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NEW BOOK: FADS, FAKES & FOIBLES

Seneca Mill Press LLC proudly announces release of the latestnumismatic book by Roger W. Burdette:

Fads, Fakes & Foibles.

Most nineteenth century Americans thought of coins and currency in two practicalways: a concern that their pieces of coin or paper currency would be accepted bymerchants for purchases and a desire to have more.

For those few involved in economic policy and politics, other, more esotericaspects of coinage were of concern. Their three principal subjects were prevention ofadulteration or counterfeiting, direct equivalence of international gold coins, and use ofmetric weights for coins. Underlying each of these were certain economic assumptionsand profit opportunities that pushed governments toward decisions.

Adulteration and counterfeiting were of concern to all because bad coins meantthat merchants and banks would reject the money a person offered in payment. In thisregard, it must be remembered that gold coins were simply convenient tokenscontaining a certain weight of pure gold. Banks and merchants could, and occasionallydid, reject legitimate gold coins because they appeared heavily worn or were lighterthan official standards. This was the focus of James T. Barclay and his obsession withpreventing degradation of the national coinage.

Nickel mining maven Joseph Wharton went to great lengths to promote alloys ofnickel and copper for minor coins valued up to ten cents. Here, he cracked skulls withpersistent mint officers who thought of base metal coins only as temporary Civil Warsubstitutes for silver dimes and half dimes.

Businessman Dana Bickford, alternatively, was concerned with the ability oftravelers to easily know the value of their American money in certain Europeancurrencies. His idea for a gold international coin was not intended as a standard ofvalue, but as an equivalency calculator. His changes were of design, not contentalthough much of the work was facilitated by George Dunning, former Superintendent ofthe New York Assay Office.

Silver producers of the 1870s wanted to stop the decline in silver value comparedto gold. Others wanted a bimetallic standard so that gold and silver would circulateequally. Backers of standard international coinage wanted to follow principles of theLatin Monetary Union and have the gold coins of all major nations exactly equal oneanother. Further, many idealists across the world wanted all coin weights expressed ingrams of pure gold or silver and coin diameters and weights to be whole numbers. Herewe find Wheeler Hubbell proposing a bimetallic coinage alloy and U.S. coins of metricweight. He was neither first not last to advocate these measures, but was certainly theone most favored by a Congressional committee. Nicholas Veeder, on the other hand,wanted not an alloy but a mechanical union of the two metals much like modernbimetallic coins.

Others proposed to protect coins by adding an iron ring, or striking pieces withone or more holes to permit a convenient diameter while aiding the blind in identifying acoin's value.

Fads, Fakes & Foibles brings together a strange crew of idealists andopportunists - creators of the best known, but little understood coinage proposals. Theauthor, building on original archival sources separates fact from fancy while providingtoday's collectors with a delightful journey through some of the oddest coinageproposals ever made.

Fads, Fakes & Foibles is available from Wizard Coin Supply(www.wizardcoinsupply.com). Cover price for the 8 1/2 x11-inch book containing 273 fullcolor pages is $29.95. Purchasers may also request a complete digital index edition atno cost. This will facilitate subject searches and provides a convenient copy for use onsmart phones, tablets, and similar portable devices.