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Video from the recent Newman Portal Symposium, held November April 27-29, 2023 is now available. The Newman Portal Symposium brings together speakers on a wide variety of numismatic topics, including U.S., world, and ancient numismatics. Our feature presentation examined crypto currencies and featured a Q&A with Rob Rodriguez and James Passin.

Videos from all Newman Portal Symposium sessions are posted at https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/multimediadetail/539070.

Recently added to the Newman Portal is Shawn Tew’s The Rabbit Hole of the 1909 Wheat Cent, a work supported in part by a grant from the Eric P. Newman Numismatic Education Society. In this work, Tew synthesizes the current technical research related to this coin and uses material from the National Archives to provide context for the design changes made early in the life of the Lincoln cent, the most ubiquitous coin in recorded history. The interplay between Victor D. Brenner and Charles Barber is fascinating, as the efforts to bring artistry to the nation’s coinage come into conflict with the quotidian concerns of day-to-day coinage production. Tew summarizes the known varieties for the 1909 and 1910 cents, one of which reuses a reverse from 1909. Tew leaves no stone unturned and integrates test results from the Center for Advanced Microscopy at Michigan State University, in order to analyze the relief profiles of the reverse dies. The work concludes with analysis of a remarkable hoard of Lincoln cents put away in 1909 and not fully examined until today.

Link to The Rabbit Hole of the 1909 Wheat Cent on Newman Portal: https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/book/629442

If someone talked about numismatics over the airwaves in 1939, what did they discuss? Remarkably, we can answer that question, at least in a couple cases. Recently located in the Eric P. Newman papers are scripts for two presentations delivered by Newman in 1939 over St. Louis radio station WIL (the call letters predated the standard K-format now used west of the Mississippi). The June 11, 1939 script provided an overview of colonial numismatics, while the August 13 presentation related to Newman’s recently acquired 1861 St. Louis $10 demand note. This note ultimately appeared in Newman VIII (Heritage Auctions, November 2017), lot 28315, where it sold for $168,000. 

The Newman biographical papers, now at the Missouri History Museum Library in St. Louis, fill in the gaps leading up to the August 13 presentation. Newman, almost certainly referring to this $10 demand note, wrote to his then fiancée Evelyn Edison on August 2, 1939, “Got 2 new Missouri banknotes which pleases me very much.” In further correspondence on August 4, Newman noted “I am going to make another radio talk on August 13 of the same kind I made before but shorter. So come home & help me write it.”

Link to Eric P. Newman 1939 radio presentations: https://archive.org/details/Epn0930-1939wilradiopresentat