History
It has been said that coins are the footprints of history.
Years ago dealer B. Max Mehl told of the double appeal of numismatics; as a
source of pleasure and as a worthwhile investment. His words are still relevant
today:
"Coin collecting as a hobby affords more pleasure and
greater interest than any other collectible objects. It opens a wide field of
study. It develops a taste for art and stimulates research in nearly every
branch of learning. It teaches us history and geography, and while a very
fascinating and instructive pastime, it has also been the source of much profit,
as no one knows better than those who have collected coins in the past, that
good coin collections increase in value from year to year, thus providing an
excellent investment. Coins are often the only historical records that we have
of nations which have long since passed away, and which would have been buried
in oblivion but for the coins that bear the names of kings and records of events
relating to the countries whose money they once were."
A few years ago I chanced to be in Atlanta, Georgia with Ed
Rochette, who at the time was executive director of the American Numismatic
Association. A local radio station wanted to do a feature on coin collecting,
and Ed and I took a taxi to the studio to be interviewed. The movie Cleopatra,
with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, was on the screens across America, and
the subject of Cleopatra came up in the interview.
"While Cleopatra may be gorgeous on the movie
screen," Ed Rochette related, "in reality she was as ugly as a toad.
How do I know? Her portrait on coinage tells us so."
Similarly, the prognathic jaw (as medical experts would
call it today) of Leopold the Hogmouth of Austria is there for all to see on his
silver thalers, even as the abnormality progresses in its extent. Many faces in
history are known to us only through coinage, for no paintings, sculpture, or
other delineations survive.
In 1920, Frank Morton Todd wrote a history of the 1915
Panama-Pacific International Exposition, including in his five-volume study an
article, "The Coin Outlives the Throne." The subject of the article
was Farran Zerbe, who managed the coin and medal exhibit at the Exposition and
who displayed his collection, titled Moneys of the World. On view were the
engraved images of kings and queens, of schemers and scholars, and others who
for one reason or another had their portrait placed on coins, tokens, medals, or
paper money over the years. For many individuals little is known except the
tangible evidence of their coinage -indeed, for many the coin did outlive the
throne, just as B. Max Mehl said (perhaps he was inspired by Todd).
