As a longtime admirer of the works of Ayn Rand, I hold money in high regard. The origin of money is in ritual gift exchange, rather than in economic calculation, which came tens of thousands of years of later. That being so, it remains that periodic innovations in economic calculation caused quantum leaps in prosperity and general welfare. People are unlikely to kill or die for what they can sell or buy.
But I never joined any organizations for numismatics until after 1992. For one thing, I was never a serious collector and still am not. I attended a couple of lectures by Clifford Mishler, then the president of Krause Corporation, publishers of hobby periodicals and books, and later president of the American Numismatic Association. He said that all collectors, whether of coins, stamps, automobiles, vinyl recordings, wine or anything else, share four passions: Completeness, Condition, Rarity, and Value. Those are not my concerns. If I have one of something, regardless of its condition or value, I have an artifact about which there is a story to be told. Coins in particular are the often the most common artifact of any society. You have to be a serious collector to find a truly rare coin.
In 1992, I started hearing the ANA “Money Talks” radio program in the mornings as I was waking up to get ready for work. The ANA says:
In 1992, “Money Talks,” a radio program on the history and lore of money, began broadcasting across the country on several local radio stations. The “Money Talks” broadcasts were typically 2-4 minutes long and consisted of coin stories that were recorded to educate and encourage interest in the hobby of numismatics.
I submitted about 20 scripts, and about half of them were produced for broadcast. The ANA granted me a literary award for a couple of them.
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| https://www.money.org/money-talks-radio-archive/ |
I went on to write more full-length features about Peace Dollars, Large Cents, and other products of U.S. Mint. I also edited a monthly column, Internet Connections, which spotlighted safe and informative websites for collectors, typically, national mints or museums, specialty clubs, and sometimes the websites of dealers who were serious researchers.
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https://archive.org/details/bestofanamtpart1
https://archive.org/details/bestofanamtpart2 |
The ANA rebranded “Money Talks” as a series of lectures at the semi-annual conventions, and many of them have been recorded and placed in video archives such as YouTube.
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Pay Warrants of the Texian Navy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWGzivjlOUI |
The Texas Navy on NecessaryFacts
IRELAND'S POET LAUREATE by Michael Marotta
"Our coins must pitch and spin to please the gambler, and pack into rolls to please the banker." Those were the words of Nobel laureate William Butler Yeats. Yeats won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923 and was regarded as the greatest poet of his time. He was also in charge of the committee that designed Ireland's coins.
Yeats was born in Dublin on June 13, 1865. At that time Ireland was completely under the control of England. While working in England, Yeats joined other Irish patriots who eventually won independence for the Emerald Isle. A world-renown playwright and poet, Yeats was elected to the Irish Senate. He chaired the committee that chose the designs for the coins of the new Irish Free State.
Yeats had seen classical Greek coins while studying and writing in Italy during the late 1800s. He arranged for all of the artists on this project to receive ancient Hellenistic coins, so they could see for themselves the powerful images he wanted to bring to Ireland's coins.
For over seventy years, Ireland's coins changed little from the winning designs of Percy Metcalf, a young sculptor recommended by the British School in Rome and selected by Yeats' committee. The horse, bull, salmon, hound and other animals of Ireland's eight circulating coins were all joined by a common symbol of Ireland's poetic tradition: the Celtic harp.
William Yeats died on January 28, 1939, at the age of 73.
(Numismatist, historian, and jurist Theodor Mommsen, was granted a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1902.)
A.N.A. MONEY TALKS Transcript No. 1400
ANCIENT HEARTS by Michael E. Marotta
Look around . . . heart symbols are everywhere on Valentine's Day.
Maybe even on a coin.
The first heart symbols that appeared on ancient coins were produced 2500 years ago in North Africa.
The town of Cyrene was founded in the 7th century B.C. by Greeks.
Their town was eventually destroyed, but it was near what today is the city of Benghazi, along the coast of Libya.
The city enjoyed modest prosperity . . . until its inhabitants
discovered the silphium plant. (The plant is extinct now, but its closest
living relative is a key ingredient in Worcestershire sauce.) Silphium was
used as an herb. Its stalk was edible. Its pungent sap was the basis for cough syrups, and gave food an interesting flavor. But the most important use for silphium was as a contraceptive.
Modern research suggests that silphium actually worked, and because of this, it was in great demand. Attempts to cultivate it in Syria and Greece were unsuccessful. It only grew near Cyrene--and, starting in 500 B.C., it became a steady source of income for the townspeople. By Roman times, silphium had been harvested to extinction.
Over the centuries, the silphium plant came to symbolize Cyrene. The plant appeared on the town's gold, silver and bronze coins, starting around 500 B.C. Often the entire plant was shown. But sometimes, only the seeds of the plant were depicted. The silphium's seeds were heart-shaped, and those heart-shaped seeds that appeared on Cyrene's coins eventually came to symbolize love--a symbol that's still with us today.
Today's program was written by Michael Marotta. "Money Talks" is
a production of the American Numismatic Association in Colorado Springs,
America's coin club for over a century. Take a tour of ANA's virtual Money Museum on the Web at www.money.org.
Transcript No. 1329 November 6, 1997
THE MYSTERY OF THE MINT by Michael Marotta
Imagine a world without coins. It isn't easy. Coins and paper money are basic to our civilization. Yet someone had to invent coins, and the truth is that we just do not know why coins were invented.
Coins first appeared about 2,600 years ago in the ancient country of Lydia, in what is today western Turkey. But people in the Middle East had already been using gold, silver, copper and other common trade goods as money for thousands of years, going as far back as perhaps 8000 B.C.E.
From our modern viewpoint, the advantages of coinage are obvious. But those advantages were not so obvious to ancient peoples. Today, there are several theories to explain the invention of coinage. Many people think that merchants invented coins by marking nuggets and ingots of precious metals. The marks were promises of purity and value.
Another theory is that coins were invented to serve temples. After all, ancient coins have gods and goddesses on them. Temples amassed wealth from donations and the temples might have issued the coins as rewards for good behavior.
However, some scholars today think that the first coins were given to the mercenary soldiers of Greek towns. These coins may have been like military campaign medals -- badges of honor that may not have been intended to be spent as money.
Whatever the origins of coinage, the idea spread rapidly. Within a hundred years, almost every Greek town from southern Russia to eastern Spain had its own mint. Today, people collect ancient coins for their historic value and artistic beauty.
This has been "Money Talks." Today's program was written by Michael Marotta and underwritten by Whitman Coin Products, a division of GoldenBooks, quality coin supplies at affordable prices. "Money Talks" is a copyrighted production of the American Numismatic Association, 818 N.Cascade Ave., Colorado Springs, CO 80903, 719/632-2646, ana@money.org,http://www.money.org.
ANA: MT: Use of Mintmarks
Transcript No. 1648 January 27, 1999
USE OF MINTMARKS by Michael E. Marotta
If you look closely at coins, you will find that some of them have small letters indicating the mint at which they were struck. Mintmarks go back to ancient times. They were used to prevent forgery as well as to honor the mintmaster.
Mintmarks date to about the year 400 B.C. At the time, Greek towns elected their moneyers or mintmasters to annual terms of office. These men ometimes were the actual die cutters, but usually they were officials who oversaw the cutting of dies and striking of coins.
The mintmaster might engrave his whole name on a die, or just the first letters of his name. Sometimes he made a "monogram." The purpose was twofold. It allowed praise for the man who did the work and identified the person responsible in case the coinage later proved to be of short weight or impure alloy.
When the Roman Empire stretched across three continents, it operated more than 20 different mints with over 50 different mintmarks for a period of 300 years. We have identified the mintmarks of London in England; Constantinople in Turkey; and Alexandria in Egypt.
Today most nations have only one mint. Larger countries often assign letters of the alphabet to identify mint cities, starting with the nation's capital. On French coins, for example, the letter "A" stands for Paris. An "A" on a German coin, on the other hand, usually means "Berlin."
Some nations contract out the production of their coinage. On some British and Canadian coins, for example, the letter "H" stands for the "Heaton" company.
In the United States, the main mint at Philadelphia typically did not use the "P" mintmark until recent decades. Today, most American coins have either a "P" for "Philadelphia" or "D" for "Denver." Usually you will see an "S" for "San Francisco" or "W" for "West Point" only on special coins and proof sets.
This has been "Money Talks." Today's program was written by Michael Marotta and underwritten by Whitman Coin Products, a division of Golden Books, the right choice for coin collecting books and supplies. "Money Talks" is a copyrighted production of the American Numismatic Association, 818 N. Cascade Ave., Colorado Springs, CO 80903, 719/632-2646, ana@money.org, http://www.money.org.
PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS
Debt: The Seed of Civilization
Robert Leonard’s “Curious Currency”
Numismatics; History as Market
Money as Speech and Peacemaking
Mere Gold is Not Enough: Hayek’s “Denationalization”
Numismatics: The Standard of Proof in Economics
My Numismatic Bibliography (Partial List)
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