Steve D'Ippolito

I have officially accepted nomination to the American Numismatic Association Board of Governors, so here I go running for the ANA Board!

I believe that since the 2007 election the ANA has made a dramatic turnaround. It has now been six years, we now have a good executive director. It's time to assess the future direction of the ANA and the hobby, without losing sight of the good management and leadership principles that allowed us to recover so well from the disaster we were courting back then.

Unlike stamp collecting (which is probably doomed because few today use stamps), coin collecting is growing. We need to be in the forefront with education, so that the next generation of collectors does not get burned by ripoff artists and become turned off. We've all watched someone come into a coin shop with an item they overpaid for only to be told that what they brought in wasn't worth anything close to what they paid; I can only imagine what goes through their minds.

I plan to emphasize the internet, in particular as a way of combating the increasing number of fakes that have been turning up in the marketplace. The ANA's website has been vastly improved, but I don't think it will ever be complete, because the internet is a moving target. This is not a "ding" on the work being done by the ANA's staff, just a recognition that the internet is very dynamic. By the time we finish what we are planning to do today, it will be in danger of looking and feeling "retro". What this means is we must continue to push in this area.

I hope to earn your vote, and if elected, earn the honor of serving the ANA as it finds its way into the future.

Well I am finally going to be receiving something I've had on layaway for six months.... sometime next week.

 

As to Europe (the Schengen countries) - it is good to live inside. I live in Belgium. When I take my bicycle for the 25km to the German town of Aachen (=Aix la Chapelle), I cross the Dutch border and pass through the Dutch town of Vaals, then the German border for Aachen. The borders have become symbolic, no customs, no border guards, nobody cares what's in your pocket or baggage. And the money is the same everywhere.

In 1991 I rode a bicycle from Brunssum (NL) to a town in Germany that I don't even recall the name of (found it on Google maps: Hillensberg), primarily because I could. There was a customs booth basically in the middle of a field (this was very much a back road), and all that happened was the man inside nodded at me when I slowed down and glanced through the window to see if anyone was actually there. (And looking at it from street view this simply doesn't match my recollection of the trip so I may be confusing two different trips or something.)

Anyhow I note this thread is about a 1760 piatak, not a Nicholas II minor coin or European travel... so I guess I've just participated in the hijacking of an already hijacked thread.

I'm only missing Arizona from 2010; from 2011, Pennsylvania and Oklahoma. And everything after that, and everything from Denver.

It took me until the middle of last year to get an Arizona from the Philadelphia mint. And it was butt ugly too.

On that note, the reason you'd often see 4 rendered as IIII but never 9 as VIIII, is that IV (the rendering you'd use to be consistent with the rules) just happens happens to be the first two letters of IUVPITER, (Jupiter, ultimately deriving from Zeus Pater--he really was the same guy as Zeus!), the supreme god of the Roman pantheon. Not wanting any sort of bad attention from a god for appropriating their name... they went with IIII.

Completing a set!

OK admittedly the platinum coin was BU, which stands for "Butt Ugly" in this case.

Well platinum didn't do all that well, why should gold have a lock on it?

I take it that in order to qualify a coin must weigh 2.5 grams?

Should be interesting to see what people come up with for ten cent/tenth-dollar pieces (with the caveat that "dime" is, as far as I know, the legal name only in the United States).

It looks, on the coin as if he is seated facing away (knees are behind the crossbar representing the seat of the throne).

I miss my platinum type set. My beat up and ugly 3 ruble remnant is still a cool thing to show people at shows though.

Russia was certainly denomination happy; you had 1/4. 1/2. 1, 2, 3, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 50 kopeks and 1, 5, and 10 ruble coins, all at basically the same time, during Nicholas II's reign (I haven't looked closely at the books to see if there was a specific year where all of these were made, but certainly all of them were current--though the quarter ruble seems to have been very spottily produced). To top it off there were the 1897 7 1/2 and 15 ruble pieces but those were transitional pieces when the gold standard was altered so they don't really count.

I can only imagine what the cash drawers in cash registers (and yes I believe those existed by the 1890s-1910s) looked like.

I should qualify/clarify what I said. it could conceivably be a fake--I don't handle enough of these to really know (who has?)--and it appears there aren't decent pictures. I just don't think from the picture that it was intended to read "1819."

Looks pretty solidly like a 2 to me.

The lettering for "in silver" isn't even centered properly.

So here's the question (for computer geeks). Can you float a check written in integers?

Aw that beats me.

Got a 1962 Canadian quarter a couple of days ago, both silver and Canadian are unusual in these parts.

Continue with my type set. It's a bit difficult because it seems like I cannot find good seated liberty pieces, even though i still need NINETEEN subtypes.

Just a nit but it wasn't Elisabeth in 1724, it was Ekaterina (Catherine) I.

which war?

WW II I think. If it wasn't WW II it was WW I.

1523, anyone, anyone?

Was browsing Omnicoin and noticed that Steve D'Ippolito has (or had) a great looking bisti:

I still have this coin; I exhibit it as part of my "Russian Coins Of Conquest" exhibit (which took ANA World's Fair of Money Best of Show in 2007). Thanks!

One of my favorites is in my avatar.

50 kopeks masonic eagle, in unc... Alas I no longer have the coin (sold in Nov 2008 via World Wide Coins).

I concur, it reads Nerva Trajan ("Nerva Traianus"), which means the emperor we commonly just call Trajan (not the one we today call Nerva).

I heard the story once of German soldiers finding a room full of the things and literally scooping them up with their helmets.