(502) The Front Page: Volume 1 Issue 5: Last Revision: 12/22/05
First let us wish you Merry Christmas, or a Happy Hanukkah, and a great New Year! 2005 has been a banner year for Mexican Numismatics and Mexican Coin Magic. We have found many new collectors because of the website; some old-timers and a few new-comers that were completely unknown to us before we began this little project. At times we have been discouraged that the website didn't seem to be working, and then there are times when an email or phone call have brightened our day.
Sometimes it is just an encouraging word that someone found something new they didn't know before. Sometimes it was an answer to a collector's question that had been bothering them for years. Sometimes it is an old friend that we had lost contact with years before. Other times it was a collector or dealer that said they enjoyed reading about the history of the coins, the mints, or the book reviews. Others found the stories about the writers, dealers and collectors very interesting and we had a few comments about how absurd it was that anyone wanted to know about Mexican coins.
Some people like the scans of the coins on the website, even though some of the early ones weren't so great. Others told us about problems with the website, which we always try to correct. I now know how entertainers feel about applause from their audiences, because I worried about little or no feed-back from the first couple of issues.
Enough reflections, let's get on with the news...
A Great Loss in our Small Community
Numismatics, and Mexican Numismatics in particular, lost one of our great supporters on November 25, 2005! Richard "Rick" Medina (47) , passed away after several long months of illness. Rick, along with Kirk Menczer, had been a mainstay of the hobby for many years in San Antonio as partners in San Antonio's Lone Star Coins.
During the early 1980s Rick purchased Dellview Coins and soon he and his new partner, Kirk Menczer, moved the old business to a new location and renamed it Lone Star Coins and Collectibles, Inc. During his life Rick was a passionate collector of many items, including Mexican coins and he assembled a complete collection of National Geographic Magazines, which is no mean feat. Early in his career Rick purchased a roll of Gem Brilliant Uncirculated Chihuahua Ca 1870 M 5 Centavos and this tiny hoard has been the source of most of the nice coins from this DAM ever since.
Rick was known far and wide for his honesty and integrity and was highly respected by both buyers and sellers of coins and antiques, which is very unusual today. With the loss of Mr. Medina, Kirk Menczer made a heart wrenching decision to sell Lone Star to another well-respected coin dealer so Rick's legacy will continue on in San Antonio.
Anyone and everyone who knew Rick will greatly miss him.
Put January 12, 2006 on Your Calendar
This is the date slated for the grand opening of the ANA Viva La Revolution Exhibit at the Museums of Port Isabel, Texas.
Edward P. Meza, Director of Historical Preservation for the City of Port Isabel Texas, tells us that there will be several speakers, great food and hopefully the co-author's of the book attending. If you are interested in attending this gala event call Ed at (956) 943-7602 for more information. The party begins at 6:00 PM, so come one and all!
A side note: Several Mexican coin collectors from around the country are planning to attend, so we are going to have an informal get-together to talk about Mexican coins. This should be interesting because we have many different areas of collecting interests with this group of people. If you are interested in being part of this First Annual South Texas Winter Mexican Coin Conclave let us know by email or call (956) 943 8409 and we will give you more information.
How Many Charles & Johana 8 Reales Are Really Out There?
Another of the elusive, one of only four reported to exist, Mexican Charles and Johana 8 Reales has surface and will be in the sold by Heritage in New York at NYINC'06 in January, 2006. I wonder if this is one of those four reportedly known coins, or another specimen crawling from the woodwork because of the “reported” near million-dollar price paid for the last one?
Several of us involved with the Mexican Coin Magic website have a “beer and steak sandwich” bet … “What will the final hammer price be for this goodie?” I’m the highest prognosticator at over a half million dollars. Others have guessed as low as $180,000.
What’s your guesstimate?
New Information about the Heritage Coin ... I just received an email notice about the Heritage Auction this evening. They have some very interesting information about this coin and the two others that were also found with it. Be sure to check out their website and catalog.
A Second Important New Discovery!
I was totally shocked and slightly overwhelmed when I opened my emails on the evening of December 5, 2005. The return address on the third new one said ... jblieden. Could this be the great Joe Blieden and had he found our website?
My mind raced back to a conversation the previous week with Alex Siegel when he asked, after looking at a few of my ex Joe Blieden 8 Reales, "Blieden's 8 Reales are still some of the most unbelievable and wonderful Mexican coins I've ever seen. I wonder what happened to Joe Blieden?"
I answered, with my now standard reply when asked this question at least one hundred times a year, "I don't know, in fact I don't know if he is dead or alive."
I responded to Joe's email as soon as my hands stopped shaking.
Not only is Joe Blieden (now 70 years old, with a quick mind and wit) still alive, he has agreed to be interviewed. After my first fascinating three hour phone conversation with him, he has agreed to tell us all about his collecting days, his collections and his war stories about his days in Houston, which happened to be a hotbed of Mexican Numismatics during the 1970s and early 1980s. Joe knew all of the players in Houston at that time; Mike Dunigan, Pat Johnson, Dr. George Vogt, Toby Quails, etc., and he purchased coins from not only them but many other great dealers while assembling one of the truly great Mexican collections of his time. His knowledge of the people and the rarities of that bygone era will make interesting reading for all of today's collectors, both new and old.
It was a revelation to me that Mexican Republican 8 Reales were the last series he started collecting and he feels his other collections were probably better and more important than his Republican 8 Reales.
Stay tuned to learn more about Joe and his experiences.
A Third Important Discovery Shows Up in December 2005!
Yes, Virginia there really is a Santa Claus because we can now confirm a second Culiacan Cn 1885 M 1 Peso! Here are the scans of this important coin.
A long time and very advanced collector of Mexican Republic Gold 1 Pesos has reported completing his set of the verified DAM gold one pesos! This milestone event took place on December 6, 2005 in the company of three other collectors here in Port Isabel, Texas. To say he was overwhelmed ... would be an understatement.
If true, this is the first time, to our knowledge, that any collector has accomplished this task. We grilled this guy at length and he finally admitted that various sources list several three DAMS not in his collection. But he believes all coins don't really exist. They are the Cn 1875 P, Go 1870 S, and the Ho 1875 R.
So if you own one of these coins let us know, and we will break his heart.
Advancing Prices in Mexican Numismatics?
Let me go on record again and say … I personally believe rising prices for “good” Mexican material continues to draw even better material to the market. However, there are those who disagree with me. I guess only time will tell if 2005 was a Mexican Numismatic abnormality or the beginning of an upward trend for a market that has slumbered for so many years while all other areas of numismatics have skyrocketed in value.
Speaking of new material; has anyone else noted the number of great Mexican 8 Reales, from the Colonial, War of Independence and Republican epochs that have been surfacing lately in many places? And this still doesn’t include the much-publicized Mejia Collection from Heritage. Is the upswing in the market caused by a slight increase in coin prices or is some other unrealized condition causing this to happen?
With the help of the Mexican Coin Magic Editorial Board, (I used to call them My Fellow Mexican Coin Freak Friends) I have decided that several changes are needed to be make this website better and more politically correct. Most of you probably won’t notice the changes, but a few may.
Beginning with this issue there are no longer any For Sale ads featured on the Mexican Coin Magic website. There have been some rumblings about there being no advertisers other than FoxLair Partners (me) using this feature and several people (collectors and dealers) have said that this website was a way for me to promote my coins and special reports for sale.
While this is true to a certain extent, we have offered the service to others at what we thought were cheap prices. But if this is perceived as a problem … poof it is gone!
This doesn’t mean that the Mexican FoxLair website will go away or not be mentioned here, or that new books by other authors won’t receive a plug and a hyperlink, only that you will not be able to buy anything on this educational website from FoxLair Partners, Ltd. However, we will still do the Items Wanted ads.
Therefore, if you want to buy books, catalogs, coins, special reports and other stuff from FoxLair you can go to www.mexicanfoxlair.com to purchase the items we have for sale. And if you would still like to see Items for Sale on this website again, let us know and we will think about reversing this decision.
Several members of the Mexican Coin Magic Editorial Board have stated that it was difficult to tell that multiple issues of our digital magazine are posted, so we have made a few changes to the Home Page to try to correct this problem.
Please let us know if you like these changes?
Because of the lack of interest, and the small number of pre-publishing advance orders for the Mexican Gold Pesos Handbook, we have decided to put the full printed version on hold and return all of the checks received so far. This lack of orders plus a 300% increase in publishing costs from original estimates to final printing for a limited 1st Edition has made it uneconomical to do the project at this time.
We may offer a CD version, if there is enough interest, sometime in 2006 for both the Gold Pesos and the Escudos, but the others are still up in the air. I guess Richard Long is correct, Mexican coin collectors are just not book buyers, if a book costs more than $10.00!
Recently one of contributing writers, Kirk Menczer, made a field trip to the Smithsonian Institute and here is his report of the trip and comments about the largest collection of numismatics items in North America:
I was recently planning a three day vacation to Washington DC with my wife and hoped to see the Mexican Republic coins in the national exhibit. Fortunately, my friend and noted coin dealer Mike Dunigan was able to arrange a meeting for me with Dr. Richard Doty, the numismatic curator of the SI. Dr. Doty, among other areas, specializes in certain areas of Mexican Republic coins and is the author of numerous books on numismatic subjects including The Soho Mint, The Industrialization of Money which has a fascinating chapter discussing aspects of five of the Mexican Republic mints.
I met with Dr. Doty and learned the national coin collection is maintained by Dr. Doty and a staff of one (1)!! In addition they have a few volunteers without whose help virtually nobody would be able to view and study the collection.
The coins I was interested in were stored in metal coin cabinets housed on the aisle in which I entered the vault. Therefore, I never saw the extent to which the coin cabinets reached. I could see at least 80 cabinets and there could have hundreds more. The Mexican coins lay unprotected on divided trays approximately 40 trays per cabinet with approximately one hundred (120) coins per tray. I apologize in advance if these estimates are grossly inaccurate as I didn’t take notes about the cabinets and trays and these are my impression several weeks later. The Mexican Republic coins occupied less than one full cabinet. The coins were arranged chronologically by denomination. Therefore, for each year you start with the copper coins followed by the silver coins followed by the gold. This is similar to the old Buttrey Hubbard catalogs except the copper, silver and gold coins were not separated in the national collection.
I had no preconception of what to expect in the area of Mexican Republic coins. So I started in 1823 and began to examine coins. After only a few trays it was obvious that this is not a collection in the sense I think of a collection. That is, it was not group of coins with some common denominator. It was in fact an accumulation of donated coins all of which were from the Mexican Republic Period. There was no consistency in grade, rarity or completeness. Considering all the coins were donated or came the Mint Collection when it was transferred to the Smithsonian it really could not have been any other way.
Most of the gold coins were donated from the Lilly collection and the specimens/proofs came from the Mint collection. There was a substantial collection of state coppers of which Dr. Doty was not particularly proud but I thought it was very impressive. He is a former ANS employee and I understand they have an exception state copper collection so his frame of reference maybe biased. On the other hand I see so few nice clean fine, very fine and extra fine state coppers maybe my expectations are too low.
The national collection includes many exceptionally rare and high-grade coins. There are too many in fact to mention them all in this article. There are also large numbers of common coins in common grades. It was like looking for diamonds in diamond rich soil. You were sure to find great coins you just didn’t know when or what they might be. Special mention should be made of the transitional specimen/proof set. These coins came from the mint collection so they were undoubtedly a gift from Mexico. Probably they were exchanged for a US proof set of the same period. There are two sets, which include coins from 1904 the last full year of Republic coinage and 1905 coins from the first year of issue from the United States of Mexico. I didn’t have time to fully inspect the coins and determine if they were true proofs or specimen strikes made from polished business strike dies. In either case they were a sight to behold and some of the most beautiful Mexican coins I’ve ever seen. I took several pages of notes about individual coins. If there’s any question you’d like to ask please email me at mexcoins@flash.net.
It’s hard to believe that in the United States, a country so rich in numismatic history, none of our national coin collection is on exhibit. I asked Dr. Doty about this and as you might expect it is all about money. Some of the most popular exhibits, the gems and minerals and entire other museums have been funded by large individual contributions. Not just the articles for display but the facilities in which to exhibit them. It’s seems that unless the SI receives a bequeath sufficient to build a separate museum or remodel a wing of an existing building the general public may never have the opportunity to enjoy and study the incredible coins in the national collection. Perhaps someone who reads this article is in position to do something about this disgraceful situation.”
Here are my two cents on this unbelievable and deplorable situation!
I can’t believe the entire American Numismatic Community, collector and dealer alike, has chosen to sit on their collective butts, with mouths sealed, while some new bureaucrat has decided to remove from public display one of the greatest American historical treasures found in the Smithsonian.
Isn’t it about time the owners, the American Public, of the Smithsonian had some say about what is displayed there? Write or call your U. S. Congressman and/or U.S. Senator about this travesty of justice because you, and only you, can make a difference!
Oops, looks like I was wrong again! Not the first time, and probably not the last. It seems like the US Numismatic Community didn't just sit on their butts, because a front page article in Coin World (12-26-05) states that a new exhibit opened at the Smithsonian featuring part (56 coins) of the National Collection. Looks like NGC secretly got on the bandwagon shortly after the announcement of the closing of the old exhibit and sponsored the new exhibit that opened on December 8. Good show guys, and thanks!