Sad news for Smithsonian Public Deposited

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[Colonial Numismatics] Re

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  • From rogermoore435@yahoo.com Tue Apr 20 08:21:08 2004
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    From: Roger Moore <rogermoore435@yahoo.com>
    Subject: Re: [Colonial Numismatics] Re: Sad news for Smithsonian
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    Thank you John for sharing this extteordinary story.
    I was wondering how you got statred attributing
    Virginians. I will cross reference to the Virginia
    group. Roger


    --- "John M. Kleeberg" <jmkleeberg@yahoo.com> wrote:
    > --- In colonial-coins@yahoogroups.com, "Steven G
    > Frank"
    > <taxi_steve929@y...> wrote:
    > > The Smithsonian could put EVERYTHING on
    > display.....right here
    > > online!!
    >
    > Actually, there is an instance of that happening
    > with another museum
    > collection - the Library of Notre Dame. And that's
    > a very positive
    > museum story, and illustrates well the nuances and
    > ambiguities of
    > the problem.
    >
    > At some point in the late nineteenth century someone
    > - JCS has made
    > the very exciting suggestion that it was Horatio N.
    > Rust - donated a
    > large group of coppers to Notre Dame. The
    > collection was stored
    > away in the library, and nobody really looked at it
    > for a century.
    > Fast forward to the 1990s. Robert Gore donated a
    > very nice type set
    > of colonial coins to Notre Dame, and the librarian,
    > Lou Jordan,
    > wanted someone to come out and look at it and I was
    > invited to do so
    > and to give a lecture. I looked through the type
    > set, but there
    > wasn't very much I could contribute, because someone
    > had cataloged
    > it very assiduously before me and all the
    > attributions appeared to
    > be correct; in fact, the only coins that were
    > unattributed were the
    > Virginia halfpence, and that's how I started out in
    > attributing
    > Virginia halfpence by Newman variety... Friday
    > night at dinner Lou
    > mentioned that there was another collection of coins
    > in the library,
    > but it was just a pile of junk. I said I should
    > probably look at it
    > anyway. So we arranged to go in on a Saturday. I
    > didn't expect to
    > see much of anything, but I figured I might as well
    > be conscientious
    > and see everything there was to see. We went into
    > the small vault
    > room and Lou turned on the light and pulled out some
    > albums, and I
    > began to look through it, and what do I see on the
    > first page I pull
    > out - but a bunch of Machin's pieces! (These I can
    > recognize very
    > readily, using, as you know, my "George III wearing
    > lipstick"
    > technique.) I turn over more pages, and there are
    > more Machin's
    > pieces, and next thing I know, there's a Vlack
    > 14-84A! I thought to
    > myself, "Now I know how Mike R. must feel nearly
    > every day." So I
    > said to Lou, "This is an extraordinary collection.
    > It complements
    > very nicely the typeset. In fact, there are pieces
    > here that are
    > much rarer than anything in the typeset."
    >
    > Notre Dame library had just put one of the first
    > research areas on
    > the web - a Dante project, and I remember Lou saying
    > to his
    > boss, "We could be the first place to put coins on
    > the web!" And
    > they were. They did a lot of work with JCS, and the
    > result is that
    > there is now a huge website with vast amounts of
    > resources about
    > colonial coins. And Lou has done a lot of other
    > work in this field,
    > such as being an editor of CNL and writing his book
    > about
    > Massachusetts silver coinage.
    >
    > So was it worthwhile for the donor to give his coins
    > to the library
    > of Notre Dame? The answer depends upon when you
    > answer it. As of
    > 1987 you might say - "What a waste, the collection
    > was hidden away
    > in the basement and nobody saw it." As of today, we
    > can say - "That
    > donation has had extraordinarily positive effects
    > for numismatic
    > research." Thank you, Lou, Jim, Robert Gore, Notre
    > Dame, and (I
    > think) Horatio!
    >
    > John M. Kleeberg
    >
    >





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  • 2004-04-20
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