matter.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: And if you've taken the time to understand what you're buying, understand rarity, understand I appeal quality, that will pay dividends when it is time to sell.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why it's a big difference between, like, I have a big difference.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: I've always tell people there's investors are sold coins, collectors buy coins, and when you're buying coins, someday that education that you've taken the time to learn, you've studied, that will pay off in the long run.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: It is important.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: It may not be important now, but it will be someday for either you or your heirs that you've been an educated collector.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: I agree with that approach in that if you really know your coins, I mean, A, most of us are going to be buying our coins to have the collection.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: I I'm very privileged in that I have access to collections that are not mine, and I get to study them and tell the stories about them.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: But yes, the more you know about the coins to understand them numismatically, that will also inform what their value is.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: You want the best coin you can get of something.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: It'll matter way down the road.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: Which is natural as part of the collecting process, then that is part of it.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: My difference was that uh, no, I don't know exactly what my coin is worth right now.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: I know relatively what it was when I bought it.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: I can remember how much I bought them for and all that.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it probably doesn't matter because you're not going to sell for 25 years.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: Right, exactly.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: And but at the same time, I do know that this is much more rare than this, and so that was good.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you have a a structure within which you can rate your coins, I guess is one way to put it.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_04: And and to me, the the the financial value of the coins really just informs the uh the way you look at it, uh you look at the pieces and value them as historical objects.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_04: Um and as for ancient coins, in my opinion, that is more important dramatically than the actual like financial price that you're gonna pay for something.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_08: Because we've touched on this a few times, and because this is quite personal to myself, and I'm sure to many of you, should museums sell the coins that they do not display?
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_03: I work a lot with museums.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_03: I sell things to museums, I've worked at a museum, um, I'm probably, aside from Doug, the only one of our panelists who's actually worked at a museum, I think.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_03: And I was museums have a mission, and they have a mission that tends to educate along a theme.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_03: You know, in the Smithsonian, the theme is American history, for instance.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_03: I worked at Monticello, that theme is Thomas Jefferson and the people who lived in his community on top of the mountain.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_03: It's the curator's job to sort of define that theme and hone that theme and gather material culture and objects that speak to that theme, that can teach those who visit or use the museum toward that theme.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_03: So if it's a research institution based on, I don't know, classical things, ancient Roman and Greek items, they're gonna have no interest in a collection of Morgan dollars.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_03: It does them no good to sit in the vaults.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_03: However, I hear a complaint a lot of times that museums should sell anything that's not on display.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_03: The vast majority of my work with museums as a researcher numismatist has to do with collections they have that I can access that aren't on display.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_03: Not everything has to be on display, but if it's a research institution, I want to know that when I go to the American Antiquarian Society, where the theme is early America, then I'm able to see a cohesive and critical mass of objects that speak to that theme that'll help my research.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not going to American Antiquarian Society to look at their collection of hobo nickels.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_03: They ain't got them and ain't where I'm looking for them.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_03: Another museum might have them that might be coherent to their theme.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_03: So I think it's honestly a question of good curation and a question of what theme can we use to communicate to an audience, both of researchers behind the scenes and maybe a more general public to speak to them about that as they come in on tours.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: And to that idea, for museums, part of the responsibility of the museum is the Smithsonian is a unique example.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: The Smithsonian is an institution which is designed to be the nation's addict.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: It really is.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: And whether or not you know much about the collection to start with or anything else is less important than the fact that it exists.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: And one prime example that I've used for many years I used to work with the collections of the National Oceanographic.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Group.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: There was a department of the Smithsonian that existed since the 1880s.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: They used to literally scoop up the sea bottom from around the Antarctic.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: They hired three ships over a 30-year period and they brought all this stuff in.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: It was seaweed, plants, giant squids, lobsters.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: I saw a lobster that was like three and a half feet long.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: And some of that was used over the years, but most of it sat there and was stored.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: In the 1970s, for those of us who have enough gray hair to remember, there was a huge move to study what was going on with mercury in the in our seafood.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: And somebody remembered that there is a collection in existence, pretty much unique in the world, that has specimens from that time period.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: We can compare.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: And they figured out that actually, in the in this particular case, the levels of mercury were not significantly different.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so that was great information to have.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: And there was only one place that that could be found.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where museums, especially research institutions, can be repositories for information that may be unimportant right now, but in the future, and this is numismatics is included in this, where there are treasures that are buried in collections that require people to help.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where the numismatist, the collector that's advanced, has always been tremendously important to museums.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: Museums and collectors need each other because there's no museum that I know of that is overfunded, that has too many curators or anything like that.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: We're always struggling to find the people we need.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: We can only display any museum, but particularly numismatic museums.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking small pieces, you know, you can have huge collections and yet you don't have nearly the space to display them all.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: But if you look at it as a historical repository, then you have a different reason for them to be there.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: But it's also incumbent on the curators to create a direction.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: You can't just accept everything, you can't just bring everything in unless you can responsibly say that it fits our goals, that you have, even if it's going to be 10 years down the line, the ability to actually study it and make it available, if not to visitors physically to see it online.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: And this is one of the major things that we've been doing at the ANA is we're trying to put all our collections online in a way that everybody gets access to them, which means we can also learn more about our collections as people respond.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_04: I I would actually like to piggyback on that answer because I Shanna and I agree but also disagree.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_04: Oh fun.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_04: We actually think that museums should sell their pieces that they have not been able to display for any significant amount of time for a couple reasons.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_04: One is access.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_04: For example, Shanna literally tried to make appointments at the British Museum, at the Danish National Museum, and at several other institutions, and they didn't even reply to her.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_04: So you can't even see the coins that they're not exhibiting.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_08: Do you think that's because of her position and what she does?
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_04: Or you think it's just totally no interest no matter what?
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: Because they they they don't have they don't have the staff a lot of museums have cut back on staff, so they're they're they're shorter staff.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_04: And then in addition to that, there has been like a general perception in the academic community, Doug, you were not in this area, thankfully.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but there's a demonization or or or a negative view of collectors, that basically collectors are not good stewards of specifically ancient coins.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_04: But Doug made a point that these collections are where the knowledge is stored and where we can go to study the pieces.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_04: And I'd just like to point out that a very large percentage of the SNS library is actually auction catalogs and uh collection catalogs of private collections.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, we do have syllogies and catalogs of museum collections, but about a quarter of our library that is not auction catalogs, are collection catalogs.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_04: Some someone, Basil Demetriatus, the BCD collection of Thessalian bronzes, or the the the Danish princess from the 1800 collection.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_04: Um they they they produce these syllogies in these collection catalogs which are instrumental in the studying of coins and the tracing of dyes and the writing chronic chronologies.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_04: And then auction catalogs, in addition.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_04: You only see these coins when they come up for sale sometimes.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_04: And if they're sitting in a dusty back room of a museum because they just physically don't have the staff, even if they have the desire to display them, it's doing no one any good.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_08: So I agree about the catalog aspect, and I think that's a really interesting point.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_08: But here's my next question.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_08: A lot of sales have moved online without catalogs anymore.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_08: You're looking at whatnot sales, tick tock sales.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_08: Does that change the dynamic?
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_04: The internet is a wonderful thing, it's also a terrible thing.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_04: The whatnot sales and the TikTok sales and the Facebook sales, they're good at attracting new collectors, they're good as a baseline, but they're commercializing things in a way that established auction houses aren't necessarily doing.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_04: The buck and go, the the gamification almost of sales is a whole different ball game than uh even even an online electronic sale by uh an auction house.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_04: Like the CNG bi-weekly e-sales, NAC's relatively new um uh bi-yearly uh or or semi-yearly um uh e-sales.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_04: They are different from the printed catalog important sales, which generally have nicer material, and that's where you'll probably find the more expensive, more study worthy?
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_04: No.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_04: You're gonna say the more the more trophy coins.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_04: For example, like in in in a CNG by we uh uh e-sale, you'll see um a uh a coin from Carey, uh a Roman provincial coin that is unique, that a that the the the gentleman who studies it just has to have it.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_04: And and that coin you'll it won't be seen on the on the on the collector market for another 10-15 years, but I know for a fact that collector is publishing a book on that coin to the next five years.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_04: Okay so um you get the academic importance of it from these auction houses, but you won't necessarily get that from the from either museums or from the the the new fangled uh new fangled.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_04: I'm sounding like an old fogey here.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_08: The new um says the guy who just got his wisdom teeth in.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_08: Come on.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_08: That was years ago.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_08: I know, I'm playing, I'm playing, I'm playing.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_08: That was previous.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_08: What do you guys think?
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_08: Over here on the obverse side.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, for me, um, I don't think museum selling is it should be taboo.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think it it's it all depends on the case.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: I know, like at the A, if someone dies, they send their collection to the A.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: If it's Minsets and ProSets, they should sell them.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's never gonna be, you know, you're not gonna find 20 years later that's it.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that is one of the things that's important.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's very rare that museums can do that because usually their boards are completely against anything like that.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: Right, so I think it is a good topic to talk about because if you say we're never gonna sell anything, if you're if you want to donate your collection to A, where they're missing out on that revenue that they could actually generate by getting something that they really don't need, but they'd be happy to sell.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that it's that's has to be kind of talked about.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: I do think that like some, you know, I know some other like other, I've been involved with a few museums, and you know, it's like, okay, do you really need, like A?
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: Does A need two$1804?
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: I think that would be a debate that people could could have.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's three, four million dollars.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: But then again, people hate to see money, something sold to fill a budget deficit.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: You know, where's that money going?
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: The whole thing about, you know, museums, I don't think it should ever be taboo.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: I think it should be talked about thoughtfully.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, does it fit the collection?
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um I don't think you want to ban it because, like you say, board members hate the idea of selling anything.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: But then again, they also hate the idea of like missing out on revenue.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I and I know other um other great museums around the country have uh they'll they'll have deaccession sales.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's definitely not, it's not like you know, coin businesses uh the first to like address that.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's great museums, I mean art museums will sell art occasionally to raise$25 million so they can buy a great painting.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: I mean it happens all the time.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: It should be on a kind of like uh, depending on the situation and what needs to be done.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_04: I I also want to add to that, the two most important museums for coins historically would be the British Museum and potentially the Hermitage.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_04: The British Museum has had numerous publications done about their books, and those are done, have been done for over 100, 150 years.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_04: The Hermitage has not.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_04: One of the only real ways that we can study their collection is the ours classica sale of the Hermitage duplicates.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_04: Fair enough.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: Were they really duplicates or did they do that accurately?
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_04: It was marketed as duplicates.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_04: Whether or not they were.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: I just wondered how well that was done.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I uh I'm I personally do not know if they were like legitimately duplicates.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: Because a duplicate, like a duplicate, I'm gonna sell one of my duplicate owls, but you know, did they really take in the fact that there are 25 different kinds of owls?
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_04: It was just it it the it's when they sold it, they called it the hermetized duplicates.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_08: Which is a great marketing perspective.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that goes back to the it's somewhat the responsibility of the museums.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things we talked about was whether researchers have access to things like that.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: One of the biggest problems that a lot of museums have, and I used to teach a class on uh numismatics for museum and library professionals, because there are a lot of collections that are buried in museums and libraries that have a focus that is completely not in numismatics, no interest in it all.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: And those collections don't have the access because they have people that are literally terrified of showing anybody that knows more about the collections what they have because they're afraid they're going to be robbed.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: This is one of the problems that you have to understand, but it's also one of the problems that has to be addressed, and this is where I agree with you, Jeff, that there are collections and areas where museums have to figure out what they can focus on and what they can responsibly curate.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: And think 20 years in the head.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, even longer than me.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, forever.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: I look a hundred years ahead and see, hey, if I do this to this coin now, is it gonna fall apart because the current state of the art is wrong?
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: And they, you know, like with PVC plastics, uh, you know, that was a mistake that was made in the 60s, and people have found out later it was a big mistake.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_08: So let's go on with that idea of the future, because I think that that is something that is really important to discuss here.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_08: Cash generally is being used less and less.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_08: I can't tell you how many people come into the money museum and say, you guys take credit card?
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_08: That's ironic, and I mean I get the point.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_08: But how do we preserve the hobby of numismatics?
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_08: How do we make sure that it continues past this generation where we've gone electronic?
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we all know that in, I don't know, 10 years to 50 years that uh money will probably be obsolete.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_01: It'll all be digital.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: We'll probably, you know, we there won't be really physical money.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: The U.S.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: Mint has already experienced a huge decline in circulating demand for circulating coinage.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what it's maybe 50% in the last five years.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so the U.S.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: Mint is responding by making more collector coins, focusing more on like special issues, commemoratives.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: They want to keep their revenue up by having uh more uh collector type things.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_01: And here's another good example.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: U.S.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: Mint's not making pennies anymore.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody, that's headline news.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: But guess what?
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: They're still making them in mint sets and proof sets.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: So you can still get a penny.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that'll continue for a while.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think mints around the world are invested in the hobby, they're gonna continue to make coins.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, ultimately, maybe uh Whitman folder sales might go down a little bit for people looking for current issues.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's a that's an issue.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: But it's definitely inevitable.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: But I do think the stories are still great.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: People uh I even said to people like during COVID, people started to watch in Netflix history shows, and people like, oh, I got them interested in history a little bit more.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I think people will become more nostalgic.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: We have the 250th anniversary that's really stimulated a lot of interest.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I think going forward it's it's gonna be about the stories and it's gonna be about hobby leaders also addressing the issue.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think that'll be a big deal.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_01: They'll have to, you know, success is not guaranteed, it'll have to be worked on.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_08: Oh, I like that.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_08: Dennis, what do you think?
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: It is something to worry about.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_08: It is, yeah.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_02: You know, if there are not coins out there for people to handle and look at and think about every day, how is that going to affect collecting?
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think you can take a broader look at the collecting instinct.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_02: And if you have a young person who's interested in history, uh in art, cultures, engineering, whatever it may be, let them collect whatever they want to collect.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe they want to collect circus broadsides or movie posters or postcards or stamps or whatever.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_02: Don't try to force them to collect coins.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_02: Let that interest in collecting and history germinate and then eventually cross-pollinate.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_08: So loving these analogies.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_08: That's good.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_08: Cross-pollinate.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_02: Encourage, encourage collecting, encourage intellectual pursuits, and let the let the uh specific coin collecting fall wherever it may.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_02: Not worry too much.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_03: I think that we're in the middle of a sort of reshuffling and recalibration of demand in numismatics because of this.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_03: The generation, say Jeff's generation, just slightly older than me, grew up at a time with Whitman folders and the chance to find silver coins or wheat cents or whatever in circulation.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_03: By the time I started collecting, eh, there was still some chance, but it was it was minimal.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_03: That created a market where things like scarce dates and mint marks were highly valued because that was the way people collected from circulation.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_03: No one collects Roman Cisterci from circulation, but it doesn't keep them from collecting Roman Cisterci, right?
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_08: That's a very good point.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_03: That's a good point.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_03: I like that.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_03: The forms change.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_03: A modern Porsche is not a Model A, but people still want to own a Model A.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_03: Even when money is entirely digital and not physical or tangible at all, money will still exist just in a different form, and people will still have a curiosity about those earlier forms.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_03: But in that recalibration, you may see that a 47S penny is not of special interest or value compared to other things because of that recalibration, but the historical value of a coin from post-World War II America will still have that value for other reasons.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_03: So I think that the manner of collecting will change as people no longer see coins on a daily basis.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_03: But I think what coins can offer as a historical document or as a material culture object, that's immutable and won't change.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_03: And I honestly think while desire of different kinds of mismatic collectibles will change, I don't mind that mint marked Lincoln scents in the 40s are not going to be on the top of people's list in 50 years.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_03: That's great.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_03: People, I mean, Condor tokens were the hip collectible of the 1790s, they're still collected, just not as much.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_03: Taste change, times change, but ultimately money is money and people like money.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: You're talking about the Condor tokens.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: I have in my collection something I really love.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_01: There's a it's a British trade token from around 1838, and it's a coin dealer, coin dealer in England, and on it his token says, Dealing in uh ancient and modern coins.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_06: Oh, I think that's how wonderful.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: I know, it's a really great token.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, I was thinking about his uh his modern coin was uh Own on the Lion.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, you know, that's junk.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's fascinating.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's a pretty fun token.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the great stories where where you put together things that are happening today and you realize, you know, the sisterti, they they haven't been using money for thousands of years.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, one of the things that I look at is okay, stamps.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: Philatoly has had a drastic decrease in interest because basically the younger generation doesn't really mail letters anywhere near what was done in the old days.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of the kids don't even experience stamps at all.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that's been a disaster as collectors, but it's what it's done is contracted the collecting market, the audience.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think it's ever going to go away, but it's gonna be a very specialized thing.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: On the other hand, numismatics, one of the things that's really interesting is yes, cash is going to be less and less common.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: But one of the things that that to me says that cash is gonna be around for a while is there are lots of uses for cash for smaller transactions or transactions that people don't want people others to know about.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: Cash will be around for a while for that reason.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: You also have things like your flea markets, the other things where you don't have access to electronic means or whatever.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: People are still going to be using cash for a long time.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: Interestingly, as of 2022, you know, there is more cash in circulation in the world than ever before.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_00: There are more coins, more banknotes, and all that.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: Ready cash is still out there.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: It is a much smaller percentage of all of the transactions going on.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: So that I think that trend will continue where you you have lots of coins and and paper money still out there.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_00: There'd just be a tinier and tinier fraction.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: Right now it's it's something like 15 to 18 percent of the the total money out there is cash.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_08: Does it just make it more rare in some ways?
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: It makes it a little bit more rare.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: In total numbers, it's not, but it will get more rare at some point.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: But it as the need for cash contracts, there's still enough where I don't think we'll have quite the crash that philanthropy had.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_00: So coinage and and money in general will still have a niche in actual usage, which means collecting will probably keep up.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_04: But I I'd like to add to that.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_04: I personally lived in a part of the world that uh for a while that very much is cash reliant.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_04: It was the odd store outside of the Capitol that took a credit card.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_04: Every kid still paid in cash for their little snack on their break during class.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, they'd go down to the little corner store and buy their little bag of pretzels or whatever with with the 10 denarii coin.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_04: So there is still a vast majority of the world that is very heavily cash reliant, so I see no issue with that part of the trend.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_04: However, I do want to just point out, Jeff, uh you were talking about um tokens that showed collecting.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_04: That's also been going on for centuries.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_04: There are the condor tokens that actually were advertising pieces for coin dealers.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_04: Um and then I just saw someone uh wanted to consign a collection to us yesterday of of he just called it the Moneta collection.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_04: And it's coins and metals, a couple ancient, but most from the 1700s and on, that were about making coins.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_04: And there were a couple brand new ones.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_04: The the Mexican silver pesos that's got the the the screw minute.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_08: That really makes me think about your collection versus accumulation.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_08: That is such a focus theme.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_04: And it was only like 20 coins.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_04: And and I mean a couple of them were rare and valuable, but most of them were just you could find uh most metal dealers or most coin dealers.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_04: But I think my only real two cents with how to get the the new generation of collectors and dealers involved is to continue the social media trend of doing uh just pushing out, not not sales, but like doing the short little videos of like biopics on of coins or um little stories or a story about a cool horde that was found or the the blockbuster um coin that the mint produced or something.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_08: Well, one of the stories that money has really brought to light this year is the idea of the Trump dollar as well as a few other things.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_08: I can't have you guys here and not ask, what is the problem?
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_08: Why is it so controversial to put a living person in the US?
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_03: The founders had very careful ideas on this subject, including George Washington.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_03: We look to our founders as the progenitors of our national ideals.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_03: It's instructive to look at the Mint Act of 1792.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_03: The adopted version of the Mint Act of 1792 that founded the U.S.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_03: Mint and still continues to define the emblems on our coins.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_03: The adopted version is principally the House version, all right?
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_03: Just like back today, there were different versions in the House and Senate.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_03: The Senate was a little bit more monarchical.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_03: The Senate version called for all of the coins to depict the president and a ordinal of Roman numeral indicating what number they were.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_03: So G Washington, Roman numeral one, that's why you see that design on the 1792 Getz patterns.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_03: They talked about that idea.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_03: It wasn't approved.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_03: They said, no, that's a bad idea.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_03: George Washington dismissed that idea completely out of hand.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_03: So we know exactly what the founders thought.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_03: They weren't unanimous, but they voted, majority rule.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_03: We've had the exact same law since 1792.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_03: We're a nation of laws.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_03: If you want to change the law, we have ways to do that.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_03: I'll leave it at that.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_01: I think that the uh one of the reasons too, it goes back to even Roman coins.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: Roman, the Romans used coins for propaganda.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_01: It was very, very one of the reasons they what they did, you know, war victories, all these kinds of things.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_01: So if you don't have it like what we use with the Liberty and things, I mean it can be basically, we don't we don't want our country's coins to be basically used for propaganda.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know if that's the right word to say, but it's like, you know, so what what message next?
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_01: If you open it up to just to any weight what whatever you want to put on a coin, you know, what what'll be the next message that we open that some people will approve of and some people won't, but it's a shame we have to even have that debate.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_01: And also to point out that one of the first persons to put their picture on a coin was was Julius Caesar, right?
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_01: And that didn't end well for him.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_04: Oh yeah.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_04: It was one of the reasons why he was killed.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, one of the reasons why he was killed.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_08: Splavery stabbings, if I recall.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: Our founding fathers, the ones that were educated formally, were educated in Latin, and they learned Cicero and Cato and all of the Roman Republican arguments, because that was what was current for the last hundred years in England.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so they knew the arguments against putting a person's name on it.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_00: The world that the Roman Republican coins were created in, as well as the world that the United States started its story in, was a world dominated by kings and emperors, and all of those coins belonged to the king and emperor, and they had their head on them.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_00: So in order to show that we were different, we had to show that the people were most important.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_00: And as John mentioned, George Washington did not want to be on the coins because he didn't want to be seen as a king.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_00: He knew that was a problem with a new republic.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_00: So they argued back and forth, and in the end, they settled on something that everybody could get behind, which was the image of liberty.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because everyone, no matter what political stamp you're in, will say, I believe in liberty.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_00: They may have a whole different view of what liberty encompasses, but everybody could agree on it, and that's why liberty lasted for well over half our country's history.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_02: Doug just used the word important.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_02: Important.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_02: And something that you mentioned yesterday in your presentation was that the United States does not have a most important citizen.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_02: We don't have a first citizen.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_02: The president of the United States works for us.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we don't work for him.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_04: Works for us.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_04: I love that.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_04: I just want to point out that that distinction was also used to spur the transition from republic to empire in Rome with Augustus.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_04: But I did want to point bring a little bit of levity to this discussion where John and I were talking last night that it was a bold choice to do a forward-fronting portrait on a modern coin that you can never fully strike up unless you're using like an ancient technique where it's more being punched through and you have more metal, kind of looks a little funny.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_04: I love the idea that he might actually know these techniques.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_04: But also ironically, the Julius Caesar portrait coins are also notoriously ugly portraits.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_04: They are not.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_04: Even if they're well made, they are not very good.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_04: The neck folds are not great on the Julius Caesar coins.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_08: He's trying to show his wisdom in neck folds.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_08: Come on, guys.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_08: Honestly, yes.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_00: The Romans were obsessed with realism at some point, and uh to a fold.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_00: A little bit too far.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_08: I want to end this with something that means something to each of you.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_08: So I want to ask you to tell me of all the metals, coins, tokens, currency, paper, whatever you've owned, what has meant the most to you and why?
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_08: Let's start with Tyler.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_04: Well, you can go for the most expensive, you can go for the most historically important.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I'll go for what actually started my collection.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_04: And it's actually what started my collection, oh, 50 to 100 years before it was my collection.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_04: My great great grandmother had a little box of coins on her windowsill, and she gave it to my dad when he was a kid, and it was uh worn large matron headsets.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_04: A buck or two a coin.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_04: Nothing, nothing, nothing important financially or even historically.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_04: But I still have the coins, I'll never sell those, but I also still have the box and I use it to the to store the stuff.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_04: Uh the the dealer, Steve Vessely, has a really fun little term.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_04: It's it's uh the desk of shame.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_04: So that's where I keep my desk of shame stuff where I'll deal with it.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_04: Just I'll deal with it.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_08: So the sentimentality of it, I like it.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_00: Doug?
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's a difficult question.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I choose I choose coins that that I like because they fit the historical areas I'm into.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't put my most valuable coin, the most I paid for as one of my top coins from that answer.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_00: But if I if I have to come up with an answer, I'll I'll come up with two.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_08: The the coin changing the rules here?
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_08: Yes, I'm changing the rules.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the the coin that started me on my journey down the numismatic trail was uh my father was a collector.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_00: We were in Bolivia, and he was collecting Spanish colonial coins, and I used to follow him around to the various dealers, street dealers in many cases, and we would look at coins and I saw a cuartillo, so the little tiny Spanish silver coin.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_00: It had a llama on it, which I thought was fascinating.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_00: I thought that was really cool.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_00: I was 10 years old, and there was a castle on the reverse, and I I fell in love with tiny, I loved tiny things, and I begged my dad for three or four weeks, and he finally gave me the coin.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_00: I still have it today.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_00: It was a cortillo with a hole in it, so it had been used as part of a decoration or something like that.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_00: My first act, of course, was to use some tinfoil to fill the hole.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, I wanted my coin to be complete, of course.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_08: Conservation versus yeah.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_00: A piece that I've recently acquired, actually.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_00: My my grandfather was a sailor in the Navy.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh he joined in 1919 and he served on the Yangtze Patrol.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_00: And if anybody knows the U.S.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_00: Far Eastern fleet history, we had we actually helped patrol the Yangtze River, keeping the warlords under control in China at the time.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_00: He served on that, and my cousin inherited most of my grandfather's material, and she had the actual medal that he was issued for the gunboat that he served on and the medal that was for service on the Yangtze Patrol.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_00: When I saw this, it gave me a memory and a connection that was just amazing.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_00: And it was meant to be in some ways because I could I collect miniature soldiers, I paint them.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the companies I've dealt with, and I know the guy very well, had just issued a new line of figures for the Yangtze Patrol.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_00: And he the week before I got this, and I sent him a picture of the metal, he actually used it in an advertising for you.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_05: Jess?
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, for me, um, I still have a lot of the coins that I that I, when I started coin collecting in like 1960s, I have them, they're meaningful for me, and like tokens and you know, inexpensive coins.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_01: But over my career, I've handled a lot of really great items, and I still have to say, probably the most meaningful that was had an impact on things was the 1913 Liberty Nickel that I was able to purchase in 2013.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's the Walton coin, and the Walton coin uh was uh rediscovered around 2003 and was on part of the team that got to authenticate that.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_01: So that was really a big, it was really a neat night in my life.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_01: I've got great pictures of it with all of us sitting around a room authenticating that coin.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_01: The Walton family kept it for 10 more years at the A Museum, and it was on display.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_01: In 2013, they decided to sell it at auction.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_01: And uh the night of the auction, I called a friend of mine, uh, Larry Lee, who I knew had a big client that we maybe be able to sell the coin to.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_01: We had a big con, talked about it, and we went into the auction, and also it was meaningful in a way you guys will appreciate that it was one of the last times that a great coin sold where there was 500 people in a room.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_01: Now everyone's sitting in a pajamas buying million dollar coins, and it's not quite the same.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_01: But it was a room full of 500 people.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I was sitting there, my son was with me, and started the bidding off, and we bought it for uh 3.1 million, 3.127 million dollars.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh reporters everywhere, which is super, super exciting.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I go out and there's like, you know, they're interviewing me.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_01: My wife's calling the next day, there's reporters, so it was really an exciting, sighting coin.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and also it was uh a really funny story.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_01: So that was on Friday night, Saturday night, Saturday Night Live had a skit with Seth Myers who said that uh uh they had a picture of the 13 nickel that says, now someone paid three million dollars for a nickel, now he has a nickel for every time he makes a mistake.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I made it on Saturday Night Live.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_01: So that coin was really a lot of fun.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we sold it later.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Larry Lee passed away.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_01: He was one of my great friends of all time.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I hate to go like to the super high end, but that was really a neat, meaningful coin for me, and it was uh, you know, had a something I'll always remember that night.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_01: It was really exciting.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_08: An SNL cameo to boot.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_08: SNL cameo.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_01: You can't beat an SNL cameo.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_08: Dennis?
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_02: So half of my family is Filipino.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I I married into a wonderful Filipino family, and I've also served on the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee, and one of the congressional gold medals that we were able to review the designs for is for uh Filipino veterans of World War II.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_02: My grandfather-in-law was a veteran of the war.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um, he uh was served he served in the medical corps uh and was taken prisoner by the Japanese, so there's a wonderful connection there.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_02: My mother-in-law was able to help me think about this medal and and review the designs.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_02: So I have a uh three-inch bronze version of that congressional gold medal.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_02: She's handled it.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_02: I've passed it around to other Filipino friends and and collectors who have actually touched it, and that is a personal favorite.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_02: That will always be a treasure in my collection.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_08: I love that.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_03: Alright, for me, I'm gonna actually mention a book.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_03: We'll collect coin books just alongside their coins and medals and paper money.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_03: For me, what I do.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_03: My whole adult life has been spent writing about numismatics, and uh the guy that inspired that was a guy named Dave Bowers.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_03: And uh, you know, growing up, Q David Bowers books meant everything to me.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_03: They gave me entrance into this whole world of rare coins and the people who enjoy them.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and at age 11, my mom drove the lengths of the Pennsylvania Turnpike until we reached the building we're sitting in right now.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_03: 37 years ago this month, I handed Dave Bowers a book to autograph, and that relationship that that meeting engendered has changed my life.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_03: And there's no coin in my collection or any coin I've ever handled that's changed my life as much as that book.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_03: And it just happens to have happened right here in Pittsburgh in 1989, you know?
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_08: That's a great answer, and I think that is a great place to end today's discussion because ultimately, for all of our talk about rarity and grades, market, I think that the objects we remember most are usually those that really have a meaning and a and a memory and a moment or a connection for us.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_08: Thank you, panelists, so much for sharing your expertise today as well as some of the stories and experiences.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_08: And thank you guys for joining us for the premiere of Worth Its Wait.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_08: If you enjoyed this conversation, and it would be hard not to enjoy listening to these gentlemen and what they have to say.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_08: Please subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and join me for future episodes as we follow the money into some of the stranger, richer, and unexpected corners of history.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_08: I'm Caroline Turco, and this is Worth Its Wait.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_08: History you can hold.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_08: Thank you guys so much.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_08: Thank you, gentlemen.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_07: Worth its weight is brought to you by the American News and Medicare Association.
• 55:26
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• 55:41
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• 55:45
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• 55:51
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