by David Wolman
ONE NIGHT DURING my trip to Iceland, I joined Anton Holt, the mustachioed curator of the country’s national coin collection, and his wife, Gillian, for dinner at their home. Over boiled potatoes, salmon with chutney, and coleslaw, I asked about Holt’s personal coin collection, separate from his work for the central bank. “Did you hear that, love?” he said to his wife, rubbing his hands together like a scheming villain. “Let it be noted that I didn’t force anyone’s arm.” Gillian rolled her eyes.
We carried our tumblers of scotch into the cozy sitting room, where Holt opened one of two elegantly crafted wooden boxes resting on a bookshelf next to thick maroon volumes about the coins of the Indian subcontinent, and opposite the desktop computer where Gillian does her daily Facebook browsing and posting. Inside the box were maybe twenty delicate wooden trays, each filled with rare coins lying on a bed of green felt. Holt delighted in starting my tour from no place in particular. “I have a fairly comprehensive collection of coins from the Maldives for the 200-year period between 1700 and 1900.”
Using the extra-long fingernail of his fifth finger, he lifted a coin off the felt mat to place in my hand. “And you thought the fingernail was for snorting cocaine!” Every few minutes, we would take a look at another coin, and Holt would serve up a breezy synopsis of its place in history. One coin he showed me is a ten-pence piece from Ireland, dated 1969. Too recent, I presumed, to be of much interest. “Look closely. See where it says ‘UVF’? The unionists defaced coinage of the [Irish] republic to protest Republicanism. It stands for Ulster Voluntary Force.”
Holt is a numismatist’s numismatist, a descriptor that is easier to write than to say. He has been collecting since the age of five. “I started with a bag of twenty or thirty coins that my father gave me. In it, there was this one coin, a five mils piece, from Palestine. It had three different languages on it. Mind you, I was only five, but I found that fascinating. I wanted to know more about where it came from. Why it looked that way. The people who used it.” As banknote designer Kristin Thorkelsdottir had put it, material money is like heritage you can hold in your hand.
To Holt, that physical connection is key. He can’t stand to see coins entombed in plastic cases to protect them from damage or contamination that might bring down their market price. (Hence the expression, “mint condition”). “The whole point is handling,” he said, passing me a bronze 1,000-year-old coin from the Kushan Empire. “If you’re going to appreciate coins, David, you don’t collect pieces you can’t touch. Either they’re your babies, or forget it.” Tactility is what transforms coins and paper into talismans.
From the Yuan banknotes that so stunned Marco Polo centuries ago, to the five mils coin that dazzled Holt as a little boy, physical money has, and probably always will have, this unusual power. I turned a small silver coin a few times in my fingertips. The whiskey was dulling my memory of the day’s chilly rain and conversations about Iceland’s economic tribulations. “That coin you’re holding—it was drawn, designed, and made by Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo held that very same coin!” Holt declared with exaggerated certainty. “Now, you may not be able to prove that, but you can’t prove otherwise. In any case, it’s the idea that he might have—that’s the wonderful thing.”
The idea. Like money itself. Only in its material form can money connect this coin collector in Reykjavik to Leonardo da Vinci, and now to me. If cash is a representation of an abstraction, of a social construct, then digital money is an abstraction of an abstraction, inevitably diluting that sense of connection even further. The truth is that I can’t be sure something won’t be irretrievably lost with an end to the production of physical money. Yet I’m not convinced that its end would be a betrayal of heritage, either. “Evolution is natural,” said Holt. “If change means no more coins, then no more coins. Besides, I collect backwards in history. Not forward.”
ALONG WITH THE COINS I’ve brought with me to the Coin and Currency Show are my father’s accompanying series of blue and green coin folders published in the 1940s by the Whitman Publishing Company in Racine, Wisconsin. With titles like “Indian Head Cent: Collection including Flying Eagle Cents 1856 to 1909” and “Barber, Liberty Head or ‘Morgan’ Quarter: Collection 1906 to 1916,” the books provided an easy way for young enthusiasts to organize their possessions and begin collecting in series. As a boy, my father would ride the bus to the coin shop in downtown Columbus to see what new pieces might be available.
I open the folders gingerly, so as not to damage their fragile spines, and am greeted by rows of worn coins resting within cutouts in the cardboard. A label below each spot marks the year and sometimes the location where that coin was minted, and the total number that were issued. The 1884 bronze Indian Head cent, which had 23.3 million coins in that run—my father has that one, and it’s set in the right place.
Upon inspection, however, other coins are in the wrong place, and the placeholders for the more valuable coins are either empty or plugged with more commonplace ones from a different year. I can almost picture my father, sixty years ago, with his dimples, buzz cut, and that vintage striped T-shirt I’ve seen in a few of his childhood photographs. He’s pressing coins into place, pleased with the ones that match up, but unfazed by the ones that don’t.
After a few conversations with dealers, I find out that a 1931 Lincoln penny from my dad’s collection might be worth as much as $90. The coin lists for significantly more than that if it’s in great condition, but this one’s grade is “fair.” I sit across from a dealer who has appraised my Lincoln cent and confess that I’m in a bit of a pecuniary pickle, stuck between disliking physical money, the undeniable allure of an easy $90, and not feeling too hot about mortgaging these pieces of family history.
“You love your wife. You like your coins,” the dealer tells me.
While not exactly emotional handholding, this input strikes me as reasonable. After double-checking the “red book” price to assuage last-minute concerns that I might be getting ripped off, I gently pluck the coin from its placeholder in the green folder, and close the deal for $87 in cash. There’s no turning back now.
And I must say: it feels pretty good. I suddenly have $87 that I didn’t have a minute ago, and per the dealer’s suggestion I may just have to earmark it for a fun dinner out with my wife. Either that, or perhaps something a little less enjoyable, like my cellphone bill. But cash is fungible! As long as I go to dinner someday, this $87 will contribute to that outing, right?
Minutes later I find myself in a round of friendly banter with Rick Hennessey, a gun enthusiast, climate change denier, and coin dealer who generously helps me part with what eventually amounts to $300 worth of coins. I sell him quarters and half dollars mostly, all of them between fifty and 150 years old. All are in rather poor condition and appraise in the range of $5 and $18 apiece. Their value stems almost exclusively from their silver content. Hennessey pays out in $20 and $10 bills, none of which look counterfeit to my un-expert, but now obsessively curious, eye.
Two pimply teenage boys inspect Hennessey’s plastic-encased 2006 gold American Eagle $1 coin at the other end of the table, but it’s apparent that they’re only browsing. I’m his only customer for the time being.
“You got any more of those Barber or Morgan quarters?” Hennessey asks.
I tell him I do have some more, but that I’m feeling reluctant to relinquish them.
“Do you love’em?” he asks.
“That’s the million-dollar question,” I say.
“Is there something you could do with the money that you love more? That is the two-million-dollar question,” Hennessey replies.
The profit margins of Hennessey’s business are slim, at least for the merchandise he’s getting from me, and lately things have been especially tough. I had assumed that in gloomy economic times, people liquidate more assets, like jewelry or coins, so that they have funds to meet everyday expenses. And many people do (We Buy Gold!). But in the years since the crash of 2007–2008, it fe
els like everyone—not just Americans, but people all over the world—are especially confounded by how money works, and worried about preserving value. When people get nervous, they often collect or hoard possessions like coins, for much the same reason that fears of inflation or shaken faith in national currencies send people running for gold. If your coins are gold, all the better.
Hennessey says he might be able to sell silver half-dollars for a buck or two more than what he’s paying me, but the logistics of dealing with overflowing inventory and getting product to someone who can sell it for melt value eat at his profit. As he complains about how lackluster my dad’s coins are—the ones he’s buying—Hennessey almost makes it sound like he’s doing me a favor.
Maybe he is. I now have almost $400! Without feeling anything that might be diagnosed as seller’s remorse, I send my wife a quick text message. $400! A pragmatist as well, she writes back: “Way to go!” She also doesn’t send any warning to slow down a little, so that I don’t do anything I might come to regret. The absence of this message, of course, gets me worrying about exactly that. Am I pawning these heirlooms for a few bags of groceries, a dinner out, and a day on the slopes? Maybe money really is a soul-devouring demon.
I don’t think so, though, and here’s why. Coins, especially in the context of a coin show, have all different kinds of value. There’s the monetary value, set by the state and legitimized by our belief in it. There’s the intrinsic value: the silver content of pre-1965 coins that Bernard von NotHaus cherishes, or the market value of the zinc, alloys, and tiny bits of copper in today’s U.S. coinage. There’s also the market or collectors’ value, what someone will pay for that 1931 Lincoln penny because it completes his collection, or that rare Roman coin that a dealer aspires to acquire, only to turn around and sell it at a premium to a Roman-era coinage fanatic in Houston.
As a noncollector, I don’t find a measurable distinction between two very physically similar coins, like my dad’s 1887 versus 1889 Liberty Head nickels, or his many 1864 two-cent pieces. Provided none of them have an astronomical red-book price tag that would throw this experiment in valuation and incentives off track, none of them convey any special comparative value. The 1931 Lincoln penny is worth more than the others in the collection folder, but its worth to me is only on paper. I can’t feel it.
But there’s another type of value, one that’s even more elusive: the personal kind. What do the objects in your life mean to you? What makes one thing an heirloom and another a tchotchke? Only you can say. Only you can determine what you’re willing to pay for it, and that’s true even if it happens to be a kind of money.
While negotiating with Hennessey, I notice an odd thing happening. Without even planning it this way, I’m not selling anything in the collection that is one of a kind or the last of its type. I even transfer these coins into a separate compartment of my briefcase, so as not to sell them by accident. They are off limits.
I’ll probably keep a couple of them on my desk at home, but the rest of these keepsakes will end up in a closet, and probably not see daylight again for another ten, perhaps forty years. It’s really up to my son. If he’s ever curious about them, we’ll take a look. Maybe we’ll check their value in a 2050 price guide. If he decides to sell them, he’ll get to choose what to do with the earnings flashed into his bank account in the wireless cloud, or beamed into the holographic wallet floating above his hand.
Me? I’ve decided to use that $400 windfall to take my son to visit his grandparents. Money well spent, I think.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many, many people helped make this book happen. To everyone who is mentioned within these pages: thank you for time, patience, and insights. I would also like to thank the following people for providing assistance with resources, added explanation, logistical support, research guidance, editing, encouragement, and invaluable criticism: Aaron Ernst, Adam Rogers, Aiichiro Kurata, Aimee Geissler, Allen Kupetz, Andrew Steckl, Andy Jordan, Anil Kakani, Anne Marie DiStefano, Anthony Effinger, Astrid Mitchell, Carlson Chambliss, Carol B., Charlotte Webb, Coert Voorhees, Daniel Lowther, David Abrams, David Tidmarsh, Diane Coyle, Einar Baldvin Stefánsson, Erik Jensen, Erik Steiner, Frederick Reimers, Glenn Wood, Greg Lastowka, Hannes van Rensburg, Heather Wax, Heidar Gudjonsson, James Grant, Jan S., Jason Jarrell, Jim Bruene, Jim Rosenberg, Jonathan Carver, Jonathan Lipow, Joshua Davis, Julian Smith, Kabir Kumar, Kakha Bendukidze, Kathleen Vohs, Kiera Butler, Lee Voo van der, Lewis Iadarola, Liana McCabe, Lisa Rutherford, Mark Pickens, Mark Robinson, Marta Peiret, Matt Dill, Matteo Chiampo, Michael Linton, Michael Salmony, Mugdha Bhargava, Neha Mehra, Nick Hughes, Nick McKenzie, Oakley Brooks, Ólafur Ísleifsson, Pallab Mitra, Paul Collins, Paul Makin, Peter Fishman, R. S., Rawls Moore, Rebecca Clarren, Richard Heeks, Rick S., Roy Vella, Ruud van Renesse, Shayan Bardhan, Shelle Santana, Shravya Reddy, Shrayana Bhattacharya, Tamar Mayer, Tim Murdoch, Tim Verstynen, Tom Ferguson, Tom Zeffiro, Varun Bangia, Verity W., and Yuki Maeda.
Thank you Giles Anderson, my agent, and Lissa Warren, my tireless editor and ally at Da Capo. Thank you to my friends near and far, and, of course, to my family.
Finally, thank you Spencer, for being such a magnificent kid. And Nicola—for everything. I love you.
NOTES
Introduction
1 http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/01/03/2010-01-03_plane_questions_dont_fly_right_warning_signs_were_evident_yet_bomb_suspect_still.html.
1: The Missionary
1 Gene Hessler and Carlson Chambliss, The Comprehensive Catalog of U.S. Paper Money, 7th ed. (Port Clinton, Ohio: BNR Press, 2006), p. 8.
2 http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/10/googles-ceo-the-laws-are-written-by-lobbyists/63908/.
3 http://www.neuroeconomics.net/article.php/471.html.
4 Jack Weatherford, The History of Money (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1998), pp. 22–25; David Smith, Free Lunch: Easily Digestible Economics (London: Profile Books, 2009), pp. 172–173.
5 Georg Simmel, The Philosophy of Money (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 129.
6 As quoted in “Market Man,” The New Yorker, October 18, 2010. (Book review of Nicholas Phillipson’s Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life.)
7 Weatherford, History of Money, p. 30.
8 National Geographic, January 2009, p. 43.
9 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/18/opinion/18lipow.html.
10 Klaus Bender, Moneymakers: The Secret World of Banknote Printing (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley, 2006), p. 20.
11 Stephen Mihm, A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and the Making of the United States (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), pp. 26–27.
12 Jason Goodwin, Greenback: The Almighty Dollar and the Invention of America (New York: Henry Holt, 2003), p. 99.
13 Ibid., p. 256.
14 Craig Karmin, Biography of the Dollar: How the Mighty Buck Conquered the World and Why It’s Under Siege (New York: Crown, 2008), p. 101.
15 http://www.theonion.com/articles/us-economy-grinds-to-halt-as-nation-realizes-money,2912/.
2: The Messenger
1 Frank Herbert, The White Plague (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1982), p. 125.
2 http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=07c0a52f-2c9b-469a-ba85-ae0fa1d27396&k=76062.
3 From Michael Salmony’s presentation to Digital Money Forum, London, 2010, “You’re All Crazy—Cash Is King.”
4 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18359825.
5 Klaus W. Bender, The Moneymakers: The Secret World of Banknote Printing (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley, 2006), p. 27; http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/health/HealthRepublish_1684553.htm.
6 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111944477; http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/464200.stm; and http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8204857.stm.
7 Lawrence Weschler, Boggs: A Comedy of Values (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 121.
8 http://www.finextra.com/finextra-downloads/newsdocs/TheWayWePay2010.pdf.
9 “Technology and Its Future Role in the Mining Industry,” April 2007 presentation by BHP vice president of technology, Megan Clark, at the World Conference of Science Journalists.
10 “For One Business, Polluted Clouds Have Silvery Lining,” New York Times, July 12, 2007, A4.
11 As quoted by Paul Wachter in “Why Tip?” New York Times Magazine, October 12, 2008.
12 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7628137.stm.
13 “Penny Dreadful,” The New Yorker, March 31, 2008.
14 Ibid.
15 Numismatic News, February 16, 2010.
16 http://financialservices.house.gov/Media/file/hearings/111/Moy%20Testimony%207%2020%2010.pdf.
17 Francois Velde, “What’s a Penny (or a Nickel) Really Worth?” Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, February 2007.
18 “In Praise of Inflation,” The New Yorker, September 27, 2010.
19 “Why the US Keeps Minting Coins People Hate and Won’t Use.” http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10783019.
20 Jack Weatherford, The History of Money (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1998), pp. 156–159; also, Bender, The Moneymakers, p. 20.
21 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VemU6EZtnwc.
22 Digital Money Blog, May 10, 2010; and Dave Birch, personal correspondence, November 2010.
23 William Greider, Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country (New York: Touchstone, 1987), p. 53.
24 Michael Salmony, Digital Money Forum address, London, March 10, 2010.
25 http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/rptcongress/annual09/sec5/c1t11.htm; and “As Plastic Reigns, the Treasury Slows Its Printing Presses,” New York Times, July 6, 2011.