NBS BOOTH AT THE PITTSBURGH ANA CONVENTION Público Deposited
The E-Sylum: Volume 7, Number 35, August 29, 2004, Article 7
NBS BOOTH AT THE PITTSBURGH ANA CONVENTION
Howard A. Daniel III writes: "Before the ANA Convention
in Pittsburgh, I was not in a good mood because the forms
were lost for our booth with IBNS and NI, but the meeting
contractor did process the forms for the NI and IBNS meeting,
which was in the same envelope. Someone misplaced the
booth form? But Rachel Irish at the ANA came to the rescue
and matched me up with Ray Czahor of the Philippines
Collectors Forum and I shared a booth with him.[IBNS = International Bank Note Society;
NI = Numismatic International. -Editor]I arrived on Tuesday at my usual time and went to the bourse
to help setup the exhibits area but it was already done! The
union labor had worked Monday night and had already put
up all of the tables and cases! So I went back to my vehicle in
the convention center parking garage and brought two loads
of stuff to booth 15. During the afternoon Ray and I set up
our booth with each of us using one half of it, but after his
forum on Friday, he packed up and departed and I had my
usual complete booth to split it up between NBS, IBNS and
NI.During each convention I give away one old Standard Catalog
of World Paper Money and one old Standard Catalog of World
Coins to a school-age person who I think shows much more
than normal enthusiasm for numismatics. So when I do not have
many children at the booth, I ask each child and/or parent about
their ethnic background.After they answer, I try to find an IBNS banknote and some
NI coins that will complement that background, and tell them
that collecting them and mixing it in with the family history and
photographs can prove to be more valuable time and money
spent than just collecting anything else. There is usually a
positive response and I continue to talk about how they can
collect a type set to start, while the child digs through the NI
box of world coins for his or her ten coins.During this convention, a boy of about 12 with some Boy Scout
things on him came to the table. I mentioned to him that the
Boy Scout Coin Collecting Merit Badge now allowed him to
collect US paper money, world coins and paper money, and
tokens to acquire his badge. He did not know this and got
quite excited about it. I asked him what was his ethnic
background and he said "Jewish." I told him there were no
Israeli banknotes in the IBNS stack but there were some coins
in the NI world coins box. He really jumped into the box and
his father assisted him.As I talked to them, I could see they could really be interested
in numismatics, and now more so that the boy could assemble
an Israeli collection for his merit badge and the father could
use it to talk to him about their heritage. So I presented the
two catalogs to them, and told them why they were getting
the references. I also said they were two years old but they
can still learn something about Israeli coins and paper money,
and they could create a want list from them.Besides buying the general world catalogs in the future, I also
suggested that they should find some numismatic book dealers
and buy several specialty catalogs too. Not only will they
discover more to collect, but they will find much more
background information about each piece, and some things
they can relate to their heritage. I was very happy to see two
enthusiastic people leave our booth with a goal of becoming
numismatists specializing in Israeli coins and paper money.During the first few days of the convention, a man come to
the booth twice and asked me about the NBS function with
a dinner and a book auction. It had really slipped my mind
as to what he was talking about so I could not answer him.
After his second visit, I walked around and asked some
people about it until I discovered it was an American
Numismatic Society function for their library. I got all of
the information about it and had it at the booth but the
man never returned.I was planning to attend some of the NBS meetings and
functions at the convention but I missed every one of them.
Just as I planned to leave the booth, someone would come
to it and we would get into a conversation and I would
remember the meeting after it was over. I hope everyone
had a good time at the meetings because I did not. But I
did find time to attend a few meetings.On Saturday, I was moderator for the IBNS and NI meetings.
The IBNS meeting had about 30+ attendees and the NI had
about 10+. I introducing myself and NI or IBNS and then
had a show and tell session. Everyone introduced themselves
and many briefly talked about a piece they own, or a particular
project. Then I gave a talk: You Too Can Write an Article,
Booklet or Book. Part of my talk was that periodicals like
our journal can even use one page articles about one piece,
so they did not have to start by writing a major piece. The
talk was very well received and several of us volunteered
to be anyone's editor who wants to try their hand at writing.For the entire convention, I passed out about 3000 world
coins for NI and about 300 world notes for IBNS to children.
My standard spiel is that I ask them to research them and
use them for show and tell in one or more of their classes.
Many of the coins came from the shipment of about 40
pounds of coins from an NI member who lives near Chicago, '
and the notes came from several IBNS members, to include
myself.If I had time, I also asked each adult if he or she was a
veteran and each child if they had a veteran in their family.
If yes, I gave them an Military Payment Certificate (MPC)
or Allied Military Currency (AMC) note and asked them to
research it, to also talk about it in a class, and show it to the
one or more veterans in their family. And I told them they
could subscribe to the free MPCGram, an emailed newsletter
about military monies to learn more about them.As I have already written, the Girl and Boy Scout Coin
Collecting Merit Badge has been revised and they can use
other than U.S. coins to earn their badge. What I have
not written about is that some of the work on it was done
by George Cuhaj, of Krause Publications, who is also a
Boy Scout advisor. How many of you have this numismatic
pamphlet in your library?My goal at every ANA is to sign up a total of six people
for NBS, NI and IBNS. This time I beat it by one with four (!)
for NBS, two for NI and one for IBNS. And I probably
found about a dozen more people who wrote down the
information to subscribe to The E-Sylum! See you at the
next ANA Convention!"- 2004-08-29
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