Did You Know?

What, no quarters? That in 1975 lots of Washington quarters were struck? They were, but you can’t find them listed, at least not obviously. They were dated 1776-1976 and were coined in advance for the 1976 Bicentennial.

Where’s the mintmark? In 1870 the San Francisco Mint received dies from Philadelphia, per regular practice. However, two dies lacked the S mintmark—a gold dollar die and a $3 gold die—someone forgot.

Which is the obverse? Try this out at your next coin club meeting: What side is the obverse of the $1 and $3 gold coins? If you answered the Miss Liberty or “heads” side, you’d be right, and we’d agree with you. However, in Mint records the side with the date was called the obverse, what we call the reverse. So, if you hold your club meeting in the foyer of the Philadelphia Mint, then the answer would be wrong! We won’t even mention which is obverse and which is reverse for the 1936 Robinson-Arkansas commemorative half dollar! (PS: Stack’s was the official distributor of that coin).

That the first First National Bank to open in the United States was in Davenport, Iowa? It was set to open on Monday, July 1, 1863, but someone overlooked reading the instructions from the Treasury Department, and it threw open its doors the preceding Saturday.

You probably didn’t know this either: The president of the First National Bank of Davenport, Austin Corbin, was later a major developer of the Coney Island vacation area in New York. And, for good measure, you probably didn’t know that on his private estate near Newport, New Hampshire, he kept boars, buffaloes, and other exotic (at least for our part of the country) game animals.

That the Professional Numismatists Guild was formed way back in 1953 by Abe Kosoff and had its first formal meeting at the 1955 American Numismatic Association convention in Omaha? Those who like minutia concerning the traditions of our company’s antecedents will be interested in knowing that for a number of years James F. Ruddy, partner with Dave Bowers in Empire Coin Co., was the secretary of the PNG. The records were kept in our office, and the correspondence was done from there. Jim volunteered his services to the PNG, no charge at all. Later, the position evolved into the executive director and was held by others, well paid. Dave Bowers became member no. 58 of the PNG in 1960. Elsewhere in our company, Larry Stack served as president of the PNG some years ago.