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ACCent: The Monthly Newsletter of the Anchorage Coin Club
| Volume 16, Number 8 |
August 2003 |
|
| August Membership Meeting | ||
| Wed., Aug. 6th, 2003 | Central Lutheran Church |
7:00 PM Open, 7:30 Meeting |
We would like to see a good turnout for our coin club's summer picnic on Sunday, July 27th. Show up starting at 12 noon with the picnic running through the afternoon. Location: Centennial Park Pavilion. A map has been provided with this month's newsletter to direct you to the location.
Besides lots of food... there will be a coin auction, games, and lots of coins to be given away that afternoon.
So be sure to bring your family to this event.
We also want to remind all of our club members that our next coin club meeting will be held on Wednesday, August 6th at Central Lutheran Church. Although the
YNs (i.e., Young Numismatists in our club) will not meet until September 3rd, YNs are encouraged to attend our regular membership meetings...such as the club's summer picnic and our club's August 6th meeting.
Summertime is a time of enjoyment here in Alaska. The weather has been great this year with lots of summertime activities galore.
If you can find time to enjoy the company of other coin collectors, we look forward to seeing all of you.... Your Editors.
The beautiful Anchorage Coin Club banner was displayed at its first major US coin chow. It was quite an impressive display and received many compliments. Halfway through the show I felt that maybe the banner was too large and maybe taking up too much viewing space across the bourse floor...so I decided to take it down. Many dealers approached me and said "NO, don't take that down. We like it, it's very nice, leave it up!". So I left the banner up for the entire three day show. Our banner was definitely a hit, and everyone expressed their admiration. We also gave away many Anchorage Coin Club newsletters which many people appreciated and were interested in reading. A very special thanks to Marilyn Stubblefield, Richard Bilak, and Loren Lucason for making the fabulous banner possible and helping promote the Anchorage Coin Club in the numismatic community...Carl (Carl's Jewelers and Gifts/ University Center).
Schedule of Events for the Month of August:
The Anchorage Coin Club invites you and your family to attend our club's summer picnic at Centennial Park on Sunday July 27th from 12 noon through the afternoon. This event will be held at the Pavilion located at Centennial Park in Anchorage.
There will be lots of food, fun events, coins/numismatic items to be given away, and Part Two of our Young Numismatists Donation Auction.
The club will provide the hotdogs, hamburgers, chips, dips, soda pop, cups, plates, and utensils for this event. We ask that club members bring a salad, dessert, or hors doeurve potluck item. Roy Brown will be calling members to get a head count of those attending...so that we can determine the quantity of items needing to be purchased for the picnic. If any of you wish to bring an item, you can give Roy that information at the time he calls.
The events are being planned by Greg Samorajski and his boys (who are YNs in our club).
We will also have an auction that afternoon. This auction will be Part Two of The Young Numismatist Donation Auction. Coins and a number of numismatic books will be featured in this auction.
We will also be raffling off our club's latest coin, a 1934-S US Peace Dollar in VF condition. Raffle tickets will available at $5/ticket prior to the drawing.
So...come one and all to our club's 15th year Summer picnic....
Minutes of the July 16th Board Meeting
The meeting was called to order at 7:26 PM by Vice President John Larson.
The Board met at the Spenard Lions Club located at 2108 Roosevelt Street. While at the Spenard Lions Club, the Board had a chance to look at the Lions club facility.
It has been proposed that the club consider moving their regular membership meetings to the Spenard Lions Club. At this time, the Anchorage Coin Club is paying Central .Lutheran. Church $25/event for use the church facilities. Through consolidation of the YN and membership meetings into one event each month...and by having the Board meet at restaurant locations for their monthly board meetings...the club has lowered it's overhead cost from $900 to $300 per year for use of Central Lutheran Church facilities. The proposal to move meetings to the Spenard Lions Club is intended to lower the club's yearly costs even further.
As first order of business, the Board made the decision to query our coin club members at the July 27th Summer picnic (at Centennial Park) and at the August 6th membership meeting (at Central Lutheran Church) on this matter. The Board recommends that members try at least one meeting at the Spenard Lions Club...for either September or October. The members attending this particular meeting will then decide the matter. The Spenard Lions Club will then require a letter from our coin club requesting permission that meetings be held at their location.
Correspondence and bills to be paid were then reviewed.
An update was provided by Larry Nakata on the status of our club's 15th year medallion. Larry is still in the process of getting costs for production of the medallions. It will not be possible to get this information in this month's newsletter. Larry expects to have the costs formalized by the next newsletter.
The Board then went over plans for the club's Summer picnic scheduled for July 27th at Centennial Park in Anchorage. At this time everything looks good. Bill Hamilton will be bringing the barbecue grill for the event. The Samorajskis have a number of fun events planned for the picnic. Larry Nakata and Loren Lucason will be getting all of the food in the week prior to the picnic. All looks good at this time.
The Board then discussed the 2004 calendar project. At this time, there has been little interest by our club members for 2004 club calendars. In order to make this project happen, it will be necessary to get commitments for at least 100 calendars before proceeding with this project. Cost: $10/calendar. Thus far, only a few club members have expressed interest. Unless we can get better commitment for calendars by our club's August 6th meeting...it will be necessary to defer the project until next year (for 2005 calendars).
As there was no further business to discuss, the meeting concluded at 8:36 PM.
We wanted to remind all YNs that there will be no YN meetings until September 3rd.
However, there will be our club's Summer Picnic on Sunday July 27th.
Be sure to bring your family to the picnic. Lots of prizes and food will be enjoyed that afternoon.
See you there... Don and Marilyn.
THE 1950-D NICKEL: WORTH A SECOND LOOK!
by Mike Nourse (Life Member #1)
If you have done much numismatic reading over the years, you are undoubtedly familiar with the story of the 1950-D Jefferson nickel fiasco. When the mintage figure for the year 1950 at the Denver Mint was made public, collectors and speculators grabbed up every one of these nickels they could find.
The price climbed and climbed and climbed for over a decade, eventually reaching around $25 per coin in 1964, which translates to about $100 or so in today's dollars. Wow! However, it has pretty much been downhill ever since then, and you can get a decent Uncirculated specimen for under $10 today. I have not confirmed it myself, but rumor has it that the 1950-D nickel is the only coin listed in the 1964 edition of the Redbook that actually has a lower price listed in the current edition.
It sure sounds like it would be hard to find a worse place to put some money today than into a coin with a 40 year track record as a loser. But maybe we should take a closer look at the 1950-D nickel before we start laying them out on the railroad tracks to be flattened out like scrap metal.
The low mintage figure that started all the ruckus in the 1950's and early 1960's was 2,630,030 pieces. That is a low mintage, and it is the lowest mintage among Jefferson nickels produced for circulation, but one can certainly find lower mintage figures among the older Buffalo, Liberty head, and Shield nickel series.
The 1950-D nickels were heavily saved near their time of issue, so it is a safe bet that 2 1/2 million of them are still in existence, an adequate supply of that date to guarantee that they will never be rare. But price depends on demand as well as supply, and this is a case where demand could possibly outstrip the supply, even as large as that supply is. Jefferson nickels are not at the top of the popularity list right now, and they really have not been there for quite a long time, possibly all the way back to the 1960's.
It must now be noted that there will be some new designs found on the nickel sometime in the coming months, and that invariably gets attention from the general public. We received confirmation of that when the state quarters were first issued and many non-collectors took notice. Some of those people started collecting Washington quarters and hopefully will eventually become dedicated coin collectors. Now, when James T. Public sees a new design on the nickel, he is not likely to suddenly start slamming together a set of Extra Fine Shield nickels; he is first going to look into building a complete set of Jefferson nickels, minted from 1938 to present.
Now, look at that that mintage figure of 2.6 million again. You may notice that number is roughly one percent of the population of the United States today. In other words, there are only enough 1950-D nickels to go around for one person in 100 to have one, and that makes the absurd assumptions that there are no foreign collectors and that all collectors are content with a single specimen of this nickel (i.e. no roll collectors). When you put it that way, it really drives home just how low the mintage of nickels in Denver that year really was. It shows that Jefferson nickel collecting only has to catch on in a small way among the general public for the available supply to dry up.
The moral of this whole story is that there are plenty of 50-D nickels to supply the current number of people building Jefferson nickel sets along with those who are hoarding them or just have a roll or two stashed away. If even a tiny portion of the non-collecting public looks into building one of these sets, that situation will change dramatically, dealer's inventories will be quickly depleted, and prices will rise. It remains to be seen how much excitement the new nickels generate, but the new nickels coming along five years after the beginning of the state quarters program certainly should prove beneficial to our hobby!....Mike Nourse.
Lot # Description
1. U.S. Coins: 7 books & 3 Morgan dollar folders
2. Chinese and Japanese coins: 6 books
3. Iberian coins (mostly Spanish): 8 books
4. Paper Money including fractional & military currency: 13 books
5. Ancient coins including Handbook of Roman Imperial Coins: 5 books
6. British Empire: 4 books
7. Eclectic books on collecting: 13 books
8. New World coins: 18 books
9. Seated Liberty Dime 1841-O
10. Indian Head Cent 1909
11. Spanish Mexican pillar 1/2 reale 1746
12. Silver German 2 marks 1913-A
13. British Caribbean Territories 1965 proof dime
14. BU 1978 Belize 25 cent 5458 mintage
15. Electronic Scale
16. Gold Plated Chinese 5 Yuan in Bezel
17. BU 1979 Silver Costa Rican 100 Colones
18. BU 1992 Russian 3 Roubles 15th anniversary defeat of communism
19. Certified Alaska Gold Nugget from The Alaska Mint
20. $100 roll of mints
Thanks go to all of the people and organizations who donated numismatic materials for this year's YN Donation Numismatic Auction. Among the donators were Greg Samorajski, Jim Hill, Larry Nakata, Fred Weinberg & Co., Pinnacle Rarities, Mike Orr, and The Alaska Mint.
Club Archivist / Photographer
DUES
The Anchorage Coin Club is a non-profit organization formed to provide information, education, and a meeting place for individuals having an interest in numismatics.
Correspondence Address: Anchorage Coin Club, P.O. Box 230169, Anchorage,
Alaska 99523