Montgomery County Coin Club

February 1999 Bulletin

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Next Meeting: Tuesday, February 9, 1999

Guest Speaker: Mary Gardner on "The Brookeville Commemorative Token Story"

The February MCCC meeting will also feature the presentation of Charity Auction proceeds to the Boys and Girls Clubs of Silver Spring and Wheaton. Each will receive checks for $250 --- thanks to the generosity of all the MCCC members who donated material to, and bid generously at, the November Auction! Special thanks to those who contributed cash directly to this good cause.

NumisRiddle of the Month

The answer appears later in this bulletin. To suggest a NumisRiddle for future publication, please write to MCCC YN (Young Numismatist) Robin Zimmermann, P.O. Box 598, Kensington, MD 20895-0598.

January Meeting Report

January announcements included:

• The 1999 MCCC Officers were sworn in, and outgoing President Ken Swab handed the gavel over to incoming President William C. Massey. The other officers confirmed were Vice President Richard Jozefiak, Second Vice President Kenneth E. Swab, Treasurer Simcha Kuritzky, Secretary Jack Schadegg, Sergeant at Arms John Herman, and Directors Tom Hall, Andrew Luck, Don McKee, John Pylypec, Ed Russell, Kermit Smyth, and Mark Zimmermann.
• Treasurer Simcha Kuritzky reported that MCCC begins the New Year in great financial shape. He encouraged members to pay their 1999 dues promptly, and reminded those who had not already picked up their receipts for the November 1998 MCCC Charity Auction to get them at once. Simcha also offered information about the American Numismatic Association's Chicago convention, to be held in August.
• Librarian Kermit Smyth commented that the MCCC collection now numbers 346 books, including a fine new copy of Q. David Bowers's massive commemorative coin encyclopedia, plus tomes on 19th Century world coins, Confederate money, and much more. A new online MCCC Library catalog will be reformatted for the Web and placed online within the next few months.
• The door prizes were two Bicentennial Eisenhower dollars and a South African 2.5 cent coin. Winners of these door prizes were Irv Blank, Jack Cross, and Ed Alexander. The Bison Chip winner was Kermit Smyth, giving him the first of three legs needed to win. The lucky 50-50 raffle winner was Irv Blank.

Results of the MCCC Elongated Competition!

Many thanks to all who participated in the MCCC Elongated Design Contest! The next steps will be the engraving of the die and the production of the pieces by elongated guru Willy Massey and colleagues. Keep your fingers crossed --- the results will be visible within a few months.

January Displays

(A Case of Conscience)

• Herb Hall showed a sheet of stamps commemorating the 125th Anniversary of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The signed souvenir sheet on display was accompanied by a silver Canadian dollar with a mounted policeman wearing a pillbox hat, and a miniature dollar pin.
• Ken Swab discussed the 121 designs for the new US $1 coin. His Freedom of Information Act lawsuit was successful in getting the U.S. Mint to release all the designs.
• Jerry Grzenda, on a politically topical note, exhibited an Impeachment Ticket for the 1868 U.S. Senate trial of President Andrew Johnson. Jerry also showed a 1915-D $5 gold piece which he noted was absent from the official Mint production listings and which perhaps is a forgery. He discussed the issue of die-struck high-quality counterfeit U.S. gold coinage, including the "Omega" mark signature hidden on some such pieces.

Featured Attraction: Numis-Bingo!

NumisRiddle Answer

Answer: Infinity! Certain U.S. large cents produced in 1801, 1802, and 1803 are, due to a die engraver's blunder, marked with the value "1/000" --- which mathematically is infinite. (Give yourself partial credit if you guessed $100 for some of the recent non-circulating U.S. bullion coinage, or $50 for the Panama-Pacific commemorative gold slugs.)

Acknowledgments

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