The E-Sylum v14#09, February 27, 2011

[esylum at binhost.com]

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The E-Sylum
  
  An electronic publication of
  The Numismatic Bibliomania Society


Volume , Number 09, February 27, 2011
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WAYNE'S WORDS: THE E-SYLUM FEBRUARY 27, 2011
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NEW BOOK: OTTOMAN EMPIRE COINS 1687-1839
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BOOK IN PROGRESS: COUNTERFEITER LYMAN PARKS (1788-1872)
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MARGINALIA: DIM FUTURE FOR NOTES IN THE MARGINS
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NUMISMATIC VOCABULARY: DAMASCENE
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THOMAS HIPSCHEN, BEP PORTRAIT ENGRAVER
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MORE ON STEVE TANENBAUM
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MORE ON WHO SAID STEPHEN NAGY WAS JOHN HASELTINE'S SON-IN-LAW?
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MORE ON THAT BEP INTAGLIO TEST PLATE
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BORDERS BANKRUPTCY - WHO GETS STIFFED?
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QUERY: IS FLORESCENT LIGHTING HARMFUL TO BOOKS?
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NOTES FROM E-SYLUM READERS: FEBRUARY 27, 2011
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ENGRAVING ON THE POINT OF A PIN
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CHALLENGE COINS BECOME COPYCAT FAD AMONG BUREAUCRATS, POLITICIANS
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MORE ON CHINESE COUNTERFEITS
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THE BRITISH MUSEUM CELEBRATES ITS 150TH BIRTHDAY
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ANNAPOLIS PASTOR COLLECTS BIBLICAL COINS
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FEATURED WEB SITE: BIBLICAL COINS BLOG
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Click here to read this issue on the web





WAYNE'S WORDS: THE E-SYLUM FEBRUARY 27, 2011





Among our new subscribers this week are
Greg Shane,
Rhonda Kauffman, 
Charlene Myers, and
Jerry Robinette. 
Welcome aboard! 
We now have 1,412 email subscribers, plus 117 followers on Facebook, including 
Matt Draiss and Robert Jenkins.


We don't have a lot of reader-generated content this week, but that's OK - one never knows what the mix will be from week to week.  But we do have a good selection of numismatic news and information covering a wide range of topics.  I'll look forward to your comments, although I've long ago given up on trying to predict which articles will inspire more discussion.  That's part of the fun of The E-Sylum - one never knows what direction we'll go in, but you can count on it being interesting.


This week we open with a new book on Ottoman Empire coinage, word of a new book-in-progress on a U.S. counterfeiter, and an article on the benefits of marginalia, those scribbles in books we either love or hate.


Other topics include BEP engraver Tom Hipschen, who loses out in the Borders bankruptcy, florescent lighting in libraries, and The British Museum.
To learn more about counterfeiter Lyman Parks, koniackers, damascened medals and copycat Challenge Coins, read on.  Have a great week, everyone!


Wayne Homren
 Numismatic Bibliomania Society




NEW BOOK: OTTOMAN EMPIRE COINS 1687-1839



Don Cleveland of Australia forwarded this note from Kaan Uslu about a new book on Ottoman coins:



Our second book of the Ottoman Empire Coins Series has been published. In this book we cover the area from Suleyman-II to Mahmud-II (AH 1099-1255 / AD 1687-1839)


To see sample pages from our book please click the following link

issuu.com/kaanuslu/docs/ottoman_empire_coins_










You can either buy directly from EBAY using this link
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320629320036&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT


or


You can send 60 US$ (registered postage cost included) directly to our Paypal address : kaan at uslu.net

Our main web site (www.osmanliparalari.com) is fully renewed. It will be available in english very soon.





I captured some images from the site.  The sample pages seem to make this confusing (to the Westerner) series easier to understand.  If anyone purchases the book I'd like to invite you to review it here in The E-Sylum.
-Editor





BOOK IN PROGRESS: COUNTERFEITER LYMAN PARKS (1788-1872)


The Past is Present blog from the American Antiquarian Society mentioned an upcoming book on counterfeiting by Deborah M. Child.
-Editor





Deborah M. Child (www.deborahmchild.com) has been at AAS for the past month researching her upcoming book on Lyman Parks (1788-1872). Parks’ forged bank notes were so accomplished that even the experts could not tell his notes from legitimate currency. Part of Fraud Week on Past is Present, Deborah’s post below gives tips on how to identify counterfeit currency, starting with a bill that features our man-of-the-week, George Washington.



Gilbert Stuart’s bust portrait of George Washington continues to be a favorite subject for vignettes on American currency. Shown here is an example from the AAS currency collection. 







This counterfeit bank note is an excellent illustration of what to look for when examining currency made before 1862 when the Federal Government began regulating the currency. Prior to that, each bank adopted its own distinctive design. Paper was not standardized and bank note plates were outsourced to private engravers. 


Internal control of currency was just as loosely maintained. Each note was individually numbered and then signed by the cashier and the bank president. Denominations for currency were not standardized either and could range from five and half cents to 10,000 dollars. All these variations provided a myriad of opportunities for the counterfeiters aka koniackers to ply their trade.








The second example is another bank note from the AAS currency collection. Examined over a light box, it becomes immediately apparent this bill has been chemically altered. The ink is uneven and the lettering is not consistent with the rest of the text.  The paper is thinner and lighter, the texture altered, making it obvious that the bank name “Hamilton” in the center has been substituted.


The bank for which it was originally printed was undoubtedly defunct so the counterfeiter removed the name of the original bank and substituted this name to place it back in circulation.


Not surprisingly, all this devious behavior corrupting the currency prompted a public outcry and a proliferation of anti-counterfeit guidebooks and newspapers. Trouble was the counterfeiters would study these guides as closely as the bankers and adjusted their practices accordingly.


To read the complete article, see:

Fraud Week, Part 3: Funny Money

(pastispresent.org/2011/good-sources/fraud-week-part-3-funny-money/)







THE BOOK BAZARRE

DAVID SKLOW - FINE NUMISMATIC BOOKS offers
the Q. David Bowers Research Library Sale Part V on June 11, 2011, including:

Director of the Mint Reports 1851-1970
.
www.finenumismaticbooks.com.
PH: (719) 302-5686, FAX: (719) 302-4933.  EMAIL: numismaticbooks at aol.com. USPS: Box 6321, Colorado Springs, CO. 80934. Contact me for your numismatic literature needs! 





MARGINALIA: DIM FUTURE FOR NOTES IN THE MARGINS


Len Augsburger forwarded this New York Times article about the impending death of marginalia.  Who's got a great example of marginalia in numismatic literature?
-Editor




Locked in a climate-controlled vault at the Newberry Library here, a volume titled “The Pen and the Book” can be studied only under the watch of security cameras.


The book, about making a profit in publishing, scarcely qualifies as a literary masterpiece. It is highly valuable, instead, because a reader has scribbled in the margins of its pages. 


The scribbler was Mark Twain, who had penciled, among other observations, a one-way argument with the author, Walter Besant, that “nothing could be stupider” than using advertising to sell books as if they were “essential goods” like “salt” or “tobacco.” On another page, Twain made some snide remarks about the big sums being paid to another author of his era, Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science. 


Like many readers, Twain was engaging in marginalia, writing comments alongside passages and sometimes giving an author a piece of his mind. It is a rich literary pastime, sometimes regarded as a tool of literary archaeology, but it has an uncertain fate in a digitalized world. 


“People will always find a way to annotate electronically,” said G. Thomas Tanselle, a former vice president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and an adjunct professor of English at Columbia University. “But there is the question of how it is going to be preserved. And that is a problem now facing collections libraries.” 


Marginalia was more common in the 1800s. Samuel Taylor Coleridge was a prolific margin writer, as were William Blake and Charles Darwin. In the 20th century it mostly came to be regarded like graffiti: something polite and respectful people did not do. 


Paul F. Gehl, a curator at the Newberry, blamed generations of librarians and teachers for “inflicting us with the idea” that writing in books makes them “spoiled or damaged.” 


But marginalia never vanished. When Nelson Mandela was imprisoned in South Africa in 1977, a copy of Shakespeare was circulated among the inmates. Mandela wrote his name next to the passage from “Julius Caesar” that reads, “Cowards die many times before their deaths.” 


Studs Terkel, the oral historian, was known to admonish friends who would read his books but leave them free of markings. He told them that reading a book should not be a passive exercise, but rather a raucous conversation. 


Books with markings are increasingly seen these days as more valuable, not just for a celebrity connection but also for what they reveal about the community of people associated with a work, according to Heather Jackson, a professor of English at the University of Toronto. 


To read the complete article, see:

Book Lovers Fear Dim Future for Notes in the Margins

(www.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/books/21margin.html)




NUMISMATIC VOCABULARY: DAMASCENE


Dick Johnson submitted these thoughts on a medal, a numismatic vocabulary word, and the never-ending process of learning in numismatics.  Thanks!
-Editor



My local coin dealer and good friend, Dick Bacca (Heads & Tails Coin Shop, Torrington) sent me a scan this week. "Help identify this medal" he emailed. 
 







After some heavy researching the books I identified the medal from the Kings and Queens of England series, engraved by Jean Dassier. It is goldplating on a bronze medal, bears a portrait of King Stephen in full armor, with his vita in the reverse exergue: born 1105, crowned 1135, died 1154.

 
Digging deeper I found Chris Eimer's comments on this series in his book "British Commemorative Medals" (page 79). Chris stated "Bronze medals are occasionally found damascened, whereby the relief is gilt and the field "bronzed."
 

I vaguely remembered hearing the term damascene applied to medals before, but had never encountered an actual specimen. Here was an illustration in full color, and a documented use of the term "damascene."
 

In metalworking damascene means an inlay of gold usually in steel. In the medallic field it is an imitation of this by goldplating. Dassier's series was first struck in 1731 but the dies still existed into the following century when the medals were restruck -- 34 in all -- and finished with a heavy bronzing treatment. After which the medals were masked off where the gold was not to be deposited leaving the dark bronze finish intact, then goldplated. After the masking was removed the medal exhibited the dark brown field in stark contrast to the bright gold relief.
 

Since goldplating was not in active use until the 1840s, the restriking must have occurred after this time.(Before this time a gold surface was applied by firegilding with the use of mercury but the mercury fumes were poisonous, shortening the lives of such workers.) This piece was not firegilded, it was heavy goldplate.
 

With an example of damascene in front of me I realized I had not included the term in my "Encyclopedia of Coin and Medal Technology."  Trouble is, I had just  sent off the full manuscript to my associate at Medallic Art Company, Rob Vugteveen, which had clocked in at 1,851 terms. I could now write the entry on damascene and be able to illustrate it. Clock in entry number 1,852. Hey, the book is not printed yet, I can still add another term.
 

I am in my seventh decade in numismatics, 71 of my 80 years. This is a textbook case: You are never too old to learn something new!




THOMAS HIPSCHEN, BEP PORTRAIT ENGRAVER


Gene Hessler forwarded this great article about Thomas Hipschen, a former portrait engraver at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.  The article came out in October 2010, but we haven't covered it in The E-Sylum.  It's long, but very well done - be sure to go online and read it all.  Thanks, Gene!
-Editor




Though few Washingtonians know of him, most of us carry some of Thomas Hipschen’s art every day. His portraits of Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, and Ben Franklin are cut into American history, printed on the front of the $5, $20, $50, and $100 bills.


Hipschen is considered one of the world’s best portrait engravers. “For the late 20th century, he is basically the engraver,” says Mark D. Tomasko, author of The Feel of Steel, a history of currency engraving in the United States. 


But when the Treasury Department rolls out a new $100 bill in February, the engraving on the front—a fuller portrait of Franklin—will be Hipschen’s last. The two-centuries-old tradition of hand engraving is fading away. Bank-note artists who cut tiny dots, dashes, and lines into steel plates are putting down their tools and instead using a keyboard and a digital tablet to create images that can be produced in three weeks rather than three months.


The move to digital engraving has raised concern about security and even sparked conflict between the Federal Reserve, the central bank that buys the bank notes, and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, which manufactures them, says Michael Lambert, assistant director for cash at the Federal Reserve Board.


Hand engraving has been a security feature of US currency since the early 1800s. Since then, it has been made increasingly complex and intricate in order to frustrate counterfeiters. Hand engraving has remained an important tool for fending off forgeries because engravers’ artistic fingerprints—the subtle differences in style found in the tiny dots and dashes—are hard to replicate. Those idiosyncrasies get lost when the work is done on a computer.


A magnifying glass held to Benjamin Franklin’s coat—which Hipschen lengthened for the new $100 bill—and to the facial and eye area on the left side of the note, reveals lines that are alternatively heavy, thin, dark, and light. Slanted, tic-tac-toe-like crosshatches with dots inside create depth and texture.


“It’s almost as if the portrait is rising off the paper,” says Gene Hessler, author of five books on paper money and engravers. “A master engraver like Hipschen creates this three-dimensional effect better than anyone.”


Hipschen has spent decades studying engravings—especially those from the 1920s and ’30s—to learn ways to use open space, lines, and dots. “There are a million little decisions because there are a million little dots,” he says. “It’s a very tiny canvas, so all the space has to be put to good use.”


Hipschen’s interest in art was sparked at age eight, when he saw a drawing of a young hare by the German Renaissance engraver Albrecht Dürer in a magazine. “I thought it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen,” he recalls. Hipschen also copied pictures in comic books that his father, a drugstore manager in Bellevue, Iowa, brought home after they didn’t sell.


Hipschen dreamed of studying art in college but knew that with ten children in the family (he was second-oldest), his parents couldn’t afford it. A door to art opened when his cousin Bob Jones, a postage-stamp designer at the Bureau of Engraving in DC, returned home to Iowa to visit and saw Hipschen’s work. Jones knew the bureau was searching for an apprentice and encouraged his cousin to apply.


Hipschen traveled alone to Washington at age 17 with a bus ticket his grandfather had bought. He sketched a still life, competing with dozens of older artists before winning the post. He credits his youth with helping him get the job: “They wanted someone they could mold.” 


Over the 37 years Hipschen has spent at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing crouched over an angled, lighted table “digging ditches” in steel, often listening to Beethoven, the reproduction of engravings has evolved.


At first, the finished plates were hardened in molten cyanide and dipped in oil to cool, a technique used in the 1880s. That practice fell out of favor because it was too dangerous. In the 1980s and ’90s, Hipschen continued cutting steel, but the engravings were photo-etched into metal and plastic. By 2000, he was practicing a hybrid engraving method, using both a burin and a computer.


Hipschen was the go-to guy for testing the digital technology. He agreed to put down his burin for a keyboard in 2000 and was sent to Lausanne, Switzerland, to learn to operate digital-engraving technology that could create three-dimensional portraits. Computer engraving involves generating lines, then using digital tools to warp, break, angle, taper, and widen them. When the image is complete, the computer runs a laser that cuts lines into plastic to create a metal plate.


After experimenting with the technology for a few weeks, Hipschen reluctantly declared it a viable option for making US currency. “Being able to artificially create depth was a great leap forward,” he says. “It takes forever to do engraving by hand, but you can do this in minutes. It loses a lot of the character, but I had to admit it worked.”


Repairing a damaged steel plate from an inadvertent slip can take a week, compared with slips in digital engraving, which can be repaired in seconds.


To read the complete article, see:

Face Value

(www.washingtonian.com/articles/people/17100.html)




MORE ON STEVE TANENBAUM



Jan Monroe writes:


I just wanted to say I knew Steve Tannebaum as a buyer for many years and though we were not close he was a gentleman and an expert at what ever item I bought from Indian Peace Medals to common tokens.  It was always a chore to get his attention because so many were demanding his attention at once, the true mark of an expert.  I am sorry for his untimely loss and best wishes to his loved ones.



Fred Holabird
 writes:


Steve, of all people, was kind enough to share important token stories with me over the years that helped me understand the distribution of western tokens from collections, and he was the source of much of the information I have written in our articles and catalogs, particularly the Moise story. 


We shared a passion for tokens as the relics of American civilization, and the fact that we can actually put faces on the people that issued them. His wall of directories attested to the fact that he insisted on good research, and we had many discussions about this aspect of collecting. What a loss.



To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:

MORE ON DEALER STEVE TANENBAUM

(www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v14n08a07.html)





THE BOOK BAZARRE

OVER 500 NUMISMATIC TITLES:  
Wizard Coin Supply has over 300 numismatic titles in stock, competitively discounted, and available for immediate shipment.  See our selection at 

www.WizardCoinSupply.com 
.






MORE ON WHO SAID STEPHEN NAGY WAS JOHN HASELTINE'S SON-IN-LAW?



Alan V. Weinberg writes:


Dave Hirt questioned the story that dealer Paul Seitz was Tom Elder's son-in-law.


On December  24, 1996 at 4 PM , sitting at my kitchen table, the late R.E. "Ted" Naftzger sold me a Gem Uncirculated 1793 Chain Ameri. cent that he'd acquired from Paul Seitz for $1,000 in 1946. It had not seen the light of day between 1946 and 1996 and was not ever shown or even mentioned  to Dr.  Wm. H. Sheldon (hence its absence from mention in Penny Whimsy) during his many visits and transactions with Ted -  for a variety of reasons, some of which we can imagine.


During that Christmas Eve  transaction, as I fondled the "raw" 
shimmering Chain cent,  Ted told me that Paul Seitz was Tom Elder's 
son-in-law. Ted knew   both  Tom Elder and Paul Seitz. So that lends 
credence to the story that there was a relationship between the two.




Thanks for the background, and a tantalizing description of the cent!
-Editor



To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:

MORE ON WHO SAID STEPHEN NAGY WAS JOHN HASELTINE'S SON-IN-LAW?

(www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v14n08a13.html)




MORE ON THAT BEP INTAGLIO TEST PLATE



Joe Boling writes:


That block of four food stamps that Krause Publications used to illustrate their article on the BEP web press test plate is not related to that plate. That design was used decades ago - I've seen both blue and bistre versions (I believe there was a difference in the inscriptions). I don't know why they placed that illustration in the article on NumisMaster. Hopefully Neil's article in BNR will show the image in the plate that was sold. 



Neil Shafer writes:


Thanks for including reference to my latest BNR article on the intaglio press that was at FUN.  Your title for the coverage you provided was "An Intaglio Food Stamp Test Plate" and a picture of the orange 1939-43 food order stamps.  Before I attended the FUN show I would have thought that the TEST NOTE pieces with Lincoln at left (one illustrated in the BNR article) were somehow related to the production or development of Food Coupons, but the point of the article came to be that such was absolutely Not the case.  Instead it was a step towards the eventual production of the web press dollars made during the late 1980s and into the mid-1990s.  The only reason I had put some food stamp background in the BNR article was just to fill in the historical context of the discussion.  If I misguided anyone while discussing the Food Coupon history I am indeed sorry.




The article image left me a bit confused, so the E-Sylum headline was my fault.  I'm just glad to have been able to publicize an excellent article and an interesting and rare piece of numismatic history.
-Editor



To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:

AN INTAGLIO FOOD STAMP TEST PLATE

(www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v14n08a18.html)




BORDERS BANKRUPTCY - WHO GETS STIFFED?


Numismatic publishers are among those getting hurt by last week's bankruptcy of Borders Books.
-Editor



Borders Group, Inc. and 7 associated debtors (the “Debtors” or “Borders”) filed voluntary petitions under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code on February 16, 2011 in the Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York (Case No. 11-10614). The Honorable Martin Glenn has been assigned to the case. This initial note provides the Debtors’ consolidated list of their 30 largest unsecured creditors.


The Debtors' Consolidated List of Holders of Largest Unsecured Claims
The Debtors' have requested authority to file a consolidated list of the holders of the Debtors' largest unsecured claims in lieu of a separate list for each of the Debtors. The consolidated list is set forth below.



No. 12 on the list is F&W media, parent of Krause Publishing, which is owed $4.5 million.
-Editor



To read the complete article, see:

Borders Group – 30 Largest Unsecured Creditors

(www.burbageweddell.com/2011/02/16/borders-group-30-largest-unsecured-creditors/)


Howard A. Daniel III adds:


In the past, I have talked with two managers of Borders stores about books not being on their shelves, even when they are on the New York Times Best Seller List.  So I was not surprised to read that Borders is in bankruptcy!


During one presidential campaign there was a book written by some veterans about one of the candidates.  I know the authors and many of the contributors.  It was a fact-checked book and I personally knew many of them to be true, but it was widely panned by those on one side of our political spectrum as a pack of lies.  I bought several a week from several different bookstores and passed them out to people to read so they knew the truth about one of that candidates.  I probably bought at least a hundred of them.


When I stopped at a Northern Virginia Borders to buy some copies, I could not find them on the shelf or on the New York Times table.  I asked one of the clerks and they did not know why it was not available.  I asked to speak to the manager.  The manager told me she did not believe an untruthful book should be sold.  I told her I knew it to be true and I would contact her corporate headquarters about her not stocking it.


I contacted the corporate headquarters and they told me none of their managers would not stock New York Times bestsellers or any other book as long as customers were buying them.  I said that this manager (and later another store manager) did not stock all of them.  A week later, I walked into the store.  The book was not on the table but two of them were on the shelf.  I bought the two and told the clerk I would be back the next day for two more.  I never returned and have never gone into another Borders. 

But I did go to a nearby Barnes and Noble and did not find their managers banning books from their stores.  I continue to visit Barnes and Nobles and other bookstores when I want to see what has been recently published in my areas of interest, but you will never find me in a Borders.





QUERY: IS FLORESCENT LIGHTING HARMFUL TO BOOKS?



Mike Niebruegge writes:

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