Back to Chicago

Back to Chicago

It is always a treat when I get to visit a great coin club. The Chicago Coin Club is one of my favorites, and I had a chance to be back for the February meeting. Before and after, great times, food and drinks.

The presentation was very interesting too, as always. Bob Leonard talked about the Lesher Dollars, in connection with his new book. His name alone is worth the trip to the Windy City, I read his previous book, Curious Currency before. This time he introduced his new book, Forgotten Colorado Silver: Joseph Lesher’s Defiant Coins.

Find all of Bob’s books here

In a few words, Joseph Lesher put his own silver dollars into circulation in 1900 and 1901. Bob didn’t just talk about his book, but detailed the Chicago connection of the Lesher Dollar. Instead of summarizing it here, go over to the March Chatter, and read it yourself, it is a fascinating topic.

A numismatist like Bob, who is out there to educate, had a couple of kind surprises for me. After his presentation, I had a chance to touch the Lesher Dollars. One was quite worn, and the other very detailed. This is very special on its own, as there are currently 602 Lesher Dollars known today. After the presentation, Bob also helped me to get access to his book electronically, just like he did with his previous book which is one of my treasured piece of literature. Though more and more books start to become available electronically, in particular thanks to the Newman Numismatic Portal, I have to say that modern publications are quite hard for me to read. The only way mostly is to run it through a scan and character recognition. Thanks Bob for saving me hours of boring work, which I can now spend on reading your book.

Then came the show and tell. I’ve been to a few by the Chicago Coin Club, and I have to say sometimes it competes with a museum exhibit.

I got to feel a set of pre-World War two ghetto currencies from Hungary, and during the meeting I helped, or at least, tried to translate them.

Some of the other items were banknotes and books, but I had a chance to touch some Roman and Indian coins.

Call it advertisement, but at any time I’d be willing to travel to Chicago or Columbus just to attend the coin club meetings. It is not only interesting and educational, but I really enjoy the people who attend, and I very much appreciate that being blind is not an obstacle, they allow me to feel as many object as possible.

It’s been almost three months I posted anything about my trips, more travel than ever recently, and not enough going on numismatically to write a post. I’ll be back in Columbus next week, but unfortunately I will have to miss the coin club meeting, and hopefully in a couple of weeks I’ll get to go to the Currency Museum in Ottawa, which opened just a few weeks I was there last year.