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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;mrbrklyn, post: 89986, member: 4381&quot;]OK</p><p><br /></p><p>After giving this a couple of days consideration, I&#039;ve decided to pick up the gauntlet on your list of most obscure numismatics facts.&nbsp; Although posted in world coins origianlly let me add this post.&nbsp; After doing a bit of research on this, I think I&#039;ve compiled a list of the best factoids for your savouring.</p><p><br /></p><p>Starting from the least interesting to most interesting, I propse the following contenders:</p><p><br /></p><p>A:&nbsp; In the aftermath of the California Gold Rush, a New Yorker named August Humbert, who was working in the assayers office in San Francisco, decided to break new ground and solve the coinage problem that was plaguing the West Coast prior to the start up of San Francisco mint.&nbsp; He minted an Oxagonal shaped gold coin from native California gold deposits&nbsp; that more or less acted as a $50 gold piece, nearly legal tender.&nbsp; Not only was this bizarre shape readily adopted&nbsp; by the 49ers, but in addition they accepted that $50 coin was reasonable even in 1851, when it was a HUGE some of money for a coin.&nbsp; the 49ers considered it trump change in the roaring 1850&#039;s.&nbsp; What makes his story even more interesting is that in the typical style of a New Yorker, what made this coin approximate legal tender was essentially the fact that this coin was stamped from the US assayers office with the name “August Humbert United States Assayer of Gold California 1851”&nbsp; The coins themselves where issues under contract by Moffat &amp; Co.&nbsp; The coin became known as “The Slug” and by the next year it occurred to Moffat &amp; Co, the contractors who made the slug,&nbsp; that someone might need to make change from $50 gold ingot, and so they put out a series of 10&#039;s and 20&#039;s until 1853 when the Mint finally kicked into production.</p><p><br /></p><p>B:&nbsp; On a similar note, a private coin was produced by the Cincinnati Mining Company of gold in 1849.&nbsp; I bring this up because the Red Book says it has no idea of the origins of this company or the coin.&nbsp; I suppose the fact that very few gold mines exist in Ohio or Kentucky has confused the Red Book authors.</p><p><br /></p><p>C:&nbsp; The people of at the Mint hate New York:</p><p><br /></p><p>Despite having a huge number of commemorative coins for nearly every event in US history, they have never celebrated the founding of New York City, or any other New York, like the battle of Brooklyn, founding of the Brooklyn Bridge, or anything else in its storied past until they were essentially forced to rekognize Jackie Robinson.&nbsp; But if you doubt what I&#039;m saying and think me a little New York Centric and paranoid, consider that in 1824, which would mark the 300th year of my beloved city&#039;s charter, they skirted the issue by releasing the 1924 Huguenot-Walloon Tercentenary. They mostly settled in New York.&nbsp; And this lovely coin didn&#039;t even have anyone directly connected to the Huguenot or Walloon migration to the New&nbsp; World engraved on it (which as it is seems from the archeological evidence seems to predate even the official dates of Dutch and English settlement in North America). Instead has on the obverse of these coins pictures of Admiral Coligny and William the Silent.&nbsp; The reverse has a boat prepurted to be the Nieuw Nederland.&nbsp; I mean REALLY.&nbsp; Couldn&#039;t they just buckle down and celebrate the founding of the Big Apple by the Dutch and be done with it?</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>D:&nbsp; As much as the Mint hates New York, they hate Brooklyn even MORE</p><p><br /></p><p>In 1936 the mint celebrated the Long Island Tercentenary of Long Island which was made, according to the Red Book at Jamaica Bay.&nbsp;&nbsp; Well, listen up guys.&nbsp; Jamaica Bay is in Brooklyn, and it was settled a full decade before then.&nbsp; This is just no way to treat what is likely the oldest permanent European settlement in North America directly linked to the founding of the United States.&nbsp; Just because the Mayflower short changed the borough, it was originally ordered to Brooklyn and decided to head north to more English established claims,&nbsp; thats no reason for the Mint to kick Brooklyn as well!</p><p><br /></p><p>In fact, the mint hates Brooklyn so much that they made this Long Island coin the first to be allowed only a single date, in order to prevent all the Brooklyn people from ever having any chance to turn this commemorative into a circulating coin.</p><p><br /></p><p>E: Congress and Mint is confused by a lack of interest in its Commemorative coins in 1936 when after giving short thrift New York City,&nbsp; the most densely populated and culturally diverse area of the nation, and instead launches commemorative coins to celebrate the momentous events of the founding of York County Maine (the only county to ever get such an honor) and Lynchburg Virginia.&nbsp; In fact, with the addition of the celebration that year of Norfolk Virginia, the entire New York Mets Minor League system is represented in this one fantastic year alone!</p><p><br /></p><p>The York County of Main coin features an 18th century jail.&nbsp; I leave it to you to figure out who the person is that adorns the Lynchburg issue.</p><p><br /></p><p>F:&nbsp; The Bank of New York, as 44 Wall Street, discovers a secret cache in 1856 of Fugio Cents, the first coin produced for the US government, decades after they all but disappeared from circulation.&nbsp; All these extremely rare historical coins were in mint condition.&nbsp; The bank gave nearly all of them away like they were toasters, to clients who did business with the bank.&nbsp; Today they have just a few of them left which they have displayed from time to time in their lobby.</p><p><br /></p><p>G:&nbsp; Multiple Choice:</p><p><br /></p><p>The first motto on the first Federal US coins in 1787 was:</p><p><br /></p><p>A:&nbsp; United We Stand</p><p>B: In God We Trust</p><p>C: Mind Your Business</p><p>D: E Plubus Unum</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>(The Answer is C)</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>H: In 1942 the US Mint experimented with a plastic penny which in Proof 65 (I&#039;d like to see GDJMSP grade one of these babies) sells in the current market for at least $2,500.&nbsp; This would make it the most expensive plastic poker chip that I can think of.&nbsp; How do you polish plastic?</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>I:&nbsp; The Spirit of &#039;76 shows itself early with the suprisingly modern design in 1781 with this shocking coin (see images Below) , only about 2 centuries before its time with the Bar Coppers undated Confederation Token which circulated in New York and thought to have been actually made in England.&nbsp; Peter Max, eat your heart out.</p><p><br /></p><p>J:&nbsp; People are actually collecting scrap metal now .... </p><p><br /></p><p><a href="http://www.wafflecoins.com/" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.wafflecoins.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.wafflecoins.com/</a>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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