2014 Baseballc coins posted by Johnson 1

[CSJournals-migration]

The coins that no one want to talk about.

 

I am surprised that the most exciting coin to be produce by the US Mint in years is so lightly spoken about. Yes the curved coin is cool. The old timer will hold on to the coins produced in the 1700 and 1800 because that's all they know. Its time to get out of bed and wake up to the fact the times are changing, curves are cool. The topic of the coin is neat but the best part its a curved coin. It's clear that this coin is a TOTAL hit a home run to speak. This coin sold out in lighting speed, a very desirable coin. I am pushing for a 2018 Silver Eagle with a CC mint mark. My campaign for this coin is just starting.

 

See more journals by Johnson 1

[Mohawk]

Well sir,

You are certainly entitled to your opinion. While curved coins may be new to the US Mint, they're certainly not new to the world of coins. The Byzantine Empire was making tons of curved coins in the Middle Ages. I guess I just don't get the hype.

 

[wdrob]

 

I don't have much respect for the Baseball Hall of Fame. The day they allow Pete Rose be inducted is the day I will get excited about any coin having anything to do with baseball.

 

The only other fraternal organization issuing awards I have less respect for is the Nobel Foundation issuing the Nobel Peace Prize.

 

As said; to each his/her own.

 

 

[Six Mile Rick]

A nice pair there Johnson!

Being that they are the first curved coin produced for US coinage they will hold good values. A first of any different type of coinage is always a keeper for future value!!

 

Rick

[The Fielding Collection]

I ordered 2 of each of the 4 Baseball coins however even though I started trying to get on the mint web site at 11:30 on the first day they were on sale I'm backordered until 6/27/14 so no first release for me. I guess that has taken some of the joy away from this coin for me....Mike

[Critter8880]

I would have to agree with the argument Mohawk stated.

If you visit the Dumbarton Oaks website, please look at Byzantine Coinage, by Phillip Grierson. It is a great read and one will see they were minting gold solidus pieces with curves long before the United States mint ever existed. They were using curved coins for practical every day reasons--they stack easily. Grierson's work is a great look into a society long gone and what their coinage said about their culture.

As for the statement about old timers...In my twenties I must have aged far too prematurely for my time, as those old coins are my love. As a Dutch-American with other things peppered into my Heinz 57 composition, those 1700s and 1800s coins are part my history. Your history extends far beyond the life and times you know, unless you came out of an alien lab created pod, like on a bad sci-fi flick. The people who came before me and shaped who and what I am today held those coins. I love my old Dutch coins as my family in the old world used those, long before the Great War, or thoughts of setting their feet on the ground of New York. My American goes far back, as well and I know 1800s coins were part of the world my family used to know. My Grandmother a few years back showed me Morgan Dollars that her loved ones put aside for her as a child during the years we were trying to recover from the depression.

 

As far as the production of United States moderns...I too fail to understand the hype...I have a few, but most I do not get. Our productions seem limited to the creation of government related topics, military, and sports. While those are all important things to discuss, we tend to overlook cultural achievements. With a rich cultural past we fail to look at creators of the American song book, stage and cinema, cartoon, literature, and our intrigue that we hold for the automobile. There is no commemorative for song from tin pan alley, ragtime, or jazz, no dance of Vernon and Irene Castle, no stage for Mister Ziegfeld and his Follies, no acting of Fred Astaire or Ginger Rogers, no memory of the hands who created Felix the Cat or Keeping up with the Joneses, and no remembrance of the old auto that one would take their sweetheart for a spin in, and spark in a dark park when the sun had gone down.

[The Fielding Collection]

Critter, what a great post, I loved it and agree with everything you said. the USA needs to take a long hard look at our coinage and start producing better coin designs. They took a small step with the new quarter designs, but they need to step it up a few notches.

Happy Collecting and may God Bless....Mike

[Mohawk]

Critter,

Great Post!!! Thanks so much for going into more detail on the millennia old hot topic of curved coins! Like you, if I'm going to buy anything curved it's going to be a Byzantine solidus, not this gimmicky baseball thing. Going by my taste in coins, I like you must be a prematurely aged 33 year old as I love the older coins as well.

 

We collect for many of the same reasons. I'm a Turkish and German American myself. I mainly collect Ottoman and German coins as those are the coins that my ancestors used in decades and centuries past. As my family came over from Europe in the date range of 1930 to 1948, they never used Morgan Dollars, or St. Gaudens Double Eagles or Barber Coinage. Those coins, and most classic American coins, aren't a part of my family story on either side. So I don't connect with those coins like I do with Ottoman and German coins. And by the time my family was here, the plague of profiles was in high gear, so I don't connect with those coins as I find them highly unappealing. I also think, for me, my family's American story was often a sad one that was composed of the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, the rise and fall of the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich and brutal, oppressive Soviet rule in East Germany that replaced brutal and oppressive Nazi rule. Those are the reasons my family came to America and I know that it likely plays into my lack of connection with American coinage. My family didn't come here because they necessarily wanted to. They came because they had to leave their homelands, for a variety of reasons.

 

Onto the US moderns.......they certainly are lacking. I have a couple myself, a Star-Spangled Banner Silver Dollar, a Dolley Madison Silver Dollar and a 2013 Platinum Eagle and I find these issues highly appealing. But they're the exception that proves the rule. Most US Moderns are highly lacking in aesthetic appeal, in my opinion. You're so right. It's all government, sports and military topics and there are so many other themes that could be used on modern American coinage that would add some nice depth, variety and zest! I know I'd buy a Felix the Cat coin in a heartbeat!! Or an Edgar Allen Poe coin. But I think the point is that America could do better with modern coinage, and it should.

[Critter8880]

Mike and Mohawk,

Thank you for your thoughtful responses.

America needs to be more thought provoking and passionate in their design process. To people like you and me a coin is more than just a coin, a coin is a story, actually many stories, and a quest in defining identity.

I personally think that in our everyday pieces depictions of liberty should be returned. I admire presidential profiles and do not think the men on those coins should be forgotten, as we should remember leaders who shaped this country. Like winter changes into the spring, time has its way of marching forward. A depiction of liberty is enigmatic, and perhaps in a way is a depiction of all of us. If we are a country by the people and for the people, and we are people who engage in democracy then perhaps we are liberty and her story. A nation is much more than just its leaders, a nation is the voices of its people.

Mohawk, I believe most people and stories of their family's journey here is a story of sadness. No person wishes to say goodbye to a place they have always regarded as home. While in my academic journeys on the web, the library of congress offers an archive for Yiddish American Popular Sheet Music. There is a piece from 1920, entitled Farewell My Dear Parents. Under the notes section it reads: "Farewell my dear parents. I am leaving to seek my fortune in a free land." Popular song among immigrants who had left their elderly parents back in the Old Country, and never saw them again. Source: Heskes, Irene, Yiddish American Popular Songs, 1895-1950

Most American stories begin such as yours. I often wonder if any of my relatives who came here for opportunity ever saw their loved ones from the old country again. The real emotions in immigration are often skimmed over or long forgotten for people, unless they come from recent immigrants. I'm glad to see someone young like myself collecting coins to tell a story, a story of our histories.

The United States Mint needs to remember more stories of our history. We are a young nation compared to many places in the big and vast world, but we are forgetting our past, and the limited topics of our commemoratives are reflecting this notion.

[Jeffrey Cardona]

Very nice coins you got there Johnson. Mine were supposed to ship at the end of April...now the showed back ordered into middle May. i guess they will come eventually.

 

When these coins were coming up for sale, I talked to lots of people...collectors and non collectors...and they all loved the coin for the same reason I do...It's about baseball and the love of the sport. It doesnt matter if it's a ball, jersey, cap, or window sticker! It's baseball and we want it!! The only thing that would make it better for me if I could get a label for my slab with all the SF Giants signitures from 2012 World Series Team!!

[wdrob]

 

I think this was the originally considered Obverse Design but they settled on the one on your Hall of Fame coins.