Numismatics
Numismatics is the art and science that studies the forms and uses of money,
including coins, tokens, bonds, drafts, notes, medals, military decorations
and the literature about all of them.
Writing and money share a common origin in the precursors to cuneiform tablets. The first coins were political semata. Today's Federal Reserve Notes carry about 20 distinct verbal messages. Laws that regulate campaign finance limit your access to the electoral processes.
Newton lived the last thirty years of his life as the Warden and Master of the British Royal Mint. Most biographers ignore this important and compelling assignment in service to the Crown.
The images of Herakles on the coins of Alexander the Great are representations, perhaps lifelike, of Alexander himself.
Coins were a radical invention that gave a new direction to the storage and transmission of wealth. We do not know why coins were invented. Of the theories offered in the last 150 years, several stand out.
Copper Owls
After losing the Peloponnesian Wars to Sparta, the treasury of Athens was depleted. Did Athens really issue silver-plated coins as an emergency measure?
Plato defined man as a featherless biped. Diogenes came to the Academy holding aloft a plucked chicken, declaring, "Here is Plato's man!" All historians agree that Diogenes came to Athens in the wake of some crime against the coinage of his home town, Sinope on the Black Sea.
The Central Mining Company of Eagle Harbor on the Kewanee Peninsula of Upper Michigan operated for nearly 40 years, closing in 1898. When the lakes froze in the winter, the region was cut off from markets in New York and Boston. These notes were often redeemed for East Coast money when shipping re-opened.
When President Roosevelt closed the nation's banks on March 5, 1933, people still had assets and liabilities, jobs and work to be done. What they lacked was a circulating medium. Nationwide, thousands of communities, chambers, businesses and other entities created these ad hoc "depression scrip" currencies. The logging town of Teninoh (10-9-0: 10,900 feet above sea level) Washington issued the first "wooden nickels" (actually slats). Being taxing agencies, cities backed their own currencies. Another alternative was "stamp scrip," a community credit note to which were affixed one-cent or two-cent interest stamps. In Lansing, Michigan, the Board of Water and Light paid its employees 25% of their wages in scrip that circulated because it was accepted back for water and light payments.
Traverse City "Bay Bucks" are one of hundreds of modern community currencies. Best known, perhaps, are the "Time Dollars" of Ithaca, New York. Bay Bucks feature local plants and animals on the face and local ecologies on the back. The border on the face is the distinctive pattern of the fossil Petoskey stones unique to the region.
Scripophily is the study of stocks, bonds, and other fiduciary media.
Typical stock certificates sell for 50 cents to $3 each. When the stock brokers went electronic in the 1990s, millions of these came on the collectibles market. Even so, nineteenth century issues remain rarer. Railroads are always in demand. Disneys are always prized. For about $20, scripophily dealers sometimes package "Monopoly sets" with the Reading, B & O, Pennsylvania and Short Line. The Short Line is the key to the series. Add your own Water Works and Electric Company -- no insider trading, though, or you will need a special card.
Irrefutable proof that you can monetize anything.
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