This is the MCCC ARCHIVE – for the CURRENT Montgomery County Coin Club see https://montgomerycoinclub.org
MCCC image

Montgomery County Coin Club

September 1998 Bulletin

Feature Article - Feedback - MCCC Home Page

Next Meeting: Tuesday, September 8, 1998

Featuring Kermit Smyth on "To Clean, or Not To Clean?"

The Montgomery County Coin Club will meet at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, September 8, 1998, at the Senior Citizens Center on Forest Glen Road in Silver Spring, Maryland. The meeting will feature Club Librarian Kermit Smyth, who will discuss: Bring your sandpaper, wire brushes, silver polish, and ugly tarnished coins yearning to shine once more --- but don't attempt to do any cleaning until after you have heard Kermit! In honor of the talk, MCCC will award a prize to the member who brings in the ugliest coin cleaning job!


Exhibit Case Awaits

The MCCC display case offers a great chance to show off your coins, medals, currency, and other numismatically-related items of interest. Have you just acquired a long-sought piece that completes your collection? Do you remember how much you liked to hear about another Club member's special find? Do you have squirreled away an extraordinary and obscure artifact of history from long ago? Please share the wealth --- bring something fun to put in the display, and say a word or two about it. Your fellow MCCCers, especially the younger numismatists in the audience, will enjoy learning about your material!


Exhibits and Displays

At the August meeting, the Club saw several great exhibits:

Charity Auction Looms

Don't forget --- the MCCC Charity Auction is coming sooner than you think, at the November meeting. All proceeds from this special affair go to benefit the Silver Spring and Wheaton Boys Girls Clubs. Look through your hoard and make a gift that can help these young people have a better place to play and study after school, please! Your donations can be cash or numismatic material for the Auction. In either case, you get a tax deduction. Thanks for your help!


Redbooks Sales Brisk, Some Still Available

At the bargain price of $7 each, about half of the available Redbooks (the famous guide to US coins) sold at the August meeting. The remainder will be available at the September meeting. Check with Ed Russell if you want one before then.


August Meeting Announcements

On a pleasant Tuesday afternoon, a bit before 7:00 pm on August 11, 1998, a crowd began to gather in front of the Senior Citizens Center. People with bags milled about, watching the traffic and talking with each other. At 7:10 pm, the Center was unlocked, and the crowd rushed in to set up for the meeting.

MCCC President Swab called the Club to order at about 7:20 p.m. Approximately 35 members were present, including 4 YNs.

Major announcements included:


40th Anniversary Design Competition

The MCCC will celebrate the Fortieth Anniversary of its founding next year. There will be a special competition in months to come to create the Commemorative MCCC Elongated Design. Watch your MCCC Bulletin next month for a template, draw your design, submit it, and (if you win) your initials will go onto the die (just like Victor D. Brenner of 1909-S VDB fame). What a way to achieve immortality!


August's Talk, "Coins from a New Arboretum," by Joe Howard

Wearing a tree-theme tee-shirt and a large belt buckle of finely polished and lacquered wood, Joe Howard, MCCC member and Chairman of the Montgomery County Forestry Board, spoke and showed slides of numismatic materials featuring trees in their designs. Mr. Howard teaches children and elderly about trees and coins, and has put together an impressive collection of arbor-related material.

Mr. Howard began by discussing the annual competition in Montgomery County for the largest specimen of each species of tree, and distributed copies of the Montgomery County Register of Champion Trees.

Mr. Howard's brisk and fun slide show began with a Pine Tree Shilling, dated 1652, one of the first coins struck in the Americas. He went on to display coins with trees from Prince Edward's Island (one penny) and the Ontario 1992 commemorative quarter (showing a jack pine). The 1996/1796 Macintosh apple commemorative Canadian silver $1 was next, followed by several pieces from Central and South America --- a 1 Real coin showing an oak from the United Provinces of Central America (struck in the 1830s), and from Costa Rica an 8-peso of 1862 with an oak, a tree-counterstamped 2-Real dated 1775, stamped in 1845, and another piece showing a guanacasta, the national tree of Costa Rica. Mr. Howard then showed and commented on the Guatemala 5 centavo coin showing the capon tree, that country's national tree. He displayed a plantation token (25 centavos) of a coffee tree, and then the Anguilla mahogany tree (on the island's coat of arms). A coin of Columbia illustrated a saman or "monkey pod" tree, famous from the Swiss Family Robinson story. Other South American and Caribbean coins with trees that were projected included a 2.5 centavo from Columbia, a Peruvian coin with a chincora tree (the national tree of both Peru and Ecuador, and the source of the medicine quinine), an 1881 Bolivian coin showing a breadfruit tree, a Brazil 2 centavo piece with a coffee tree, a 1973 coin of Barbados with a Ficus Barbados (fig tree), a 1 Gourde coin of Haiti (the second oldest Republic in the hemisphere) with a palm tree, Cuban coins with royal palm and kapok trees, and tree-honoring coins of Jamaica, Grenada, Bermuda, and the Cayman Islands.

Moving farther afield, Mr. Howard showed and commented on slides of coins from Western Samoa (coconut palm trees), Malaysia (betelnut palm), Indonesia (banyan), Tonga (more coconuts), New Caledonia (Norfolk Island pine), Japan (paulonia tree --- traditionally planted when a girl is born, to grow into wood for her hope chest when she is ready to marry), Thailand (tonson pines), Ceylon (now Sri Lanka, coconut palms), Mauritius (still more coconuts!), the Seychelles (nut palm), South Africa (orange tree, for the Orange Free State), Netherlands (more oranges, for William of Orange), Namibia (acacia, quiver, camelthorn, and aloe trees), Swaziland (pine tree), Zimbabwe and Senegal (baobabs), Ghana, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria (cacao trees), and what is reputed to be the largest tree in Africa, honored on a Sierra Leone coin (250 feet tall, a kapok tree).

Continuing his world tour, Mr. Howard displayed slides of the Gambian 1 shilling showing an oil palm, an Equatorial Guinea 7000 Franc coin of 1993 with a mangrove, a Lebanon 1952 cedar, and Israeli coins with cedars, date palms, and pomegranates. (He showed a coin from the 132-135 C.E. from that same area of the world, during a Jewish revolt against the Rome, with a similar tree!) Additional coins then shown included a Jordan olive tree (the tree most frequently mentioned in the Bible), an Arabian data palm, a Tunisian cork oak, a Yemen date palm and a coffee tree, a 1986 Italian 1500 Lira with an olive tree, and a 1995 Portuguese set of coins showing spice trees --- fragrant sandalwood, cloves, and nutmeg. Mr. Howard then showed a German oak tree on a 1928 five Reichmark (predating Hitler's rise to power), a 1727 Polish cypress tree coin, a 1985 Swedish 100 Kroner with a Scots Pine, a Finnish 50 markka birch tree, and the 1985 Coin of the Year winner, a Finish European spruce. The UK 1 pound coin of 1983 shows an English oak, and (thanks to Julian Leidman) Mr. Howard showed a slide of "one that got away", a large plaster model design for a US 1 cent coin made by Laura Garden Fraser, which he was tempted by but did not purchase for $2,000. The $1 US commemorative for the 100th anniversary of President Eisenhower's birthday showed three green ash trees.

Mr. Howard finished up by showing an often-overlooked tree --- the mountain pine on the reverse of the popular Walking Liberty half dollar. In toto, Mr. Howard's collection includes 55 different species of trees on coins from over 100 different countries!


Swab Appointed to Maryland Quarter Commission

Maryland Governor Parris Glendenning has appointed MCCC President Ken Swab to the commission which will make recommendations to him about the design of the Maryland quarter reverse scheduled to be struck by the U.S. Mint in 2000. The Commission expects to finish its work by the middle of October.


MCCC Authors

Ken Swab and Mark Zimmermann had their article on the MCCC's recommendation on the design of the Maryland quarter published in the September 1 issue of Numismatic News. Ken Swab's article on Claude Moore Farm colonial currency appeared on page 1 of the September 7 edition of Coin World.


Acknowledgments


MCCC Web Comments and Feedback
Please send bug reports and suggestions for improvement to Mark Zimmermann via z (at) his.com. The MCCC Bulletin is copyright (c) 1999 by the Directors of the Montgomery County Coin Club.