Passion

[leeg]

Passion is the energy that comes from bringing more of YOU into what you do.

 

Simply put, it's being who you are and doing what comes naturally. When what you do is in alignment with who you are, you get energy from doing it. It's like water flowing along its natural riverbed. It actually gains energy from the path it's taking (compare that to what most people experience in their work, which is more like trying to force it up and over a mountain).

 

My passion is Classic Commemoratives.

 

How does one develop passion?

For me it was posting history lessons behind the series and fellow forum members stating how much they liked my history lessons. That drove me to buy the books in the series, learn more, and start doing research.

 

My passion for the Classic Commemoratives has drove me to find original documents, through research, to put into book format. Three publishers I contacted said no to my work. A no answer has just driven my passion to a higher level. It's their loss right.

 

Here is a little taste of my passion up to this point:

 

 

1934 to 1938 Daniel Boone Bicentennial Half Dollar

 

 

In connection with the two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of that famous frontiersman, Daniel Boone, half-dollars were struck in 1934. Varieties were struck in 1935, 1936, 1937, and 1938.

 

The Act of Congress authorized an issue of 6,000 half-dollars. Since orders from the Commission to the mint were for small quantities of the coins and in addition were divided at times among the three mints, an exceptional amount of publicity has been given to this issue.

 

 

The models for the coins were prepared by Augustus Lukeman, of New York, who had assisted in the memorial at Stone Mountain, Georgia. The reduction work was done by the Medallic Art Company of New York. The obverse depicts Boone as he appeared at the height of his career, as a pioneer in Kentucky. Since there are no portraits of Boone from this period, the design was created from contemporary descriptions. The reverse shows Boone negotiating a treaty with Chief Black Fish of the Shawnee Indians, after the siege of Fort Boonesborough, in 1778.

 

The first issue of these coins, 10,007 pieces, was struck at the Philadelphia Mint in October, 1934. That only 10,000 pieces should have been coined in the first mintage is unusual, since the Act authorized the Director of the Mint to issue a fixed number of pieces-600,000.

 

Since 1925, the practice in this regard had been to coin the number of pieces fixed in the Act. The Arkansas authorization, is also a fixed coinage, but states merely that “there shall be coined,” whereas the Boone authorization charges the Director of the Mint with a definite coinage. It would have been in order for the Director of the Mint to have had the entire quantity coined at the first striking.

 

 

In fact, the precedent for this incomplete coinage in 1934 would have gone back to the Lexington-Concord issue; and one can only guess what course commemorative coins in the United States might have followed, if the Daniel Boone Bicentennial Commission had been unable to secure fifteen additional coinages from this authorization. Had the terms of the Act been fully understood by the authorities in the light of past practice under similar circumstances, there would have been but a single issue of the Daniel Boone half-dollar. However, it was otherwise. The first issue of 1934 was marketed at one dollar and sixty cents each, by the Daniel Boone Bicentennial Commission, of Lexington, Kentucky. In the following years, 1935, 1936, 1937 and 1938, further issues were struck.

 

The designs for the coins were placed the year of coinage upon the reverse. When the 1935 issue was struck, the Commission found that the commemorative date of 1934 had been removed from the design. Therefore, they obtained from Congress a special authorization to place this date again on the coinage, in small numerals. The Act was approved in the late summer of 1935; and in the late winter of that year, limited coinages of the double-date variety were struck at the branch mints by order of the Commission.

 

The furor which resulted from the coinage of these pieces, which every commemorative coin collector and speculator in America was endeavoring to secure, resulted in a vicious attack upon the Commission by those who had not received the coins and an equally staunch defense by those who had them. Full details regarding the controversy may be read in the “Numismatist;” compare the issues of January to July 1936.

 

 

The result of the agitation was that Congressional hearings were held, and the abuses of the commemorative coin authorizations were exposed. Following the hearing, larger issues were authorized; the number of pieces which could be secured from the Mint at one time was fixed, and the coinage at more than one Mint was stopped, insofar as any new authorizations were concerned. The coinage at several mints has not ceased, however, for the issues which were authorized some years ago, and these may possibly continue to strike coins for years. Those authorizations bear the words “at the mints.”

 

This is not the full chapter, just a taste of the book to come.

 

 

[x2rider]

Thanks for the post Lee .

It looks like it will be a good read .

[Hard Times]

Thanks for sharing Lee, makes one passionate for commems for sure!

[Dcoin]

history =

[Razor2k]

Wow Lee, that is one great article!

 

If this is only one part of the whole,....then I can not imagine that you could not get this published! I, for one would be very much interested in reading the published works.

 

I wish you the best of luck in accomplishing your endeavor! (thumbs u