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Message:: [QUOTE="leeg, post: 3513973, member: 17073"]“Representative Cable, of Ohio, has introduced a bill in congress to issue a commemorative $3 gold piece in honor of George Washington’s two hundredth birthday anniversary. The bill proposes that 300,000 $3 gold pieces be minted.   I am in favor of issuing a commemorative $3 gold piece to celebrate the two hundredth birthday anniversary of George Washington, but why mint so many coins? Wouldn’t 12,000 do the work just the same as 300,000 gold pieces? Remember, everybody can’t buy a $3 gold piece, and there aren’t enough collectors in the United States to buy this immense number of coins. Go over the past issues of commemorative coins and see what has happened. The best examples I know of are the Columbian and the Pilgrim half dollars. The Columbian half dollar sells for only 75 cents, and as for the Pilgrim half dollar, it sell for $1.50 or less. These prices are for coins in uncirculated condition. As for this $3 gold piece, I am in favor of issuing just enough coins to give the Government a profit in minting them, and not make them as common as the Columbian half dollar. I would like to see this commemorative $3 gold piece become a rare American coin. As for the number that should be issued, I think that 10,000 or 12,000 would be enough. Wouldn’t the government have to melt all unsold gold coins? Then why make so many that the job of melting the coins would eat up the profit on the $3 gold pieces that were sold? What good would be accomplished by this act? Joseph Everett Ward Omaha, Neb., March 5, 1930.”16 16 The Numismatist, More Commemorative Issues? April 1930, p. 229.   “On March 18, 1930, the House of Representatives passed, without debate, two bills affecting United States coinage.   A bill authorizing a half dollar for the seventy-fifth anniversary of the acquisition of the territory known as the Gadsden Purchase. The number of pieces is 10,000 and the coins are to be issued only to the Gadsden Purchase Coin Committee. The bill was introduced April 25, 1929. (A description of the proposed designs for this coin was published in our issue for April, 1929.   A bill authorizing a half dollar to commemorate the three-hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The number of coins authorized is 500,000, and they are to be issued only to an authorized agent of the Massachusetts Bay Tercentenary, Inc. The bill was introduced December 7, 1929.”17 17 The Numismatist, Important Coin Legislation, Vol. XLIII, April 1930, No. 4.   “A press dispatch from Washington says that the coinage of an issue of 50-cent pieces in commemoration of Rear-Admiral Richard E. Byrd and his Antarctic expedition will be proposed shortly in a bill by Representative Cable, of Ohio, a member of the Committee on Coinage, Weights and Measures.   The original plan for the bill contemplated the sale of the coins to pay off any possible deficit the expedition might face. A radiogram has been received from the admiral expressing the deep appreciation of himself and his companions for the proposed honor, but explaining there would be no deficit.”18 18 The Numismatist, Half Dollar for Rear-Admiral Byrd Proposed, May 1930, p. 297.   “From the El Paso (Texas) Herald, the home of the Gadsden Purchase Coin Committee and of L. W. Hoffecker, its chairman, a member of the ANA, through whose personal efforts, largely, the bill passed both houses of Congress:   ‘It is unfortunate that in exercising his first veto President Hoover administered a figurative slap to Arizona, New Mexico and El Paso by rejecting the Gadsden Purchase coinage bill.   ‘He should not have vetoed that bill; there was no sense in doing so. His action was inconsistent. Unfortunately, also, the House failed to pass the measure over his veto.   ‘Here was a coinage bill designed to aid in the commemoration of an event of great importance to the nation and especially to the Southwest-the Gadsden Purchase. Yet the President vetoed it.   ‘It was the first coinage bill in years that purposely was so restricted as to the number of coins to be minted that it was perfectly modest and reasonable. It provided for only 10,000 coins; half-dollars. Yet the President vetoed it.   ‘It was the first coinage bill on which the Government was safeguarded against any possible loss, because L.W. Hoffecker, of El Paso, the father of the measure, stood ready to advance the entire $5,000. Yet the President vetoed it.   ‘His veto was based on the view that the issuance of special coins commemorating historical events should be stopped to prevent ‘confusion to our monetary system.’ Just how much confusion to our monetary system could be caused by 10,000 half-dollars, most of which straightaway would go into the cabinets of coin collectors throughout the country?   ‘If President Hoover held the view he has expressed, why did he not sanction this very small minting of Gadsden Purchase coins, and then have some member of his party in Congress initiate a bill to prohibit special coinages in the future?   ‘The fact is that in the past a good thing has been seriously overdone; no question about that. Special coinages have been asked, from time to time, in commemoration of this historical event or that, and in many instances, perhaps in practically all, the bills authorizing them have specified mintings far in excess of any reasonable requirements; 500,000 half-dollars has been typical. The consequence has been that the Government has been left holding large quantities of special coins for which there was no demand. These have had to be melted up and the bullion recast into conventional coins, all entailing a loss of time and labor of mint officials and workmen as well as constituting a very considerable nuisance to the Treasury Department. There was no such possibility with respect to the Gadsden Purchase coins, the buying of all of which was guaranteed.  ‘The complaint against President Hoover is not that his idea is not fundamentally sound.  It is. But that he took the wrong occasion and the wrong means to exercise it by picking out, for his veto, the one small and reasonable and absolutely safe special coinage bill that has gone through Congress in many a year.   ‘El Paso, for one, is disappointed, and has a right to be. Nevertheless, El Paso, Las Cruces, Old Mesilla, southern New Mexico in general and Arizona south of the Gila river will have a Gadsden Purchase celebration commemorating the seventy-fifth anniversary of that historic episode. It will be a fine event from every standpoint. And we can do without the special coins, since we have to.”19 19 The Numismatist, The House Upholds President Hoover’s Veto, Vol. XLIII, June 1930, No. 6.   “President Hoover’s veto of the bill authorizing the coinage of 10,000 half-dollar pieces to commemorate the Gadsden Purchase has been so stoutly upheld by the House of Representatives that the sound common sense which the President put into his first veto message may be expected to operate against five similar bills now before Congress. These bills provide, respectively, for the coinage of $1.50 gold pieces to commemorate the use of anesthetics by Dr. Crawford L. Long of Georgia; 50-cent pieces to commemorate  the 300th anniversary of the founding of Massachusetts Bay Colony; $3 gold pieces to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the birth of George Washington; 50-cent pieces to commemorate the sesquicentennial of Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown and 50-cent pieces to commemorate the 125th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark expedition.   ‘These bills offer sufficient illustration of the difficulty of drawing the line between one anniversary and another; they offer as well a hint of the multiplicity of bills of this nature to be expected if Congress should continue to tolerate such historical irrelevancies. Maine and Missouri got centennial half dollars from Congress; California could not wait for the centenary of her admission to the Union and obtained a special half dollar in 1925, on the seventy-fifth anniversary; what objection could logically be made to request from Oklahoma for a special coin to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of Statehood or from Arizona for one to mark the twentieth anniversary?’   ‘Some of the objections that the President made to bills authorizing special coinage would apply with equal force to bills authorizing the issue of special stamps. Domestic and foreign observers have insisted so often that the United States is a young nation that the progressive growth of interest in anniversaries may be explained as a sign of rebellion against this parrot’s phrase. Fortunately, medals answer the purpose of protest as well as stamps or coins.”20 20 The Numismatist, President Hoover’s Veto, July 1930, p. 346.   “Reading the article regarding the second International Medal Exposition in Paris in the July issue of THE NUMISMATIST brought to mind several things. If enough people want something it can usually be accomplished, provided sufficient effort is put forth. The French mint has in the past produced many artistic medals that are available at reasonable prices. Those of us who collect medals as well as coins should lose no opportunity to place before the proper authorities our recommendations to the effect that the United States Mint develop that part of its business. With proper advertising it is my opinion that such action would meet with response from the general public, providing the designs are by well known artists and that the price is reasonable.   Another point in this connection is that with the present Administration opposed to commemorative coins, the opportunity lies with the members of the A.N.A. and the local societies to urge commissions for historical events to issue medals in place of the commemorative coins which cannot be put through. Rather than pass up the metallic recording of the celebration of a historical event and losing the continuity, a medal can serve the purpose. If the U.S. Mint cannot strike these medals, due to pressure of other business, we have enough capable private concerns that can produce them. Recently the bill for the Gadsden Purchase 50-cent piece was vetoed and, as far as the writer knows, no concerted effort on our part was made to have a medal produced to take its place.   In closing let me again urge that we try to get the cooperation of the U.S. Mint in producing a series of artistic historical medals and also to have medals struck to take the place of commemorative coins until such time as it will again be possible to have them take, with proper restrictions their rightful place in our coinage. Harvey L. Hansen”21 21 The Numismatist, Medals and Commemorative Coins, November, 1930, p. 757.[/QUOTE]

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