Keep the Change Read online

  Mark Wagner, Comedy & Tragedy, 2013

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  © 2015 Princeton Architectural Press

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  Editor: Sara E. Stemen

  Designer: Jan Haux

  Cover Photographs: Marty Heitner

  Cover Design: Mia Johnson

  Special thanks to: Meredith Baber, Sara Bader, Nicola Bednarek Brower, Janet Behning, Erin Cain, Megan Carey, Carina Cha, Andrea Chlad, Tom Cho, Barbara Darko, Russell Fernandez, Jan Cigliano Hartman, Diane Levinson, Jennifer Lippert, Katharine Myers, Jaime Nelson, Rob Shaeffer, Marielle Suba, Kaymar Thomas, Paul Wagner, Joseph Weston, and Janet Wong of Princeton Architectural Press —Kevin C. Lippert, publisher

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Spiller, Harley J.

  Keep the change : a collector’s tales of lucky pennies, counterfeit C-notes, and other curious currency / Harley J. Spiller. — First edition.

  pages cm

  Includes bibliographical references.

  ISBN 978-1-61689-256-2 (paperback : alkaline paper)

  ISBN 978-1-61689-419-1 (epub, mobi)

  1. Coins—Collectors and collecting—Anecdotes. 2. Bank notes—Collectors and collecting—Anecdotes. 3. Spiller, Harley J.—Anecdotes. 4. Mutilated coins—Anecdotes. 5. Counterfeits and counterfeiting—Anecdotes. 6. Numismatics—Anecdotes. 7. Curiosities and wonders—Anecdotes. I. Title.

  CJ101.S65 2015

  737—dc23

  201402250

  For people who pass along passion, especially Dad and his Dad

  Excerpt from the US Code of Federal Regulations, concerning the reproduction of US currency

  Notwithstanding any provision of chapter 25 of Title 18 of the US Code, authority is hereby given for the printing, publishing or importation, or the making or importation of the necessary plates or items for such printing or publishing, of color illustrations of US currency provided that:

  (1) The illustration be of a size less than three-fourths or more than one and one-half, in linear dimension, of each part of any matter so illustrated;

  (2) The illustration be one-sided; and

  (3) All negatives, plates, positives, digitized storage medium, graphic files, magnetic medium, optical storage devices, and any other thing used in the making of the illustration that contain an image of the illustration or any part thereof shall be destroyed and/or deleted or erased after their final use in accordance with this section.

  31 C.F.R. §411 (2011)

  CABINET OF CONTENTS

  Introduction · 11

  1

  Up Like a Bad Penny

  The Irresistible Force of Copper · 20

  2

  In Sam I Trust

  US Federal Banknote Errors · 26

  3

  Sneak Thieves

  A Bit about Clipping · 34

  4

  Fine Line

  The Art of Money · 38

  5

  Case No. 6-02848

  The Law · 50

  6

  A Hole in Your Pocket

  Intentionally Burned Money · 58

  7

  Honest Wear

  The Discovery of an Anticounterfeiting Secret · 64

  8

  Hamilton, Franklin, Biv, Juror, and Golden

  Colorful Men of Money · 72

  9

  Frogskins and Cartwheels

  Nicknames for Money · 82

  10

  Illustrated Taxonomy

  and Glossary of Mutilated Money · 86

  Notes · 103 / Further Reading · 108 /

  Credits · 110 / Acknowledgments · 111 /

  About the Author · 112

  INTRODUCTION

  “I must lie down where all the ladders start In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.”

  —W. B. Yeats, “The Circus Animals’ Desertion,” 1939

  WHAT a strange thing we humans have invented: money. Before that, we exchanged assets. Now we barter with currency, the icons of social covenants and governing authorities. Our largest denominations are mass-produced slips of cloth. Coins made of precious metal are no longer in general circulation. Our money is ephemeral by nature, subject to erosion, and fundamentally worthless, but oh, what we do to get it! And oh, what we do to it! {Fig. 1}

  Most coin collectors abhor damage, frown on cleaning and artificial retoning, and prefer brilliant, imperfection-free coins straight from the mint. Patina, the surface appearance of things grown beautiful with age or use, is prized, and discoloration or staining is frowned upon, but to me, the two are the same. I admire collectors who ignore defects when face-to-face with rarities. I have nothing against new money—I’m just more enamored of the bottom of the grading categories used by serious collectors, the heavily worn and pitted, the blobs and discolored specimens. I love lumps of metal that can barely be identified (known to collectors by the grade “basal state”) and collect singular mangled coins and bills that “create tension because they demand a creative response.”1

  Fig. 1

  Found mangled quarter

  WHO but the least imaginative, when examining a prized artifact, has not experienced flights of fancy like the following, which appeared in the American Journal of Numismatics in 1867:

  Every coin or medal of historic interest is a potent talisman:—to evoke the past and people it with resuscitated life, to secure the present against oblivion, and give earthly immortality to its heroes. The owner of a numismatic cabinet is a necromancer and a ruler of the spirits, and can fill, at pleasure, his lonely chamber with shapes of the departed, and majestic phantasms.2

  That’s high-flown prose, but it’s also an incisive anticipation of the field that most informs this book: material culture studies, the examination through artifacts of societal beliefs, of values, ideas, attitudes, and assumptions.3

  Numismatists are material culturists who ask, “What’s in your cabinet?” and gauge each other by the replies. I didn’t know that secret handshake in 1965, when I started collecting pennies, and still didn’t know it in 1981, when I began my career in museums and spotted something out of place in the subbasement of the well-known institution where I worked: a broken-legged chest with greasy screws and bolts lying haphazardly in its velvet-lined drawers. The museum had just reinstalled its coins in custom Formica and Plexiglas cases, rendering obsolete the original wood, gilt, and glass exhibition furniture. I reported the situation to the administrator, who said, “You want it? Just get it out of here.” I did as I was told, and am now the keeper of a restored nineteenth-century French numismatic cabinet. {Fig. 2}

  Fig. 2

  Mahogany is the timber of choice for long-term storage and display of coins because of all woods it contains the least amount of coin-damaging oils and resins. This mahogany numismatic cabinet is of bombé form, bearing gilt bronze decorative mounts with acanthus and ribbon ornamentation. It is fitted with twelve dark-green, velvet-lined trays, and a hinged serpentine top with sliding beveled-glass vitrine, all raised on cabriole legs ending in scrolled feet.

  Generations of my family have worked such cast-offs for all their worth. After a day’s labor and a hearty supper, my grandfather would often drive his horse and buggy around town, scavenging discarded couches and chairs. Neighbors assume
d the Spillers were a dirty lot, but my family wasn’t sitting on the foul furniture. They were burning its wood in the stove, salvaging the upholstery for rags, and digging into its crannies for lost valuables such as scissors, eyeglasses, and coins.

  I was thirteen when a younger cousin bet me ten dollars on who would be taller when he turned twenty-one. I won, but then he offered a new bet: fifty dollars on who would be taller when I turned fifty. Certain I’d be stooped over by then, I started saving mutilated money to needle him a little at payoff time. I ended up a fraction of an inch taller and doubly happy, for I’ve come to see the eleven-plus pounds of mutilated money I amassed as a thing of beauty. What started as a lark has become a treasure. (Cousin Kenny also experienced a change of heart over the long course of the two bets. After less than one year as an assistant district attorney, he left the law for the scrap metal business.)

  WHERE can’t I find money for my collection?4 Mutilated money can be anywhere. I love the hunt, the wait for the next breaching, the harpooning of the oxymoronic “better mutilation.” I thrill to the serendipitous discovery of mangled money, whether it is coaxed out of its camouflage within a muddy tree bed or dusty corner or found smack in the middle of a road, in the back of a cash register, or in a lumpy envelope with a lighthearted note mailed by a friend who can’t get my collection out of his head. {Fig. 3} There are others interested in mutilated money, and I’ve come to realize my pursuits are less rarefied than I’d supposed, less odd than Odyssean.

  Currency-collage artist and collector Mark Wagner agrees. As he wrote to me in August 2013, “My chief pleasure here is that it is a point where the whole point of money falls apart.…Money is supposed to be a substance where only quantity matters. As a unit of exchange it is supposed to be completely fungible, with any specimen of money capable of replacing any other specimen of money. But for us it is not.”5

  WHY have I chosen to focus on the idiosyncrasies of mutilated money? Because compiling a set that can never be completed provides an endless source of new knowledge. Because it’s a field largely unrestrained by financial considerations. Because I can set my own standards. Because mutilation, corrosion, and erosion can make new money seem as venerable as the most ancient. My collection also doubles as a self-enforced rainy-day reserve (if a bill or coin is beat up enough, I will keep it rather than spend it). Mangled money collecting is not about the control prized by most collectors—it is about the future, about the unanticipatable surprise of finding new and different types of alterations. I see my collection as a cache that cannot be counted in standard ways. It’s not about money; it’s about what can be learned from money.

  WHEN does money fall apart? There are many answers, most labyrinthine. All humans, even brilliant financial experts, can become overwhelmed by money, more so by the lack of it. Money is always in flux, but it is here to stay. Knowledge is another type of currency, and educating ourselves about money is the best thing we can do. So, with the hope of entertaining and enlightening, I present the true stories of filthy lucre that run in my bones.

  Fig. 3

  Envelope and pierced cent mailed to me by a good friend. (I present museum education programs under the name Inspector Collector.)

  Mr. Richard Buckley, the financial manager for my parents’ company, was one of five brothers who all became accountants. He was also a serious numismatist who gave me wise collecting counsel and, once, a folder of Liberty nickels. These were, to an eight- or nine-year-old kid, ancient and rare. My eyes lit up, but Mr. Buckley assured me their fiscal value was low because of their poor condition. Still, this gift of disfigured coins from a traditional, waxed-shoelace kind of man has always captivated me. Each of the sixteen coins is more than a century old; all are worn smooth. The 1906 five-cent piece has black, brown, red, rust, and celadon-colored corrosion. The 1909 example is blackened and scuffed in a unique manner. I imagine it caught under a buggy wheel, careening around cobblestones.

  CHAPTER

  1

  UP LIKE A BAD PENNY

  The Irresistible Force of Copper

  The pale sea curdled on the shingle and the green tower of the Metropole looked like a dug-up coin verdigrised with age-old mould.

  —Graham Greene, Brighton Rock, 1938

  COPPER, THE ORIGINAL PENNY METAL, is found in the earth and in human bones, muscle, and liver. It is conductive of heat and electricity and has a legendarily warm reddish-orange color. {Fig. 4} Copper was considered sacred by the Mississippians, who lived from 800 to 1600 CE in central North America. They bartered for the malleable tawny ore and used it to create expressive repoussé (designs made by hammering on the reverse side of metal) plates and elite body ornamentation. Their most enduring legacy is the gigantic mounds in which they buried their dead with ritual copper plaques. Maybe they put copper back in the earth where it came from because that’s where it’s most powerful.

  Fig. 4

  This is my favorite verdigrised cent.

  The prevailing culture was vastly different by 1787, when a private mint repurposed copper for currency and stamped the first cents in the United States. Those 100 percent copper pennies were sixty-three times heavier than today’s cents, which are mainly zinc, clad with only one two-thousandths of an inch of copper.1

  The US Mint opened in 1792 and soon produced its first coins: 11,178 copper cents so inelegant they were nicknamed “Liberty in Fright.” It was not until 1862 that Congress declared copper to be legal tender, so these early cents couldn’t be deposited with banks. They were used for small purchases and frequently tossed by merchants into barrels and sold in bulk to smelters, for repurposing; carpenters, to use as anchors for screws and nails; hoteliers, to smooth, pierce, number, and use as key tags; hunters, to notch for rifle sights; cooks, for fixing the color of pickles (people died: copper plus vinegar is deadly); and undertakers, for use in sealing the eyes of the dead.

  Pennies were also drilled, strung, and carried to Africa to trade for slaves. Later, pennies were notched in precise locations and used by escaping slaves as bona fides on the Underground Railroad. Mourners of Abraham Lincoln turned pennies into souvenirs by placing them on railroad tracks to be flattened by his Springfield-bound funeral train.2 Forty-four years later, on the centennial of his birth, Lincoln’s profile replaced an allegorical feather-bonneted Indian, and Honest Abe became the first real person depicted on a US coin. Freighted with emancipatory significance, the Lincoln cent was an immediate and sustained national sensation.3 By the end of 2012, 470,952,310,918 Lincoln cents had been minted.

  One day in 1964 I was home sick from school, and my father sired a new pastime by tossing me a sack of pennies and a blue Whitman coin folder. I’ve enjoyed the hobby ever since, especially the search for uncommon coins. I knew I had proven my collecting mettle when, a few years later, Dad ceremoniously handed over a dented coffee can full of coins his father had gathered over a lifetime in Volochisk, Russia, his birthplace, and in his adopted hometown, LeRoy, New York.4 Dad and I spent time learning numismatics and how to have fun with next to no money. Most memorably, he glued a penny to a tile floor outside my sisters’ rooms so we could make merry when unsuspecting guests tried to pick it up.

  In 1967 I was standing in front of Bakert’s candy shop in Eggertsville, New York, when I first heard the siren ring of coins on concrete. I stared in disbelief as real money was tossed to the winds by insouciant, snack-slurping teens. I could hardly wait until they left to snap it up. Now, after almost fifty years of picking up lucky pennies, I’m reluctant to stoop for run-of-the-mint cents, particularly the nearly copper-free post-1982 lightweights, which barely click when dropped.

  The highlights of my hoard include a penny bent over double, likely by a snowplow; one with its core excised; and some so bitten and chewed they must have been doused with corrosive chemicals. {Fig. 5} I have yet to successfully dig a tire-smoothed beauty out of crosswalk tar but will do just about anything short of defying oncoming traffic to collect a coin showing unexam
pled marks of wear and tear.

  The largest subset of my mutilated-money collection consists of pennies in various states of oxidation. Their gradated celadon tones recall both the Statue of Liberty’s elegant patina and Mark Rothko’s late paintings, and they inspired artist Norm Magnusson to create a method for speeding penny oxidation: a box made of woven copper bands splashed with copper sulfate. {Fig. 6} The artist’s intention is for coins left inside to develop the variegated greenish-blue patina called verdigris, a word stemming from vert de Grèce, the Old French term for the metallic green pigment crucial to ancient Greeks. While numismatists prize the pristine nature of beautifully made pieces of money, they also place value on naturally variegated patina.

  Fig. 5

  Five uniquely and severely damaged cents

  In his authoritative book on large cents, Penny Whimsy, the numismatist William H. Sheldon describes how relatively pure pre-1815 copper pennies come in “rich shades of green, red, brown, yellow, and even deep ebony; together with blendings of these not elsewhere matched in nature save perhaps in autumn leaves.”5 The murky-colored coins I favor are more like decaying foliage in spring snowmelt.

  Corrosion and erosion are just two of the ways in which cents suffer indignities. Thrift is another. Governments save money by eliminating money, and, in the ultimate abuse, the nations of Australia, Brazil, Canada, and Sweden have eliminated pennies altogether.6 Even the US Mint demeans pennies, describing them as “minor coins.”7

  Fig. 6

  This copper sulfate—splashed copper box by artist Norm Magnusson is very slowly developing patina, but cents left inside are not yet showing verdigris.