Apologies for the absence; blogging will be lighter, but will certainly continue.
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The American Numismatic Society is being sued by the Hispanic Society for the return of thousands of valuable coins which had been “on permanent loan” to the ANS. In general, we tend to be suspect of these kinds of arrangements, as there is always a chance the terms will be altered by one of the parties at a later date, leading to legal troubles and lawsuits.
A recent article from the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, noting that “Everyone’s familiar with the big names atop Pittsburgh’s famous museums: Carnegie, Warhol, Heinz,” asks
“But what about Kerr, Bayernhof and Burtner? Scattered across the suburbs are many more houses of history that might not bear household names, but can be as fascinating as the internationally known museums in the city.”
This, of course, is a very valid point. Without denigrating the “encyclopedic museums,”–which would be most foolish”–we feel that the little museums are also worth celebrating. It’s often in the small nooks and crannies of the world that we find the artefacts and moments that are most a part of our own history, or that provide us with some insight that was new to us. Thus, we’re pleased to note a couple of interesting examples of local history and museums.
In Scotland, a newly-constructed Morrison’s supermarket houses the museum of the Johnstone Heritage Society. The society obtained funding from a Heritage Lottery Fund grant, and the supermarket was built to accommodate the museum, for which the chain charges only a nominal fee. The Johnstone Heritage Society museum inside Morrison’s is a positive example of how business, the community, and government can all come together in the interest of arts and culture.
(We also note the value, once again, of the Heritage Lottery, and we wish that such a thing existed on our side of the Atlantic Ocean. If we were the directors of the various museum organizations, we would be pushing for this.)
Meanwhile, we also note our own modest efforts in helping the Port Coquitlam Heritage & Cultural Society to have a blogging presence. Port Coquitlam, the home town of Terry Fox, is dear to our heart, and the “PoCo” Heritage & Cultural Society does a fine job of delving into the past of the city. Small community organizations like this often can and do manage to find ways to fundraise and generate interest. We hope that such organizations continue to innovate as they seek new sources of funding for their much-needed work.
We have just created what we believe to be Canada’s first numismatic forum. [UPDATE: In fact, it is far from the first, and we may delete the forum, except for a section on token collecting.] The forum is dedicated to Canadian numismatics, as opposed to being only for Canadian people; accordingly, Americans with an interest in Canadian numismatics are encouraged to join their northern neighbors in participating in this forum.
Why another forum at all? There are several good reasons to have started this particular forum. First, there are no other forums that we are aware of that deal with Canadian numismatics. While there is at least one email-based discussion group on Yahoo dedicated to this issue, it suffers from several drawbacks. First, communication is not instantaneous, and second, as we found out on only our second post, the criteria for what is allowed it, to put it mildly, too strict.
Furthermore, one must become a Yahoo member to use that type of discussion format. Different people are going to have different perspectives on this, but we tend to find it quite annoying to sign up for various email addresses–gmail, yahoo, msn–in order to join groups and interact with others. With a forum, there’s no need for a new email address. With a web-based forum, replies to one’s messages can still be sent to an email account, so one has the best of both worlds–web, and email.
In short: instantaneous posting (unlike comments on our blog, heh), and flexible delivery of communications.
Our one problem: since we are so new to the technology involved in setting up a forum, we will have to work out many bugs. Accordingly, patient testers with an interest in Canadian numismatics are encouraged to join the site and send us feedback to n.bauman@curatorandcollector.com. Feel free also to suggest new forum topics. We will monitor what happens and try our best to make the forum a good experience for numismatists and hobbyists in this field.
A Quebec financial company, the Desjardins Group, recently made headlines when it suggested that Canada drop the penny and the nickel, and replace the five dollar bill with a coin of the same denomination. (Also see this link at the Globe and Mail’s Report on Business.) This comes even as NDP Pat Martin introduced a private member’s bill in the House of Commons that would see the penny scrapped within two years. At the same time, coins would be made smaller, while the government would consider, every few years, creating a two-hundred dollar bill.
Curator & Collector enthusiastically endorses this study. This might seem counterintuitive, but our reasoning is very simple. First, one must remember that an 1870 penny had the purchasing power of 26.7 of today’s pennies. When coinage was first introduced in the Dominion of Canada, people didn’t bother with valueless coins. Why should we?
Second, the devaluation of coinage has caused the public to flock to the credit card companies for the means to make most purchases. Rejigging the coinage and paper money system will enable the public to continue to use government-issued coins and banknotes. Accordingly, tradition and aesthetics–both critical to our numismatic hobby–are both on the side of a complete monetary overhaul.
A Sikh organization in India, the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, was successful in lobbying Sotheby’s to cancel its plans to auction an armour suit believed to have belonged to the tenth guru, Gobind Singh. The group wrote a letter to the Queen, and was prepared to to take its protest to the United Nations in an effort to create a global ban on the “auctions of such relics, which are revered by communities all over the world.”
Naturally, we have a few comments about this. First, speaking of a ban on sacred artefacts is almost an oxymoron, as for millennia believers of all religions have been buying and selling relics and other “sacred” “artefacts.” In this case, it was feared that the relic would be sold to someone who was not a Sikh. On one level, we can sympathize with this view.
On the other hand, it smacks of religious imperialism to require secular societies to “respect” religions according to the terms set by those religions. Certainly, our inner atheist is being driven crazy by the encroachment of imperialistic religions on the fabric of secular life. It is also unclear where the demands of religions will end, and everyone cannot be subject to the dictates of all religions everywhere.
Of course, in this age of globalization, this “cultural imperialism” is a two-way street, and people in many parts of the world are putting up with the aggressive reach of western pop-culture. Ironically, it may be that the worst parts of east and west are meeting at the threshold of Joe or Yusuf Average’s house. We remember traveling near Germany’s Black Forest some years ago and being astonished at how much English, coupled with American products, there was everywhere. We were horrified.
In our opinion, the market value of the armour suit should be somehow ascertained, and then an offer should probably be made to a Sikh body to buy the relic at the market rate. Whether this is a religious relic at all, of course, has been asserted but not proved–a difficult task given the fact that it turned up at an auction house in London, having been preserved, apparently, outside the religious tradition.
An exhibit in a Catholic Museum in Vienna recently sparked a controversy after one of the artworks showed a homosexual orgy transpiring at the Last Supper. The art was being exhibited in a retrospective titled “Religion, Flesh, and Power,” a tribute to the eighty year-old Alfred Hrdlicka, one of Austria’s leading artists. Other artwork displayed include “works such as a depiction of the Crucifixion in which a soldier simultaneously beats Jesus and holds his genitals, [and] an image of Jesus on the cross without a face or a loincloth.”
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We had to email our webhosting company, Hostpapa, after Curator & Collector disappeared last night. They didn’t tell us what caused the problem, but we’re pleased they fixed it. We’ll have more posting today!
We continue to follow the story of Lady Britannia with great pleasure and interest, thanks to the Daily Mail’s continued and devoted–and humorous–coverage. The recent redesign of British coinage left her without a presence on circulating coins. Now, a “senior advisor” with the Royal Mint has stated that Britannia could return–on a newly redesigned 2 pound coin.
Since this post is dedicated entirely to the matter of Lady Britannia, we should probably note that the “disappearance” of Britannia from British coins is not total: she remains on silver bullion issues, albeit in a different pose:
John Porteous, the official quoted above, reassured us when he said that “There is certainly no anti-Britannia agenda going on” at the Royal Mint. On the other hand, Porteous also appears to be looking for new designs. He said “if someone comes up with a decent design for Britannia, we would love to get our hands on her.”
Our preference is for the old pose. It’s traditional, powerful, and respectful of humanity. Well, if our dear readers cannot find Lady Britannia on circulating British coinage for some time, they can always find her atop our banner.
We are happy that the Quebec City armoury that burned down a few days ago did not also see the loss of the bulk of its archives that were stored there. The armoury was built in 1884, and housed WWI and WWII memorabilia, as well as material pertaining to the Louis Riel rebellion.
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UPDATE: We are pleased to read on the CBC’s website that Ottawa will fund the reconstruction of the armoury.
UPDATE 2: Belated, but Taylor & Company has a post up on this, complete with a magnificent photograph and excellent commentary.
The Royal Mint has just unveiled its new currency designs for all coin denominations, and although some people might find reasons to disapprove of the new designs, we very much like them! Each coin depicts a part of the Great Shield. The entire scheme was designed by Matthew Dent.
In terms of disapproval, there was widespread indignation–including on our part–after it was noticed that Lady Britannia would no longer appear on any of the coins. Then, too, some might balk at how most coins fail to display a whole design or image. In some respects, this mirrors the modern tendency to see the leaves and not the forest, and perhaps readers will understand if we say that the coin designs mirror the fragmentation of daily life.
On the other hand, if the bulk of the coins do not display a whole design, they at least display recognizable parts of a design, and a solid, beautiful, and historic one at that. Then, too, the climactic one pound coin does proudly show the Great Shield in its entirety.
Furthermore, the coins, taken as a set, perhaps serve as a metaphor for the nation, comprising a mosaic of peoples. We feel that the individual tiles in the mosaic, both in Britain and our own nation, sometimes need a reminder of their relationship to the other tiles, and to the whole of which they are a part. In the mean time, “Cool Britannia” is now “departed Britannia,” and we mourn her passing and hope that she makes a comeback. On the other hand, the UK and her currency is still very, very, “cool.” In fact, we’ll probably try to pick up uncirculated sets–the last of the old, and the first of the new.
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UPDATEs: Via Coin Update, a well-illustrated blog entry. About.com’s Susan Headley also has a very positive review up.
UPDATE 2: BBC Magazine takes a further look at the new coins.
A tragedy was announced a few days ago: the CBC is dismantling the CBC Radio Orchestra. I cannot fathom the reason for this, but this is denial of everything the CBC should be standing for. The CBC should represent the best of Canadian arts and culture, and the role of the radio orchestra in developing young classical musicians should not be underestimated. We find this a highly inappropriate and tragic decision. Meanwhile, many are justifiably upset. Some of the comments at the preceding link express our thoughts, too.
Effective today, the government of Canada will be canceling the much-needed Exhibition Transportation Service. The CBC notes:
“For instance, an exhibit titled Time and Space — featuring the work of three western Canadian artists — opened at The Rooms on Sunday. Using ETS, shipping the artwork from Lethbridge, Alta., to St. John’s cost $3,000. Organizers estimate it will cost three times that amount for the exhibition to return home using a private company.”
We can’t understand why the government chose to end this program, given that its overall share of government expenses is bound to be about nil. Gestures like this, we find, are more upsetting than they are worth, and serve to solidify the impression that the party in government is basically the party of the uncultured. If we were the federal Conservatives, we would be using our passion for Canadian heritage and culture to keep small programs like this running.
Welcome to Curator & Collector’s second carnival of the numismatics bloggers! This carnival of North American blogs covers the month of March; our previous one covered February. Although we have noted how few people in the North American blogosphere are actually blogging about coins, paper money, medallions, and medals on a regular basis, this edition is actually larger than the first one, which included several blogs with no posts during the time period covered. This carnival includes posts on ancient coins, English coins, modern Canadian and US coins; banknotes, medallions, and medals. The present carnival promises to be significantly larger and therefore more interesting than our last effort, as we are including more blogs that have come to our attention. We count about 30 blogs covered, and if we missed you, kindly leave a comment. Without further ado, then…
Beginning right at the top, we see that Ed Snibble of A Gift for Polydektes has a review of Ilya Prokopov’s Counterfeit Studios and their Coins. This blook, like another title by the same author that Ed reviewed, covers classical Greek and Roman coins, as well as others from the world of antiquity.
Ab Urbe Condita’s Brian has a Jovian up, and if you don’t know when Jovian was emperor, go and visit the above link for that detail and a fine photograph. Brian also has a recounts how he discovered that a coin in his collection was a fake.
Ancient Coin Cleaning and Restoration’s Jerry has a post on visual noise in coin photography.
Wayne Sayles’ concern with “contextual numismatics” at Ancient Coin Collecting, a blog we enjoy, led to a post with rhetoric that was rather more spirited than we are comfortable with. It seems to us that Nathan Elkins (not to be confused with this blog’s Nathan Bauman) was doing nothing particularly offensive in creating a panel on “contextual numismatics” and then putting out a call for papers. We remember our time in grad school, when we noted very similar scholarly blind spots that required filling in. There appears to be much more going on beneath the surface here, but we hope that subsequent discussions can take place in a more gentlemanly manner (and we note with sadness that not a single numismatics blogger that we are aware of is a woman).
Paladin at Ancienti posts a picture of what “zapping” looks like. Paladin also has posted several examples of his cleaning technique.
Tom Michael at Big Ideas, Little World noted, like us, the cereal item that was sold (well, a coupon for which was sold) on for a four-figure sum. Tom also has a post on the somewhat related hobby of geocaching.
The eponymous Dave Harper of Buzz with Dave Harper” has a little vignette involving the new US $5 banknote. He also writes fondly of a regional regional numismatics event, noting how, while less important than the annual ANA’s event, small events have much to offer.
If you ever wanted to know how to break open certifying companies’ holders so that you could resubmit your coins, A.C. Dwyer has the post for you, complete with YouTube video links. An acquaintance of ours who worked for a time at Heritage Auctions once told me this was common practice there. This individual felt somewhat let down by this, but we don’t feel the same way. If one assumes that such practice is commonplace, then when one does see a certified coin, one assumes that this is the maximum grading that coin can have. Since grading is more of an art than a science anyway, this practice of resubmitting seems reasonable to us as it takes the lottery aspect (which graders one gets on which days) out of the equation. Dwyer’s other blog has a number of interesting posts, including one with this provocative title: “Dollar bill should be dropped for Sacagawea and Presidential coin.”
Scott, who has one of the older and and more compelling coin blogs, recently celebrated his 300th post. Scott also draws attention to the lack of accessibility on US banknotes, asking why the Bureau of Printing and Engraving does not utilize the technology used by over 100 countries and the European Union. Scott has many more interesting posts, so make sure you check out his Coin Collector’s Blog.
K. Balch’s only post for the month of March is a nice story of the finds present in a coin hoard Balch was permitted to go through.
Coin of the Day continues to post coins everyday. Like the entry above, he made a very old and very nice find in an unusual–or maybe not so unusual place: a dealer’s junkbox. His post on an 1848 penny is also worth a visit.
Congratulations are due to the prolific numismatist behind Coinupdate.com, as he recently had a baby. If you want to see a typical post with twenty-five links or so (we didn’t actually count), check out his current post, where you can find, among other things, information about fake PCGS slabs on Ebay.
“Man” of the Coined for Money blog reports that he has been seeing fewer coins coming through his hands, as he has been using credit cards more. Hmm, sounds like a familiar problem!
Susan Headley of Coins.about.com, like others in the numismatics blogosphere, has comments on the Chinese-made fake PCGS slabs that have been making the rounds on Ebay. Susan also criticizes PCGS; her comments in this regard are certainly worth reading.
Colin Bruce II of Court Jester fondly remembers a nice present from Krause Publications.
Incredible! Did we read “Robert Frost,” “Joseph Campbell,” and “A.E. Housman” in the same post from a numismatics blogger? Apparently we did, and we may have just found a new soul-mate. We jest, of course, especially when we are making bad puns. George S. Cuhaj of the Current Currency blog also has a good post on something we’ve never heard of before: courtesy signatures. It’s well worth the read, and once again demonstrates the value of the blogging community–it just opens up so many interesting new horizons.
Curator & Collector is us, of course. While toiling under the weight of the royal plural associated with Canada’s only numismatics blog, we managed to produce a meditation on the 1935 silver (Canadian) dollar. We blog daily about both museums and numismatics; don’t be afraid to hit the “page down” button numerous times to get an overall feel for things.
Dave Kranz of Digital Watermark has so many posts on the new US $5 banknote that we didn’t know which ones to link to. Accordingly, here’s a link to his archive for the month of March. Dave also kindly kindly linked to us in one of those posts.
Another one of the professionals who blog, Robert R. Van Ryzin of the Flip Side has a thoughtful lament concerning the need for living artists to take up the torch passed to them by past generations. Robert was writing this in the context of the US Mint’s bringing back the lovely designs of yesteryear.
Speaking of laments, we still have one for one of our favorite blogs on the coins of antiquity. Hobbyblog still has not been updated. We wish Ed the best of health, and hope that one day he can begin posting the remainder of his very large and very impressive collection.
Ebay’s been in the news lately for a lot of less than positive reasons. Fred Borgmann of The Militarist discovered that he’d been had after registering for a company called ePier. Fred also draws our attention to veterans’ ladder bridges, another numismatic category of which we were previously unaware.
It seems that nowadays everybody has at least two blogs. We just discovered that Coinupdate.com and Mint News Blog are identical. The extremely prolific Michael of these two fine blogs has a nice post on the burnished gold eagles that come out tomorrow (no joke, apparently).
One of the numismatics blogs that details with antiquities, Musings of an Ancient Coin Collector just came to our attention. This blogger, who goes by “JC,” currently has a post that offers a reminder of a historical correction.
Doug Barger over at Numismatic Blog has a good post on caring for your coins. He writes:
“Lets look at a raw coin sitting on a table. The air is attacking it causing it to tone, the temperature and humidity will also affect how it will tone and may cause active corrosion if the humidity is high enough. When you pick it up you risk etching your finger prints on the coin. These are the main set of issues you have to contend with.”
We think that a fantastic description that captures the issues in a nutshell. Doug also has a very nice post on how to be a contagious numismatics hobbyist.
Brett Telford’s One Coin at a Time is another blog that we are sorry to have found only now. Brett will infect you with a desire to collect English coins and coins of late antiquity.
Scott Head of SCOTVS CAPITIS has a Claudius up. Given the weakness of the strike, we found the bust on the coin to be quite–well–striking.
Sestertius Collector is displaying the wife of Trajan as well as Commodus Sestertius
One blog we are very sorry to have missed last time around is Tales of a Lifelong Coin Collector, put out by a software programmer named Les. Les is prodigious in his output of mostly short, bite-sized–but highly interesting–posts. In one post, Les draws our attention to even a coin collector’s tendency to prefer alternatives to cash. In a much longer post, he gives the World Reserve Monetary Exchange, a company we had never heard of, a good fisking.
The Punch Die remains one of our many favorite blogs. Titus has engaging commentary on ancient military history, modern politics, and, of course, ancient coins. His post on a provincial Gordian III makes for an interesting read, for he writes “my first foray into the world of uncleaned Roman coins is not going quite as I hoped.” We think every collector has experienced disappointment from time to time, and we wish him the best of luck for the Gordian III that he intends to blog again after cleaning and waxing.
Finally, last, but not least, Tom Chao’s Banknotes News Archive blog is well-worth a visit.
That’s it for this month’s Numismatics Blog Carnival–hope you enjoyed the read. So: who’s willing to do next month’s carnival on April 30th?
This post is neither a museums post, nor a numismatics post, but a note for the technically-inclined.
We’ve upgraded to Wordpress 2.5. The chief reason for our decision to upgrade was to prevent the post composition window from “messing with” our code, as the Wordpress people put it. This was extremely annoying, as every time we would edit an entry with a photograph in it, the paragraph following the photograph was always scrunched together with insufficient spacing between the letters and the lines. An additional improvement we like is that we didn’t have to go hunting for our Akismet key, as we had to do the last time we upgraded; Wordpress somehow remembered it for us.
On the other hand, the new dashboard is decidedly impractical, especially in regards to the placement of the categories, which one now has to scroll down to see. The layout and the colours are also much less attractive than 2.3.3, and to us the special organization of the dashboard leaves much to be desired. it would be difficult to overstate our aversion to the new dashboard’s format, and we hope that these issues can be fixed in a later update.
Now, back to our regular programming!
Somehow this just doesn’t sound right:
“The simple story of a troubled young man who left behind a life of crime thanks to Winnipeg’s Graffiti Art program was enough for the city to make one last addition to its 2008 budget Thursday.”
Since we’re on the subject of Winnipeg, we should mention that the Winnipeg Art Gallery will have a new director, Stephen Borys, who is presently chief curator at Florida’s John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art. This may be interesting for some, as there have been complaints that curators are under-represented in these types of roles.
Another very brief post today. The BBC is reporting a 150 year-old French song, “Au clair de la lune,” that was “recorded” by a device that represented sound waves with lines on a paper has been recovered. One of our favourite colleagues sent us a further link to several other historic recordings. Since we are on the subject of old recordings, we should very much like to mention Alessandro Moreschi, the last of the castrati. He made a number of recordings, one of which, Ave Maria, is still very recognizable.
We’re going to take something of an off-day today as we are exhausted. Fortunately, we’ve been wanting to highlight the wonderful special museums section of the New York Times, and it appears we’ve just done that.
Artefacts, including–perhaps even especially–coins, tell stories. Today we wish to share with our readers two images of, and a few thoughts on Canada’s first circulation dollar coin, which came in 1935, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the coronation of King George V. This auspicious occasion was deemed sufficient reason to remove the phrase “dei gratia rex” (”by the grace of God, King”) from the obverse, something that did not upset the public as a similar move had back in 1911, when there was a public outcry over the “godless coins.” This coin bears the inscription “GEORGIVS V REX IMPERATOR ANNO REGNI XXV,” a tribute to this twenty-fifth anniversary.
In the presence of real royalty, perhaps we should get away from our somewhat tongue-in-cheek, and highly pretentious, royal plural. Briefly, I would like to share this coin’s story so that readers can appreciate just how special it is. Beginning with the obverse, note the visible symbol of Canada’s ties to the monarchy. I appreciate the symbolism of the king and crown. Readers may be interested to know that the present queen is still officially the “Queen of Canada.”
The reverse, designed by noted sculptor Emmanuel Hahn, is even more intriguing. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, a movement took place a among a group of Canadian artists. It was felt that until the country’s landscapes had been painted, “Canada” wouldn’t really be a country fit for people. Seeking to rectify this, seven artists banded together to form the Group of Seven. They filled their canvases with the landscapes of northern Ontario: rock, river, windswept tree, leaves. Initially, their art was described as “barbaric” and strange. The painting shown below, A.J. Casson’s “White Pine,” gives one a glimpse into what the Group of Seven, who had inspired Casson, was trying to do. The painting itself post-dates our coin by over twenty years, and many of Casson’s works were of southern Ontario. Nevertheless the painting, in its choice and treatment of its subject matter reflects the artistic currents that inspired Hahn.
Both Casson’s and Hahn’s works feature windswept trees, water, and solitude. Hahn has people in his canoe, a fur-trading “voyageur” and an Indian. Carved in tiny initials on one of the packs in the canoe are the initials “HB” for Hudson’s Bay Company, an entity that played a pivotal role in the early development of Canada. The straight vertical lines above the island represent the northern lights.
The “Voyageur dollar” remains an icon and a symbol of what the maturing country of Canada was about, and aspired to be. There is the solitude of the island, yet also the spirit of community of the two cultures represented on the canoe. We also see the hardness and and the coldness, as well as the wonder of nature. Perhaps there is also a metaphor for the paradox of life in this barren region: fragile, yet tenacious.
The reverse of Canada’s present dollar coin, ridiculously known as the “loonie,” features an island in the background whose rock, shape, and trees recall the old Voyageur dollar. It’s harder to see all that, now, with the still water and the loon in the foreground, even as, sadly, many Canadians seem to have lost touch with the wilderness that gave the country its character and inspired its artists. Despite the affluence of many in the twenty-first century, it it difficult to see in this loon a convincing metaphor for the life of the nation.
After around two months of blogging, Curator & Collector now has had over 1000 unique visitors. While our numbers have been small, they have been from interesting places. Our statcounter informs us we have had visitors from:
-various universities in Canada, and America, including the British Museum
-various museums, including the Textiles Museum, the Mingei, the Carnegie Museum of Art, and the Royal BC Museum
-the Smithsonian (a curator from which kindly sent us a nice little compliment)
-the Pentagon
-the State Department
-the New York Times
-the Bank of Canada
-the government of Canada
Now we are looking to take this to the next level. First, we want more sources of information. We want more news, more press releases, and more people writing museum-themed blogs! (Curators, professors, instructors, donors, connoisseurs and students could all help us out here.) Send us your information: we want to find more online material to link to and write about. (Material from Canada is especially welcome; if we could get enough of it, we would consider setting up a separate blog just for Canadian museums.)
Second, we want more visitors. You can help us out here; if you like this blog about museums, please spread the word. Put us in your bulletin, email our website link to your friends.
Third, we want to be better. Leave constructive comments. Email us. We can’t promise to be all things to all people, but we can promise to carefully consider every comment and email, and we would be most grateful your spreading the word. Thanks for your consideration, and remember that synergy builds interest!
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And yes, we are still interested in numismatics; there will be a similar effort in that area shortly.
Akaky Akakyevitch and all other poor Russian literary heroes would be surprised to see what inflation and the rising cost of metals can do to an economy. In its own version of the penny crisis, wherein the lowest denomination coins cost more to make then what they are worth, Russia is considering abolishing the one-kopek coin. Changing its composition is another of the options on the table. As with Canada, the US, and Fiji, all of which have been blogged about here, soaring metal prices are being blamed.
In other news, the Royal Canadian Mint’s aboriginal-themed Olympic $75 coins are proving popular in Canada. We are interested in learning more about this series.
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