NNP

The ANS has launched a podcast! Hosted by our Publications Director Andrew Reinhard, each episode of The Planchet will be a conversation with numismatists covering a range of topics. Episode 1 features ANS Assistant Curator of the Americas Dr. Jesse Kraft on how Americans spent foreign currency before the Coinage Act of 1857. The Planchet is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google/Android. Subscribe and hear a new episode each month!

Episode 1: Jesse Kraft, ANS Curator of the Americas

From the earliest days of the British-American colonies, up through the late 1850s, a variety of foreign coinage circulated in the United States, including Spanish-American, British, French, and Portuguese formed a majority of the hard-money supply in the United States. Most of these coins did not conform to the predominant unit of account (i.e. "dollars" or "pounds") and forced American consumers and merchants to navigate this system through a variety of ingenious, though sometimes confounding methods. This episode will discuss those methods, including the use of abstract mathematical formulas, a variety of exchange charts, the prolonged usage of British monetary terminologies, and ways to evade the heightened threat of counterfeit coins.

In her email Newsletter #149 Shanna Schmidt writes:

For more information, or to listen, see:
The Planchet The Podcast from the American Numismatic Society (http://numismatics.org/planchet/)