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Above: Roman Republic , Anonymous issue silver Didrachm-Quadrigatus, ca 225-215 B.C. (image about 2x). The obverse shows the head of Janus, god of beginnings and endings, after whom the month of January is named.
Vol. 10, No. 1 January, 2011
MICCy Speaks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pages 2 - 3 "Regulating a Golden Currency Mess" "When They Auctioned Off the Roman Empire " "A Numbering Variety: 1954 Banknotes" "Variety Hunter: 50-Cents, 1917"
The Mid-Island Coin Club, Dues: $12 per year Mailing Address: Mid-Island Coin Club, c/o West Coast Stamp & Coin, Executive Officers: President: Felix Stawski
The Christmas party, held during the meeting of December 9th, was attended by 24 members and guests. As usual, our Christmas party is also a fund-raising function for a charity of our choice. That chosen for 2010 was the "7-10 Club" again, a volunteer organization that provides meals and box lunches to those who need them, no questions asked. As usual, their funding is forever stretched to the limit. On this occasion, the Mid-Island Coin Club raised $364 for the "7-10" - and there will be some more to come since the ultimate winner of the "Pandora's Box" donated it in its entirety for the same fund-raising purpose. It was felt that the attendees at the Christmas party were rather tapped out for cash by the end of the evening, so the contents of the Pandora's Box will be auctioned, lot by lot, at a later meeting. Proceeds will again go to the "7-10". We have also hammered out a sort of mechanism when it comes to disputed bids at the auction. Sometimes the auctioneer doesn't see your bid; sometimes two bidders are lined up, the one in front reasonably assuming that the successful bid was his. By majority vote, it has now been decided that in case of disputed bids, the bidding will again be opened at the last bid only to those two bidders involved . Dues for the year 2011 are now payable to the amount of $12. See the treasurer at the meeting or mail to our mailing address given above. Don't deprive yourself of one of life's greatest joys for a mere $1 per month; your life will be somehow diminished. January again. Voting time. Another new executive slate will assume the sacred burden of shepherding the Club through yet another year of what I'm sure will be shining times. Let your voice be heard. Perhaps seriously consider the filling of an office. You are among friends, your talents, sparkling personality and good looks fully appreciated; we have never had to call out the guard during one of our elections yet.
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Regulating a Golden Currency Mess.
There were four main colonial powers in the New World : Britain , France , Portugal and Spain . Of the four, the last three had something of stability when it came to gold coinage. Portugal and Spain both had local mints in the New World , Portugal in Brazil and Spain throughout the rest of the mainland of South America , both of which struck substantial amounts of gold coin from local ore, rendering the use of outside gold coin of small importance. France , with no external mints, enforced a French-coin-only policy on its colonies, and was largely successful in this regard. Britain tried to duplicate the French policy, but failed disastrously. The British colonies in North America and the Caribbean slogged along, literally for centuries, with a hodgepodge of coin from all over - and British coin was frequently only a minor part of this mix. In the case of Canada and the later United States, the most common silver coin was the Spanish-American 8-reale "dollar" and its fractions, while gold might be British or French but much more frequently the Spanish-American "doubloon" or Portuguese "Joe" (with their multiples and fractions). Since all were of different weights, they were assigned different local - frequently odd - values.
Mexico . 8-Escudo "Doubloon", 1732-Mo ( Mexico mint) Approx actual size. This coin is notable in that it was of the first milled issue in the Americas .
For instance: On 14 April 1808, Lower Canada enacted "Chapter 8 of 48 George III", "An Act for better regulating the weights and rates at which certain Coins shall pass current in this Province...". In it, the following gold coins, when weighed singly, were to pass as: Type of Coin: Weighing: To pass in local currency as:
The British Guinea 5-pennyweights 6-grains Troy £1-3s-4d Johannes of Portugal 18-pennyweights £4-0s-0d Moidore of Portugal 6-pennyweights 18-grains £1-10s-0d "Milled Doubloon" or "4 Pistole piece of Spain " 17-pennyweights £3-14s-6d French Louis d'Or (before 1793) 5-pennyweights 4 grains £1-2s-8d French Pistole (before 1793) 4-pennyweights 4-grains 18s-3d American Eagle 11-pennyweights 6-grains £2-10s In the next clause, it was stated that any of the above British, Portuguese or American coins that were heavier or lighter than the above Standard were to have the sum of "two pence and one farthing Currency" added to or subtracted from the above values for each "grain" in weight; and that in the case of Spanish or French coins, "two and one-fifth pence" per grain were to be added or subtracted. Clause VII concerned itself with bulk payments in gold coin. For any sum in excess of Twenty Pounds Currency in which gold coin was tendered, the recipient could - at his option - receive the payment by bulk weight at the rate of 89s Currency per Troy ounce for gold coins of Britain, Portugal or the United States and 87s8d Currency per Troy ounce for gold coins of France or Spain. Although the above seems to lay down a level field for all, reality was occasionally something else. Since only exchange houses (there were no banks) and larger merchants were likely to possess the scales, gold coin - particularly light gold coin - was received in bulk by weight and just as quickly paid out singly at full face, if this could be done. This extra tidy profit helped swell the coffers of the rich and famous. The above equally shows just how messy Lower Canadian currency matters could be, but the reality - again - was something slightly different. From the tables above, we note that most of the coins have an odd value in Lower Canadian pounds and shillings. Two exceptions were the Moidore at 30-shillings (the equivalent of six dollars) and, especially, the American Eagle at 50-shillings (or ten dollars - the same value as assigned it in its country of origin, although the commonest American gold coin at this time was really the half Eagle of $5). Already Canada was on the American System and all the others were in proportion to it. Many Canadian merchants were already pricing in dollars - and had been doing so for years. Canada could have used a standard of some kind but, in common with all the rest of the British colonies (except India), she was denied her own coinage - or even much in the official say of what would be used. By default, the standard came to be that of the Americans since it fit so well with the widely-used "Halifax Currency" by which a silver Spanish-American milled dollar passed for an even 5-shillings. But her regulation of currency was always a "paper" one in the form of tables. Others took a more active role in attempting physically to supply a standard coinage. Perhaps the leader was the infant United States of America in the period between the Articles of Confederation (ratified 1781) and the appearance of its first national gold coin (1795). Until the Federal Constitution (ratification 1787-90), the United States was actually that: a collection of essentially independent entities, each jealous of its rights - one of which was the currency of each. Until the establishment of the Dollar as the only currency in all the states (1792), each went its own way, valuing a Spanish milled dollar in one of five ways. (1) Georgia used the same standard as the Halifax Currency used for most of Canada , a dollar being equal to 5-shillings in local currency. (2) Pennsylvania , Maryland and New Jersey valued the same dollar at 7s6d local currency. (3) New York valued the dollar at 8s (the same as Upper Canada , where it was called "York Currency"). (4) South Carolina valued the dollar at 32s6d local currency. (5) Massachusetts was the "cheapest" currency of all, valuing the dollar at 45s, nine times " Halifax ". By the terms of the Constitution, all of these different pounds/shillings/pence state currencies were jettisoned in favour of the dollar for all. But, like the Canadians, a lot of Americans had already been using the dollar in pricing for years. Also, like the Canadians, the Americans had to do a lot of valuation by tables for the gold and silver coins, all of which were "foreign" before the establishment of the mint and the Coin Act of 1792. As well, there was the constant problem of coins too heavy or (usually) too light. So far as we know, only one place took action in the U.S. to bring these coins into line, allowing them to pass without cumbersome weighing - that was New York during the 1780s and '90s. In this case, licensed "regulators" tested and brought to proper weight these foreign gold coins. Usually, the coins were light and the typical method used was to pierce the gold coin in the center, insert a gold plug of the proper weight and hammer it in place, much like a rivet. The regulator's mark applied on the "rivet" was the mark of guarantee. The below coin - a Brazilian 6400-reis "Joe" (1769-B[ahia mint]) - is rather unusual. This piece was initially too heavy and lightened by filing to 216 grains, the exact weight as required by the New York Standard of 1784 to allow it to pass at an even $8.00. A hundred years ago, these coins countermarked with the script B were attributed to Berbice, in what was later British Guiana . Later it was found that the script B was the same as that found as a hallmark (shown below 2x) on the works of John Burger, a silversmith of New York . Further research proved that Burger had indeed been licensed as a coin regulator, advertising himself as such in the pages of the New York Packet and American Advertiser (1 Jan. 1784). Even Thomas Jefferson got into the act, noting in his memorandum book of 27 December 1793 : "Received from do. (John Bringhurst) in part for gold of Nov. 30 8 D[ollars]"; $8.00 coins were almost certainly "regulated" Joes.
An even more famous regulator was Ephraim Brasher of "Brasher Doubloon" fame. His EB stamp exist on a number of regulated gold coins from New York during this same period.
But it was from the British colonial Caribbean island of Grenada that we have the most extensive evidence of gold-coin regulating today, and it is not unreasonable to suspect that they were following the lead of New York since the first of them date to a regulation dated 31 July 1798 . Grenada 's problem with the gold coins - British guineas, Spanish doubloons, plus both moidores and joes of Portugal (multiples and fractions included) - was that the island valued them by defined stages of weight, rather than meticulously by the grain. Consequently, full- and heavy-weight foreign gold either fled to where this extra weight was compensated or each coin was filed, clipped or sweated to the minimum weight at which it would still pass at full value - after which normal wear reduced them even further. By the late 1790s, Grenada 's gold coinage was nearly all underweight, sometimes badly so, and when the nearby island of Martinique (formerly French but recently conquered by the British) refused to accept Grenadian gold except by bulk weight, something had to be done in the way of regulating this coin. In the case of the commonly-encountered Brazilian "johannes" (or "joe"), struck at an original weight of 221 grains Troy , it was decreed that they would fall into one of three categories: (1) Those which weighed not less than 204 grains (actually 8 dwt 12 gr) were to be stamped with a single G in the obverse center and pass for £3 12s currency (or 8 Dollars in the new rating of 9 shillings per dollar). (2) Those which weighed less than 204 grains but not less than 180 grains ("7 dwt 12 gr") were to be countermarked three times with a G near the obverse rim, each mark to occur at about 120° apart, and were to pass for £3 6s currency (or 8 dollars in the old rating of 8 shillings per dollar). (3) Those which weighed less than 180 grains were to be brought up to that weight by applying a gold plug of the appropriate weight to a piercing in the coin's center, the plug to be hammered flat, rivet-fashion, and the "rivet" to be countermarked with the workman's initials as a guarantee of this regulated weight. In addition, the coins were to counterstamped three times with a G , just like Class 2. These coins were also to pass for £3 6s, like Class 2.
Brazil , 6400-reis "Johannes", 1771-R(io mint). Possibly counterfeit dies. Regulated and countermarked in Grenada , 1798 for a rating of £3 6s currency.(Class III) Three "G"s plus IW on plug. (Approx. 1 ½ x) Perhaps it is indicative of the state of the Grenada gold coinage at the time to note that thus far, not a single example of Class I is known today - full (or nearly full) weight pieces probably rare even then. Possibly non-existent. Note: Fred Pridmore would only guarantee that the IW countermark as shown above was genuine, since it is known on contemporary pieces, some with a long history. But other rather strange pieces are known with initials W.S. and JR ; these may be concoctions prepared for the collectors' trade in more recent years. But here we see the various colonial attempts to provide their economies with a stable gold coinage through regulation - sometimes with tables, sometimes by treating the coins themselves.
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When They Auctioned Off the Roman Empire .
March 28, A.D. 193 . On that date was established the highest bid at auction in the history of the world. In terms of today's dollars, it was probably somewhat in excess of $5-billion and knocked down was no less than the emperorship of the Roman Empire , and thus the Empire itself.
The events began during the reign of Commodus (full name: Lucius Aelius Aurelius Commodus), son of what has been termed the last "good emperor", Marcus Aurelius. At 19, he succeeded to the purple in A.D. 180 and proved to be unworthy. Soon retiring from public life, he left the administration of the empire to a succession of favourites, each of whom feathered their respective nests at the people's expense. In his last years, Commodus appears to have become insane, disgracing the purple by engaging in combat with wild beasts in the amphitheatre (the odds carefully stacked, of course). He believed himself the reincarnation of Hercules, often appearing on his coins the lion headdress, and demanded worship as a god. After numerous attempts on his life, he was finally assassinated on 31 December, A.D. 192 . He was the last of the Antonine line. As the new emperor, Commodus' murderers proposed (and almost forced, since he accepted most reluctantly) the senator P. Helvius Pertinax, at the time filling the office of prefect of the City of Rome .
As former prefect, Pertinax was only too aware of the problems he faced, since the prefect was also the titular head of the Praetorian Guard, who were actually pretty much a law unto themselves. Housed in a fortress just outside the gates of Rome , the Guard filled the functions of the city's police as well as a kind of Secret Service, responsible for the safety of the emperor and his family. As the only armed men allowed in the city (and numbering somewhere between 7,000 and 12,000) they wielded enormous power and, not unexpectedly, they had come to be a corrupt group. Pertinax, to his credit, did his best to improve things, bringing in various reforms and economies. The reverse of his aureus above is probably symbolic, the star representing Pertinax as "caelo demissus", sent from heaven for the salvation of the empire, and Providentia representing the wisdom of Rome in choosing him. But the Praetorian Guard did not view things this way. On March 28, a band of mutinous Guards invaded the palace and murdered Pertinax after a reign of just 86 days. In an act of almost insane arrogance, the Guard from its fortress immediately announced that the empire was for sale to the highest bidder! There were only two bidders at this extraordinary auction: Flavius Sulpicianus, the wealthy current prefect of Rome , and Didius Salvius Julianus, the wealthy (and spendthrift) son of a famous general. The best recounting of this auction is by the historian Dio Cassius, found in book 74 of his Roman History, which reads as follows: " Meanwhile, Didius Julianus, at once an insatiate money-getter and wanton spendthrift, who was always eager for revolution and hence had been called by Commodus to his native city of Milan, now, when he heard of the death of Pertinax, hastily made his way to the camp, and standing at the gates of the enclosure, made bids to the soldiers for rule over the Romans. Then ensued a most disgraceful business and one unworthy of Rome . For, just as it had been in some market or auction room, both the city and its entire empire were auctioned off. The sellers were the ones who had slain their emperor, and the would-be buyers were Sulpicianus and Julianus, who vied to outbid each other, one from the inside, the other from the outside. They gradually raised their bids up to 20,000 sesterces per soldier. Some of the soldiers would carry word to Julianus, "Sulpicianus offers so much; how much more do you make it?" And so to Sulpicianus in turn, "Julianus promises so much; how much do you raise him?". Sulpicianus would have won the day, being inside and being prefect of the city, and also the first to name the figure 20,000 had not Julianus raised his bid no longer by a small amount but by 5,000 at one time, both shouting it in a loud voice, and also indicating the amount with his hands. So the soldiers, captivated by this excessive bid and at the same time fearing that Sulpicianus might avenge Pertinax (an idea that Julianus put into their heads), received Julianus inside and declared him emperor." We must put this winning bid of 25,000 sesterces per man in perspective. At the time, a ranker soldier received a denarius (four sesterces) per day, so this bid represented more than 15 years' pay for a common soldier. That must be multiplied by the number of men which varies with the source but Dio Cassius, reliable in other ways, giving it as 12,000. This would indicate a total of 300-million sesterces or 75-million denarii. Or, for lesser bulk, 3-million gold aurii. Still a tremendous pile of coin. And these were days of cold, hard cash. It's almost unbelievable that one man could have so much - and even more so than yet another had nearly the amount.
The auction enraged the whole Empire. At once, three Roman armies revolted, named their respective governors emperors and began a march on Rome : Pescennius Niger , governor of Syria ; Clodius Albinus, governor of Britain ; and Septimius Severus, governor of Upper Pannonia . Severus made a quick deal with Albinus, naming the latter caesar to Severus' emperor and reached Rome first. Julianus was abandoned. After several fruitless attempts to negotiate with Severus for his safety, he was deposed by the Senate and hunted down by the Guard, who hoped to curry favour with Severus. On 2 June, A.D. 193 , Julianus was captured and beheaded after a reign of a mere 66 days. In their turn, the Guard were exiled, forbidden within a zone of 100 Roman miles from the city. They were lucky to have received this much clemency.
His base in Rome secured, Septimius Severus could deal with the man he considered his main rival: Pescennius Niger . But even before Severus and his main army could meet him, Severus' officers had already defeated Niger twice. The remnants of his army was finally defeated at Issus and Niger fled toward the Euphrates, only to be overtaken, captured and executed in early A.D. 194. Although a deal had been struck, Severus obviously made the hard pragmatic decision that there can be only one emperor and, on the pretext that his armies had proclaimed him emperor before, Severus charged Clodius Albinus with treason and marched against him in A.D. 197. Albinus proved to be no pushover and the clash of 19 February 197 became the biggest Roman battle since Philippi . Severus won. Just. With no intention of being made a spectacle, Albinus committed suicide. Thus Severus stood alone.
Reviews are mixed as to how good or bad an emperor Septimius Severus was. On the one hand, there was until his death internal peace within the Empire - although border wars continued. He himself believed that he ruled with "severe justice". By his own lights, he did serve the Empire as a whole and was repairing Hadrian's Wall in Britain at the time of his death ( 4 February 211 ). On the other hand, he overtly made the Empire what it had sometimes been, and continued to be: a military dictatorship. The army was "democratized" in that any ranker could rise through merit to any rank or office, something that had been essentially denied before. Also, Severus' councils were drawn from all over the Empire, with no one place - notably Rome - favoured. The power of the old senate was broken as well. Hitherto sancro sanct and almost above the law, sixty were arrested and tried for treason (half were executed, others reduced to poverty) once Severus' power was consolidated. In their place were new councilors, many of them former soldiers.
But during a period of roughly a year, from late 192 to late 193, there existed no fewer than six Roman emperors, four of whom (Commodus, Pertinax, Didius Julianus and Septimius Severus) actually sat on the throne, and two more (Clodius Albinus and Pescennius Niger) claimants in the hinterland. Rome was not to see the like again. Nor auctioned off, either.
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A Numbering Variety: 1954 Notes.
When a few hawk-eyed collectors of Canadian notes discovered a variety in late 1968, it caused something of a momentary stir, but since that time it has become relegated to a mere footnote. The Charlton catalogue, for instance, covers it with the following words: "Some variation has been reported in the size of the numbers on $1, $2 and $10 notes printed by the British American Bank Note Company. This change in the size and style of the numbering head type apparently corresponds closely with the changeover to engraved signatures in 1968." The second paragraph may have some credence. It was in late 1968 that the process of applying the signatures (at the time, Beattie-Rasminsky) changed. Heretofore the stacks of printed bank note sheets had been supplied to the Bank of Canada by the two printers, the Canadian Bank Note Company and the British American Bank Note Company, lacking only the signatures. These were applied by printers at the Bank of Canada and, since it was a separate process, there is some variation in the location of the signatures. Some time in late 1968, the signatures were applied by the printing companies and, since they were part of the overall engraved "black plate", no variation was possible. Although we can't know for sure, it seems that the British American Bank Note Company took the occasion of the signature-process changeover to also slightly alter its numbering heads. But not completely: the two variations seem to match for the $1 and $2 but not the $10 - the printed signatures change seems to have come somewhat earlier (somewhere in the late T-over-U numbers). The change the collectors had detected in the BABN notes was that the numbers had been made not only slightly narrower but also slightly thinner in their lines as well. The result was a more open serial number in contrast to the previous more chunky one. Even so, most of the numbers are difficult to detect on their own, two of the more obvious ones being the numeral "1" which acquired as shorter "stand" and the number "4". Perhaps the easiest to differentiate (and perhaps worthy of a catalogue sub-number) is the BABN $2 note; occurring in "U" denominator series, this letter changed markedly from a flat-bottom "U" to a completely round-bottom "U". (see below) Although the BABN would confirm that their type-faces had been changed, they would not supply the information regarding the exact numbers at which the change occurred, that being something of a state secret at the time. Even so, diligent researchers pursuing the "before-and-afters" narrowed the gap down quite well so that we can give the approximate changeover serial number. $1 BABN Beattie-Rasminsky Ch-BC37b Approx. change: N/P 6000001 $2 BABN " " Ch-BC38b " D/U 0000001 $10 BABN " " Ch-BC40b " between D/V 2000001 and D/V 4000001 Below are enlarged before-and-after type-faces with an effort to contrast all numbers:
"Old" typeface (note "U" on the $2)
"New" typeface.
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Variety Hunter: 50 cents, 1917.
First noted by Neil Carmichael in his catalogue more than fifty years ago as "1 & 7 wider" and "1 & 7 closer", the "Wide Date" and "Narrow Date" also appeared in the 50-Cent variety section of the 2007 Charlton catalogue. However, it would seem that both of those illustrated there were actually of the "Wide Date" variety. It is most important to note the relationship between the right point of the 7 and the D of CANADA above. On the "Narrow Date", it is under the Ds upright; the "Wide Date" has the same point more or less under the centre of the D. So far, no determination has been made as to their relative rarities.
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January 2011"Regulating a Golden Currency Mess" "When They Auctioned Off the Roman Empire " "A Numbering Variety: 1954 Banknotes" "Variety Hunter: 50-Cents, 1917"
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