Schedule of Events for the Month of March:

1. Monthly Membership Meeting: March 1^st (Wednesday) at 7:30 PM at the Central Lutheran Church. Club members and general public welcome. Elections of club officers will be on the meeting agenda. Featured will be a presentation on "Mints and the Minting Process." As requested, we will be having a Bid Board at our March meeting in place of our Bullet Auction. Members wishing to provide items for the Bid Board are asked to bring their lots to the meeting. No lot limit for the Bid Board.

2. YN (Young Numismatist) Meeting: March 10^th (Friday) at 7:00 PM at the Central Lutheran Church. YNs, club members, and general public welcomed. The meeting will focus on putting together the coin display for the Loussac Library on "Changing Money".

3. Anchorage Coin Club Board Meeting: March 15^th (Wednesday) 7:00 PM at the Central Lutheran Church. Club members welcomed.

Minutes of the February 16^th Board Meeting:

The Board meeting was called to order at 7:15PM.

Old Business was first discussed. President Loren Lucason and Treasurer Robert Hall are working to put together the Bid Board for our club's March 1^st membership meeting. A discussion ensued on the rules for the Bid Board. Loren and Robert will have the rules formulated and ready in time for the March meeting.

On the issue of our club's upcoming Officer/Board elections on March 1^st, no new additions to the list of people running for office. At this time the following people have volunteered to run:

• For President Bill Hamilton

• For Vice President: John Larsen

• For Secretary Larry Nakata

• For Treasurer Robert Hall

• For Board Seat Roy Brown

The other two Board seats will be filled by Loren Lucason who automatically steps into one of the seats as outgoing president (in accordance with our club's bylaws). Don Thurber still has one more year to go on the other Board seat. Club members can still volunteer to run for any of these positions and can "toss their hat in the ring" right up to election day. The Board wants to encourage members to run for office.

New Business was then discussed. Loren gave a briefing on the progress of the Loussac Library Numismatic Display. A number of YNs have volunteered to help with the display. Loren would like to have adult volunteers as well. The name of the display will be "Changing Money".... which will focus on changes in U.S. coinage and currency. At our March 1^st meeting, it is Loren's intent to ask for adult volunteers to work with the YNs in setting up the display. Details to be provided by Loren at that time.

Larry Nakata will be organizing the YN Donation Auction which traditionally is held at our club's May membership meeting. Larry will be asking for numismatic donations from our club's membership.

Final item of business covered at the Board meeting was a decision to award a scholarship this year that would send a YN from our club to the ANA Summer Conference in Colorado Springs. Several of our YNs have reached an age suitable for our club to send one of them to this conference. Larry Nakata and Loren Lucason will be looking at costs and will work on putting together the rules that will determine the selection of the YN going to the ANA Summer Conference.

As there was no further business, the Board meeting concluded at 8:30 PM.

The month of May sees our club hosting an auction in which club members donate numismatic items such as coins, currency, and books. Proceeds from this auction goes to the club's YN Education Program.

Thanks to this yearly auction, we have been able to further our YN Program which now consists of 34 YNs. This year will see us sending one of our YNs to Colorado Springs to attend the ANA Summer Conference under this program.

I want to thank all of you who have supported this YN Donation Auction over the years.

I am looking for numismatic donations from our members (YOU!!) for this year's auction.

You can drop off any donation lots with our coins dealers in Anchorage. You can mail the donations to our club's post office box. You can also contact any Board member or myself. Our phone numbers are listed in this newsletter.

Again.... thanks for your support over the years............

        Larry Nakata.

We had a very good turnout of YNs and parents at our YN meeting on Friday evening (Feb. 11^th). In fact... it was necessary to move the meeting into a bigger room for all who attended.

Our session on "Lincoln Wheat Cents" covered the coin's history, the key dates that are sought after in this series, and errors & varieties. The YNs were very fortunate to see four key date coins:

• The 1909-S VDB,

• The 1914-D,

• The 1922 Plain, and

• The 1955 doubled die Lincoln cent.

Thanks go to Roy Brown for loaning us those coins for the YN meeting.

While it would have been nice to give one of these key dates away as a door prize (as suggested by one of the parents).... the actual door prize, a 1956-P Franklin Half Dollar in BU condition, was won by YN Chris Odom.

The balance of the meeting saw the YNs "cherrypicking" through an assortment of wheat cents in hopes of finding an error or variety... in particular, a repunched mint mark. The YNs did find a number of die chip wheat cent varieties, which should make for good additions to their collections. Again.... thanks go to Roy Brown for providing the hoard of wheat cents for the YNs to "cherrypick". Each YN was also given a nice BU Lincoln wheat cent minted in the 1930s or early 1940s for their collections.

Before ending the meeting, member Loren Lucason briefed the YNs on our club's upcoming display at the Loussac Library. This display will be featured at the library from March 23^rd through April 6^th, The theme of this display will be on the subject of the changing nature of US coins and currency. A number of our YNs will help with the setup of this display on the portion dealing with cents, quarters, dollar coins, and paper currency. Thanks go our YNs for volunteering their time for this project.

Our next YN meeting will be on Friday, March 10^th at the usual place (Central Lutheran Church 7 PM). We will be working on the display for the Loussac Library that evening. Better figure that there will be lots of nice coins and currency at this meeting........

        Larry Nakata.

Last month our newsletter focused on the subject of U.S. Gold coinage. There was a great article that I spotted on the Internet that I wanted to post in this month's newsletter. The information in this article comes from NGC (Numismatic Guarantee Corporation) and was posted in http://www.tulvig.com

In the first half of the 19^th century, Americans were absorbed with western expansion fulfilling their "Manifest Destiny" to conquer the continent. By the 1870's, the interior of the country was secure, and the nation's focus began to move beyond its borders, with increased emphasis on international trade. But global commerce was hampered by scores of competing coins and currencies, and many people on both sides of the Atlantic called for a worldwide coinage system to facilitate trade. In 1867, growing discussion blossomed into an international conference in Paris, where twenty nations agreed to adopt a gold standard with the French franc as its base.

1879 $4 Coiled Hair Stella Pattern

Many in Congress envisioned the United States as the hub of a world monetary system and responded with their own ideas for an international gold coin, but few proposals went beyond debate. By 1871, it was silver, not gold, that was on the minds of many legislators, and silver was not faring well at all. Germany adopted the gold standard and dumped huge amounts of silver on the market, thereby depressing iTs price. At the same time, vast quantities of silver from the Comstock Lode added to the oversupply. With little industrial use for the metal, western mine owners desperately needed the U.S. Mint as a customer and in a big way. Fortunately, they got help from three very cooperative members of Congress, Representatives Richard Bland, John Kasson, and William Kelley. For over two decades, these three never missed an opportunity to promote the interests of either silver or nickel mine owners, and they were often successful in their efforts. Kasson and Kelley were partly responsible for conversion of the dime, quarter, and half dollar to the metric system in 1873. Although they argued that metric coinage would circulate worldwide and increase the demand for American silver, the change had little impact, either on the weight of the coins or their use overseas. The legislation did have a bonus for the mine owners, however. The silver interests got free coinage of a Trade dollar for use in the Orient. The Mint made almost 36 million of these large silver pieces between 1873 and 1885, barely enhancing commerce with the Far East but certainly adding to the mine owner's bottom lines. The nickel interests also got a gift: With the elimination of the three and five-cent pieces made of silver, the Mint was limited to using nickel for those denominations. Five years later, the silver interests scored again: In 1878, Bland pushed through the Bland-Allison Act, requiring the government to purchase between two and four million ounces of silver each month and coin the metal into standard silver dollars.

It was Kasson, though, who was behind another try at an international coinage in 1879. Attempting to appease advocates of both silver and gold, he proposed a "goloid" dollar containing 96% silver, 4% gold, and a four-dollar gold piece of 90% gold, 10% silver. The four-dollar coin was intended to compete globally with a myriad of similarly valued pieces, including the French 20 franc coin, the Spanish 20 pesetas, the Dutch and Austrian 8 florins and the Italian 20 lire.

The four-dollar coin received an entirely new designation: "stella" (Latin for star). This was analogous to the eagle, "both the star and the eagle being national emblems on our coins." Like the ten-dollar eagle and its smaller and larger counterparts, the stella was to be another denominational unit, and other coins would be expressed in fractions or multiples of it. Along with the stella, patterns for the "goloid" dollar and a "quintuple stella" (metric double-eagle) were struck in 1879.

There were two obverse designs for the stella, one with Flowing Hair engraved by Charles Barber and another with Coiled Hair by George Morgan. Barber's design depicts Liberty with long, flowing hair; Morgan's version differs only in that Liberty's hair is tied in a bun. On both designs, Liberty is encircled by the lettering *6*G*.3*S*.7C*7*G*R*A*M*S*, stating the proportions of gold, silver, and copper in the coin. The reverse features a large five-pointed star as the central motif, with the incuse inscription ONE/STELLA/400/CENT. Both the U.S. motto E PLUR1BUS UNUM and the Latin motto DEO EST GLORIA (God is Glorious) circle the star, in turn surrounded by the inscriptions UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and FOUR DOL.

The stella never saw regular production; Congress killed the legislation and only patterns were made, all proofs. Unfortunately, mintage records for these pieces have proven to be unreliable. Today, specialists believe that only 15 originals and 425 "restrikes" of the 1879 Flowing Hair design were made, with the originals lacking the die striations of the later pieces. These 1879 Flowing Hair "restrikes" are the most frequently encountered of this denomination, as all the other issues are exceedingly rare. Surviving 1880 dated Flowing Hair coins number fewer than 25, and the highest estimates of existing Coiled Hair pieces are 15 for 1879 and 10 for the 1880 coins. Whatever the exact number, the 1880 Flowing Hair pieces are at least a dozen times scarcer than their 1879 counterparts, and Coiled Hair stellas are rarer still, seldom appearing on the market except in sales of major collections.

Although all four-dollar gold pieces are patterns, they have nevertheless been incorporated into the regular series of U.S. coins, similar to the 1856 Flying Eagle cents, Gobrecht dollars, and Wire Edge Indian Head eagles. Because of their rarity, however, they are usually collected as type coins. Only a few wealthy and determined collectors have ever been lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time to put together a complete four-piece set of these historic coins. At the time they were made, stellas were very popular with collectors, but with extremely low mintages, there were not enough pieces to go around. In the early 1880's, newspapers reported that while an average collector could not acquire a four-dollar gold piece from the Mint at any price, looped specimens could be seen hanging around the necks of madams operating some of Washington's most famous bordellos.

Gem specimens of all four issues exist, but many stellas saw use as jewelry or pocket pieces and show impairments of some kind. Friction on the design will first show on the face of Liberty on the obverse and on the star on the reverse. Unlike the commonly traded bullion coins struck in the latter part of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, stellas are infrequently seen and always scrutinized, making counterfeits virtually unknown.

After two years, the four-dollar gold piece was abandoned by the Mint and forgotten by the public and Congress. Today, only numismatists remember the dream of a universal coinage system that created these fascinating coins.

SPECIFICATIONS

• Diameter: 22 millimeters

• Weight: 7 Grams (restrikes vary)

• Composition: .85714 gold, .0428 silver, .100 copper

• Edge: Reeded

• Net weight: . 1929 ounce pure gold, .0096 ounce pure silver

• Akers, David W., "United Stales Gold Coins, Volume III, Three Dollar Gold Pieces 1854-1889, Four Dollar Gold Pieces 1879-1880, Paramount Publications, Englewood, OH, 1976.

• Bowers, Q. David, "The History of United States Coinage As Illustrated by the Garrett Collection", Bowers and Ruddy Galleries, Wolfeboro, NH, 1979.

• Breen, Walter, "Walter Breen's Complete Encyclopedia of U.S. and Colonial Coins" F.C.I. Press / Doubleday, New York, 1988.

• Carothers, Neil, "Fractional Money, A History of Small Coins and Fractional Paper Currency of the United Stales", John Wiley & Sons, London, 1930.

• Judd, J. Hewitt, M.D., "United Slates Pattern, Experimental and Trial Pieces, 7^th Edition, A. Kosoff (editor), Western Publishing Co., Racine, WI, 1982.

• Pollock, Andrew W. Ill, "United Stales Patterns and Related Issues", Bowers and Merena Galleries, Wolfeboro, NH, 1994.