Hello all. Merry Christmas one day early! Today is a special day for a coin-themed thread. I'm calling it " "Tis The Season Tuesday!". What does "tis the season" mean? : ' Tis the season when lots of people are saying "'Tis the season!" But why? The simple answer is that it is the season, as in, it is the time of the year that is also known broadly as the holiday season and more narrowly as the Christmas season. The statement "'Tis the season" is simply a way of drawing focus to the festive time of year when it's currently underway. Anyway, all you need to do is post a Coin(s) that are Cheerful and make you feel Happy. Something acquired recently maybe? I received these Marvelous World coins as a Contest prize here. There are Russian Wire money (Hammered) and various World coins! Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!!
So are we doing stuff we got as a gift, then? Here's my grandfather's WW2 deployment medal, which had somehow ended up with a kind stranger in Savannah (though Granddaddy lived in North Carolina). This person did some web sleuthing, tracked down my mother, and sent the medal to Mom, who gave it to me. It has some wear on it, so perhaps Granddaddy once carried it as a pocket piece. He was born in 1916 and died in 1987. His father (my great-grandfather) was the cofounder of Champion Paper Company around 1908. Other medals of this type were struck in bronze and given to Champion employees. I have seen eight of them. This one (Granddaddy's) is the only silver one I have seen. Here's Granddaddy in WW2. He's the tall man in the middle. Here he is as I remember him, in the 1980s. .
I’m going to go with this lifetime issue of Alexander the Great. It reminds me of my long departed History professor the twinkle in his eye as he recounted the Battle of Gaugamela from memory.
Very nice! So, I guess that he's the one in charge like you are in your house. ( . Where's LadyM? shhh....).
In a similar vein to @lordmarcovan, this coin and many others always makes me happy. Grandpa gifted all of his coins to his five grandchildren when I was 13. He was head librarian at the Chicago Tribune. His predecessor had people all over the world sending him coins, and when that gentleman passed away, the coins kept coming for years afterwards, and so grandpa took them over. As a result, I have world coins from many different countries, with a big percentage from the 1940s. I suspect many also came from war correspondents returning from assignments overseas. The Chicago Tribune building is studded with building fragments and rocks from everywhere, and I believe some of those rocks originated with grandpa, because they correspond with locations that I know he and grandma visited. He hobnobbed with Colonel McCormick at cocktail parties, and wrote an opinion column for the Tribune under his initials C.T. Smutny. He was a Lincoln researcher and debunked things like a list of Lincoln quotes circulating at the time, sort of a Snopes of his day. During the Roaring Twenties, he played trumpet in speakeasies and strip clubs, and carried a revolver in his trumpet case. As a grandfather, he was quiet with a sharp wit and wry sense of humor, and never let any of his grandchildren win at chess just to make them feel good. Merry Christmas, grandpa! Thanks for the coins.
See? That's what I'm talkin' about! How many of us owe our origins in the hobby to a grandparent? I certainly do, though it was to my step-grandmother and my paternal grandmother to whom I owe the gratitude for that, rather than the maternal grandfather I posted above.
This is what made me happy in 2024. Two coin clubs on the the same medal is pretty scarce. Two coin clubs in different parts of Indiana founded on the same day? That may be quite a rarity. But what really made me happy is the exquisitely exquisite splashes of morning in the meadow toning.
I haven't picked up anything new this year. Here is one of the coins my Aunt gave me in 1948 that actually started my interest. I was 5 years old but she knew I would protect her treasured coin.
As luck wood have it, I am cleaning off my desk today and came across this item. In the early 1900's my great grandmother Annie worked as a mid-wife. The family story is that this gold dollar was the first time she was ever paid for the work. The 1st photo is Annie and John, my great-grandparents. John is standing so that his missing left arm (farming accident) isn't visible. My mother doesn't have fond memories of her grandmother. Apparently she wasn't happy about looking after a rugrat while the parents were away working. By this point the farm had been sold and my grandparents were both working at the local shoe factory. Anyway, I am the steward for the necklace now. Someday it will be passed down to my grand-daughter.
