{"id":972,"date":"2006-04-14T09:52:57","date_gmt":"2006-04-14T17:52:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2006\/04\/because_being_a_numismatist_just_sounds_dirty.html"},"modified":"2006-04-14T09:52:57","modified_gmt":"2006-04-14T17:52:57","slug":"because_being_a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2006\/04\/because_being_a.html","title":{"rendered":"Because Being A Numismatist Just Sounds Dirty"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2006\/04\/14\/nyregion\/14coin.html\/partner\/rssnyt\">A dirty, filthy numismatist spreads valuable coins around town<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>. . . Scott A. Travers is going around Manhattan this week making a few routine purchases and deliberately spending three rare one-cent coins. Mr. Travers is serious about coins: he collects them, writes about them and is a former vice president of the American Numismatic Association. He hopes that the sharp-eyed people who find one of the three coins will be caught up in what Mr. Travers describes as the magic of coin collecting.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m planting a seed and I hope that a new generation of people will come to appreciate the history that coins represent,&#8221; said Mr. Travers, who is sprinkling around the pennies to coincide with National Coin Week, which starts Sunday. The pennies are almost a century old and are among the most coveted by collectors.<\/p>\n<p>One was produced in 1909, the centennial of Lincoln&#8217;s birth, the first time a United States coin showed a historical figure rather than a depiction of Liberty. The coins had the initials of the engraver, Victor D. Brenner, prominently displayed &#8212; too prominently for public taste &#8212; so they were hastily removed and the coin was reissued without them. The San Francisco mint, whose coins had a small S mint mark below the date, produced fewer than 500,000 pennies with the offending initials. They became instant collectors&#8217; items and most quickly disappeared from circulation.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Travers said his 1909 coin was worth more than $1,000. At Brigandi Coin on 44th Street in Manhattan, one of the rare 1909 coins was being offered for $1,200 this week.<\/p>\n<p>The two other coins Mr. Travers is spending, though not as famous, are also worth a pretty penny because only a relatively small number were made. One is a 1914 penny from the Denver mint (a small D is under the date), valued at $350. The other is a 1908 penny from San Francisco with an Indian girl in a headdress, valued at $200.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A dirty, filthy numismatist spreads valuable coins around town: . . . Scott A. Travers is going around Manhattan this week making a few routine purchases and deliberately spending three rare one-cent coins. Mr. Travers is serious about coins: he collects them, writes about them and is a former vice president of the American Numismatic [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-manhattan","category-there_goes_the_neighborhood"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/972\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}