A science fiction story with a numismatic element and a strange coin

Discussion in 'Coin Chat' started by willieboyd2, Sep 16, 2018.

  1. willieboyd2

    willieboyd2 First Class Poster

    When I was a kid in the 1950's I read a science fiction story which featured a coin with a wolf on it. I remembered the coin in the story and recently tried to find out more about it.

    The story was "Top Secret", written in 1948 by David Grinnell. Grinnell was actually Donald A. Wollheim, a prolific writer and publisher.

    The story's narrator is a tourist in Washington DC who encounters some men at the US State Department. Two are government escorts and three are wearing heavy clothing to disguise themselves. One of the men trips and the narrator helps him up.

    "Now what bothers me is not the impression I got that the arm beneath that man’s sleeve was curiously woolly, as if he had a fur coat underneath the cloak (and this in a Washington summer!), and it’s not the impression that he was wearing a mask (the elastic band of which I distinctly remember seeing amidst the kinky, red, close-cropped hair of his head). No, it’s not that at all, which might be momentarily misconstructions on my part. It’s the coin that I picked up off the floor where he’d dropped his portfolio."

    "It’s about the size of a quarter, silvery, very light in weight, but also very hard. Besides the lettering on it, which even the Bible Society, which knows a thousand languages and dialects, cannot decipher, there is a picture on one side and a symbol on the other."

    "The picture is the face of a man, but a man with very curiously wolfish features: sharp canine teeth parted in what could be called a smile; a flattened, broad, and somewhat protruding nose, more like a pug dog’s muzzle; sharp, widely spaced vulpine eyes; and definitely hairy and pointed ears."

    "The symbol on the other side is a circle with latitude and longitude lines on it. Flanking the circle, one on each side, are two crescent-shaped moons."

    I can not find such a coin either.

    :)
     
    Parthicus and ddddd like this.
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  3. ddddd

    ddddd Member

    Sounds very interesting!
    Maybe someone with good photoshop / design skills can make a virtual version. :)
     
  4. Idries Pappas

    Idries Pappas Well-Known Member

    Is that the whole story?
     
  5. COCollector

    COCollector Well-Known Member

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