No Stars!

I went to the ANA World’s Fair Of Money in Chicago, and managed to turn up both of the Seated Liberty No Stars coins, the half dime and the dime.

Chicago ANA, 2014

I spent the last week in Chicago at the ANA’s World’s Fair of Money.  It was a show full of controversy, difficult hunts for coins, but it had its rewards as well.

The Barber Coins Guy

John H. Bunge
9 November 1929 – 15 April 2013

I knew John Bunge longer than any other coin collector, bar none.

I knew John Bunge first as a teacher.  He taught my ninth grade geometry class, at a school that was closed a few years ago, in 1978-79.  By all accounts he was a good teacher.  Even though I was in his class I really can’t judge.  I was a math whiz and the mark of a good teacher is how well he teaches the students who would otherwise struggle with the subject.

Then I knew him as a collector.  Very early in my time as a member of the two local clubs in Colorado Springs, he gave a short talk on the Liberty Head or “Barber” coins that were issued from 1892-1916, and for that reason I had him “tagged” in my mind as a collector of Barber coinage from that point on.  With one thing or another he stopped going to the meetings for a few years, then I did, but we started seeing each other at the meetings fairly regularly this past year.  I really don’t know firsthand what else he collected though I remember him giving talks and showing off other items at meetings of the Colorado Springs Numismatic Society.  I did one day last year bring my three Barber type coins to a Numismatic Society meeting in the hopes that he would be there, and he was.  (Twenty years later he was still the Barber Coins guy.)  He pronounced them “gems.”

Those who knew him much better than I did said he had many interests and went after all of them with an intense passion, which is exactly as it should be.

He attended the Numismatic Society meeting this last Sunday, and I did not go.  He passed away the next day in his sleep, having just done some work on the kitchen.  Just that suddenly he was gone, leaving behind Claire, his wife of 62 years, and a large number of children, grandchildren, and even a few great-grandchildren (one on the way as I write this).

So long, old friend.

The Barber Coins

Another way for me to pay a tribute to John would be to talk about the Barber series of coins a bit.  Perhaps the reason John’s interest in the Barber coins stuck in my mind so thoroughly is that it’s a bit unusual.  The designs that came after 1916 are widely regarded as beautiful artwork:  The “Mercury” dime, the standing liberty quarter and the walking liberty half are artistic classics, and the walking liberty half design got recycled onto our present “silver eagle” bullion coin. By comparison the Barber series (which is sometimes considered to include the “V” nickel, which was designed by Barber but is a bit different from the dime, quarter and half dollar) are considered staid and dull and hardly seem like they could be interesting at all.  Even the portrait of Liberty on the coins seems lacking in much detail, with a broad flat cheek and a liberty cap with almost no detail in it, rather than bare hair (which would tend to have a lot).  This, I believe, was a deliberate decision on the part of Charles Barber (I’ll explain below).  In any case, the US Mint waited the statutory 25 years between design changes, and once that time period was up they dumped this design.

One look at a lustrous gem uncirculated Barber quarter or half dollar, though, and you will be surprised.  These coins look fantastic in a lustrous uncirculated grade.  I have uncirculated examples in each denomination but I won’t show my photographs here, because my photographs don’t do them justice and in this case it’s vital that justice be done.  But if you are reading this and don’t know what the Barber design looks like, see here.  (You’ll note that in many cases the coins pictured there are a bit worn or weakly struck–I wish I could get decent pictures of mine, but I simply haven’t learned how to handle luster when photographing.)

One of the most beautiful coins I ever saw was a Barber quarter, where the reverse field had toned an electric blue.  Picture that eagle and the stars against a vibrant blue blackground.  That coin was in an auction clear back in 1996, and bidding opened at three times the Red Book price.  (You get three guesses as to who doesn’t own that coin but wishes he did.)

It turns out that Barber halves are noticeably expensive to obtain in mint state grades though the quarter and dime are much more manageable.  In fact, if anyone has ever managed to assemble a set of mint-state, well struck barber halves, he or she is keeping mum because at least some people claim it has never been done.  Quarters and dimes, though not as expensive, can also be difficult to find in mint state.

So a challenge and surprising beauty when you first see an uncirculated piece.  That’s enough.  People will collect them, passionately enough that there’s an organization devoted to the Barber coinage.  (I’d have joined if I, as a type collector, weren’t already done.)

But I promised to explain my comment on Barber’s motivation for the plain design.  I think he knew he was designing a coin, first and foremost.  Most forms of sculpture do not suffer a lot of wear, but a coin will, and Barber was very cognizant of this and accounted for it when he made his designs.   He wanted to have a design that would wear fairly gracefully, and he succeeded.  If his silver coinage wears a bit, nothing is lost because the high points of the design all have no detail on them.  Even on heavily worn pieces you can tell what the design is supposed to be.  Contrast that with the walking liberty half dollar which has all sorts of detail in the high points.  First off, those details are rarely struck up properly to begin with.  Then consider that on a worn (or really badly struck–and there are a lot of those!) walker half dollar the design quickly comes to resemble a plain vertical bar and it’s hard to appreciate the design then.  I’ll even go so far as to say they look ugly then.  Of the three post-Barber designs, I think the dime holds up best as it wears.  (By contrast, the “walker” design was an excellent choice for the non circulating, and painstakingkly well struck, silver eagle, which allows its strengths to come through and be preserved.)

Apparently Charles Barber went to his grave claiming that the “Mercury” dime, Standing Liberty Quarter, and Walking Liberty Half designs were failures.  By his criteria, I think he was right.

It’s almost a hundred years since the Barber coinage was discontinued, but of course we still have the coins and can, if we take an interest, collect them.  Staid and boring?  Not really but I will admit it is an acquired taste.

Capped Bust Dime

I recently purchased this 1811/09 Capped Bust dime for my type set; it lets me check off the open collar subtype for this denomination.  Of course this is not really an ideal type coin (though it is a good coin), it’s much too expensive a date for that.

When I started putting together the set, I made a surprising discovery.  These earlier types (draped bust and capped bust) in many ways reminded my of my time in Russian Imperial numismatics.  And that’s because back then minting was  still bleeding edge technology.  It was difficult to make two coins identical, because of everything from uneven and laminated planchets, to dies that weren’t identical, either because full hubbing wasn’t in use yet or because dies got used even after they cracked or got worn.  That plus the fact that most specimens from nearly two centuries ago are long gone, means no two coins in today’s marketplace are alike, even after you account for condition. I could look at two rubles from the same year and they were very individual, just as I can do with the US coinage from the same time.  It adds to the challenge of the hunt.