One sad bit of news that came in this week was of the death July 18 of my first boss here. Arnold Jeffcoat was 72 years old when he passed on. He was editor of Numismatic News when I arrived 30 years ago to start my first professional job out of college.

He was irascible and smoked like a chimney. It was so bad that when he left in 1982, my first comment was that after five years my lungs would be like I had never smoked at all. This was a period before the dangers of second-hand smoke were well known.

His cubicle had higher walls around it and when he was at work it looked like a volcano throwing up a cloud of ash. His temper could erupt that way also.

Numismatic News, then as now, went to press on Thursday. He golfed Thursday afternoon.

Friday was the beginning of the next cycle.

“I’d rather eat a bug than read a Bailey,” he would declare loudly that day.

This was the Coin Clinic column, then written by free-lancer Clem Bailey who still lived in Iola. Bailey later went on to be editor of CoinAge magazine.

Jeffcoat knew his stuff. If you could get by the off-putting qualities and pay attention, you came out the better by working with him.

Jeffcoat had a terrible cough even when I first met him. In his last years, he was married to an oxygen bottle. He often declared that trying to quit smoking would kill him faster than the cigarettes.

Until his passing, I believe, no former editor of Numismatic News has ever died.

Obviously that happy state of affairs could not last.

Rest in peace, Jeff.

Franklin Roosevelt is a president coin collectors love to hate. Not that they are all Republicans, but the author of the New Deal took away the right to own gold coins. That has been the hobby story since I began reading numismatic material in the 1960s and we are sticking to it.

The tale had its greatest force in the years immediately prior to the legalization of gold ownership once again at the end of 1974.

People tend to forget the facts behind the headlines. Roosevelt’s first Treasury Secretary was a coin collector. William Woodin was also an author of a book about patterns. It was a standard reference before Judd.

Roosevelt’s recall order also specifically exempted coin collectors. They couldn’t hold a garageful of $20 gold pieces, but they could retain two of each date and mintmark for their collections. They rest had to be traded in for other forms of cash.

Now that is pretty generous in light of the financial emergency facing the country. Woodin’s unfortunate invisibility to history was due to the unhappy development of cancer later in 1933 so he left office and died. Had he lived, Roosevelt mythology might have turned out to be that he was the best friend coin collectors ever had.

But later generations forget the emergency the country was facing. That is natural. The gold ban was in force in one form or another for 41 years. People that far removed in time from the crisis have a hard time understanding the meaning of the words, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Actually, those words sound completely bonkers in normal times, but at times when lines are forming outside of banks, like the IndyMac offices in California, they begin to make sense – at least to the worried depositors.

In 1933 banks were failing almost daily. The Bank Holiday, declared by Roosevelt shut them all down for five days until they could be checked out. The healthy ones were allowed to reopen. The unhealthy ones remained closed.

Troubles today look small by comparison. But give Roosevelt another kick anyway. It is now a pleasant hobby tradition.

Fake coins struck in China have bedeviled the hobby for years. Colleague Colin Bruce of the Standard Catalog of World Coins staff used to acquire many of the fakes as they arrived on the scene to study them and figure out their defects.

The current wave is probably too much even for him to keep up with, but he sent me an e-mail link of a factory in China that is described as making fake U.S. and world coins.

Here is the link. Take a look at it and see what you think.

http://coins.about.com/od/worldcoins/ig/Chinese-Counterfeiting-Ring/Chinese-Fake-Coin-Minting.htm

The situation with fakes even provoked the Professional Coin Grading Service earlier this year to warn of fake coins and holders coming out of China and makl recommendations as to what should be done to counter this.

We all know the problems that are caused by fakes, but figuring out what can be done to fight them is something the hobby will wrestle with for years. Even if production were stopped right this minute, the large numbers of fakes would be passed around by people for many years to come.

Some day they will probably be collected as fakes once more complete knowledge about them becomes widespread.

“Leaving a paper trail” is device for accountants or investigators to find out where the money went.

In the case of actual collectors of paper money, the paper trail is vital in knowing the history of a particular bank note you might be considering buying.

If you are buying a high-grade note, it might interest you to discover that it had sold before as a lower grade note. Figuring this out is possible because notes have serial numbers that can be recorded and traced.

Assembling this information, or blazing the paper trail, is Martin Gengerke, a professional in the field who originally introduced the Gengerke Census and now is taking it one step further called the Gengerke Census Lite.

It is geared to coin dealers and paper money newcomers to help them identify a note and assess its rarity. It offers a complete census of large-size type notes issued before the conversion to small-size notes in 1929. It also offers a complete census of National Bank Notes, which were issued by individual banks 1863-1935 with a federal guarantee behind them.

The Gengerke Census Lite is a cheaper alternative at $30 than the version with all the bells and whistles. It comes on a disk and is updated once each year. The full version costs $175 and is updated continuously and can be downloaded over the Internet.

If you have a budding interest in paper money, you might consider e-mailing gengerke@aol.com for more information.

Judging from the attitudes of people attending the Iola Old Car Show, life goes on despite high gasoline prices and other distractions.

People who visited seemed relaxed and had a good time. Those of us cooking hamburgers on Sunday morning marveled at the quantity of food that was being packed away. We haven’t done so many burgers in years. Yet the crowds were no bigger. Those of us on the crew were unanimous in thinking that the crowds, if anything, were smaller than they were in the last couple of years.

So what is going on? How can fewer people consume more food?

The first thing to remember is my personal impressions of a show that is widely spread out may have little to do with overall results.

But the other thing to remember is that there probably were a few people who were scared away by $4 gas. Those who attended the show swallowed the price hike and made it to Iola anyway. That means by the time I saw them, they had already made a greater commitment to the show than they have for prior years.

When they got hungry, they ate.

So those who made it here were determined to have a enjoyable show. I hope we gave it to them. I talked to many people who were veteran show-goers. I talked to one fellow who said he attended every other year. At the end of our conversation, I said I would see him again in 2010.

In two weeks, the World’s Fair of Money will get under way in Baltimore. Like the car show, the American Numismatic Association convention is an annual tradition for many collectors. I assume a few potential convention-goers won’t make it, but those who do come will behave like the car show attendees. They are the veterans and they will continue to enjoy the hobby that has given them so much.

Baltimore is a great location for a coin convention and those of us who get there will have a good time. See you there.

Wow, the National Parks quarter bill passed the U.S. House of Representatives July 9 on a vote of 419-0.

Now action shifts to the U.S. Senate. Will it concur or will it allow the legislation to languish? You never really know until it is a done deal.

The 2009 District of Columbia and territories quarter legislation died in the Senate multiple times.

 The current legislative period runs until Aug. 8, when the usual summer recess occurs. That recess culminates in the national conventions for the Democratic and Republican Parties.

The Democrats meet in Denver in late August and the Republicans meet is St. Paul, Minn., in early September.

Whether National Park quarter legislation will be considered important enough to spring to the head of the line or will it die as in the past?

What do you think will happen?

More and more of the older state quarters seem to be finding their way into circulation if what I am getting is any guide. I had a beautiful Delaware quarter come my way the other day.

The recession is making people dig into their accumulations to pay daily bills. This is something that could go on for years. It is also something that might break the quarter habit for many people.

If you have been faithfully saving the coins in any quantity and you arrive at nearly the end of the 10-year program to find out that what you have squirreled away is not really worth anything more than face value, the whole hoard might eventually get dumped as money is needed.

Or, it could be something of collector’s remorse. If you have been faithfully accumulating rolls of the coins and circumstance forces you to stop, you might just feel frustration and guilt and give the whole effort up.

Either way, if the phenomenon occurs, we could experience lower mintages in future years as these coins clog the banking system, requiring fewer orders for new coins from the Mint.

This could be a little bit like what happened to coin mintages in the 1880s. Numbers were down because all of the silver coins that disappeared from circulation during the inflationary crisis spawned by the Civil War found their way back into circulation after the Resumption Act that went into effect Jan. 1, 1879, made the dollar basically as good as gold after a lapse of almost 18 years.

We’ll see.

Starting the day off in the dentist’s chair is no fun, but it happens more and more as my teeth age and fillings age and need replacement.

It gives me a chance to ponder the great questions of the age.

The one I chose today has to do with an e-mailed question that was thrown out to me to think about by Mack Martin, a type collector who puts together great exhibits.

I happened to give him the Bank Note Reporter Most Inspirational Exhibit Award down at the Memphis paper money show on Saturday. It was a great Baby Bonds exhibit (Southern state bonds with a vignette of a baby on them).

But Mack’s question to me yesterday is another one of those coincidences I wrote about on Tuesday. It had a lot to do with state quarters, which I wrote about Wednesday.

He said he was a type collector. That means collecting just one of a given design instead of a whole series. But Mack asks, with the proliferation of state quarters (50 types), and Lewis and Clark nickels and its successor design (5 types) and other denominations starting off new design series, how will a type collector in 100 years cope?

The whole point of being a type collector is to have some of the fun and variety of the many series of coins struck by the U.S. Mint, but not the expense of having to buy all of them, including expensive key dates.

What will type collectors do in the future? Will this approach to collecting still exist?
They are all good questions. I will probably have to think about them again after I get out of the dentist’s chair because I don’t think I can quite trust any thoughts I might come up with during the treatment.

What do you think?

As I finish up the July 15 issue of Numismatic News, I can mention that on the Mint Statistics page that the state quarter mintage box makes a one-week comeback.

I had an e-mail from Halbert Carmichael. I first met him in 1987 at the Charlotte American Numismatic Association convention.

His point to me in his recent e-mail was that he thought it was about time to bring them back onto the page. That’s a difficult task considering the First Spouse box, the Kennedy half dollar box and the list of various Presidential dollar options that the Mint currently sells.

But fundamentally, Halbert is right. It has been a long while since the box appeared, so it is time to bring it in.

What has changed since the last time it appeared was the inclusion of the Oklahoma and New Mexico mintage totals.

The Denver quarter with the Oklahoma design now has the distinction of having the lowest mintage total in the series. It is 194,600,000. That is the first issue to slide under 200 million.

We have touched the low 200 millions before with the P-mint Iowa of 2004 at 213,800,000, Ohio of 2002 at 217,200,000 and Maine of 2003 at 217,400,000, but none has gone below the mark.

We probably can thank the current nonrecession recession for reaching this new low. Coin demand is down in the banking system. Perhaps the last three states will challenge Oklahoma for the overall low point for the entire 10-year series. We’ll see.

We have come a long way from the Virginia of 2000 where the Philadelphia issue racked up a mintage of 943,000,000 and Denver came in at 651,616,000.

Coin demand in the economy has never recovered to the highs achieved in 2000 at the very peak of the tech boom. It is beginning to look like it never will. Perhaps that is why there are so many noncirculating products listed on the Mint Stats page. The Mint and its employees need something to do.

Ever notice the frequency of coincidences? As I headed to lunch yesterday, I had to stop at the post office to send off an anniversary card. It was bigger than usual and I wanted to have correct postage. There was a line. I had to wait. There is nothing wrong with that except Lyle Mork had yelled across the street to me on my way in that he wanted to join me for lunch. He was waiting for me.

I was expecting to have lunch with Cliff Mishler. When he is in town, he usually shows up on Monday. On our way to the Crystal, Fred and Kathy Borgmann arrived with the same idea in mind.

Gosh, some days I have to eat alone. Such is the power of coincidence.

At work I checked the Mint schedule to see when the uncirculated coin sets were due out. There is nothing specific posted, just a July/August window.

In yesterday’s mail, I had a letter from a reader who had a couple of things to say. One was related to uncirculated coin sets. He noticed Mint Statistics called the 2007 uncirculated coin set a 20-coin set. Oops.

But that error has been on the page for about a year. Someone could have pointed it out at any time, but it came as I was mentally gearing up for the 2008 set. The listing for the 2007 set will be changed to 28 coins to reflect the arrival of the Presidential coins last year.

None of this is remarkable, but it is interesting how random events get channeled and suddenly become related events.

My thanks go to David Rickard for his sharp eye on the Mint Stats page.