A bit of this and bit of that goes into a garden compost to make a fertile soil amendment. So these posts, when taken together, create a fertile environment for this blog to grow. It’s also not lost on me that I just compared half of my blog posts to rotting and decomposing plant matter.
In my last post I told you about visiting the Denver Mint. But on the same day we visited the Mint, the Denver Coin Expo was just getting started. Billed as “One of the largest and oldest coin shows in the Rocky Mountains!”, it did end up being really big at around 140 tables and a whole lot of people attending.
We got out of the Mint at around 9:00am and the expo started at 10:00am. While we weren’t the first ones in the door (mostly because I missed a turn and had to drive through construction traffic to get to the parking lot) we must have been pretty close. The expo was going to last three days but we only had one as we had to go home the next morning. So we had a lot of coins to look at in a short time.
Since both of us are new collectors we spent the day learning about coins more than we did buying them. The dealers at the show were great. There were a few that didn’t seem like they wanted to be there but for the most part everyone was very friendly.
Riley went off on his own and made his own deals while I sat at a few tables looking through discount coin bins and talking to some great people. I especially enjoyed talking with Tom and Sandy from Tom and Sandy’s Coins. they live in Huntsville, TX but apparently come to the Denver show often.
While the expo was a great treasure hunt it was also very educational. We learned about collecting coins, sure, but we also heard mini lectures from several ancient coin dealers about the history surrounding some of their specimens. Other dealers taught us about events surrounding some of the earlier US coins we were looking at.
We didn’t spend very much money at the show since we really didn’t know what we wanted to collect. Now that the show is over, however, we have a much better idea of what interests us (and what we can afford).
My favorite coin from the show: 1866 Shield Nickel
Yesterday I wrote about Day 1 of my numismatic trip through eastern Colorado. My son and I spent that first day travelling and visiting the American Numismatic Association’s Money Museum in Colorado Springs.
Day 2 started out with a visit to the Denver Mint. I’ve been wanting to take my son to the Mint for years now. This year presented the perfect opportunity since, in school, he’s studying early American economics and the government’s role in our money system. One of the beauties of home schooling is that it’s easy to re-arrange schedules and just go when an opportunity arises.
While learning
about touring the Mint, I discovered that getting tickets can be a bit of a
competitive sport. Tickets for the tours are free but they’re available on a
first-come-first-served basis. The ticket window opens at 7:00 am so at the
very least you want to arrive by then to try and secure entry. Certain times of
the year can be extra busy. We weren’t going during one of the posted “busy”
times but there was a large coin expo starting that day and I didn’t know if
that would bring in more people for the tour or not.
Well, I wasn’t
about to take a chance on missing the tour after driving as far as we had. So
at 5:00 am we were up and getting ready. At 5:30 we left the hotel and drove to
downtown Denver. We got there by 6:00 and drove past the ticket window to see
if any crazy people were freezing in line yet. Nobody was. It looked like we
were the only crazy ones. Ok, Ok, I was the only crazy one. My son didn’t have
a choice.
Anyway, we
parked on the street less than a block away and waited. Every 10 minutes or so
we would hop out and go around the corner to see if anyone was there. Finally,
about 6:30 I looked and saw two people in line!
Since we were
already there I figured we might as well wait in line too. You never know when
the hordes will come. So for about 25 minutes we shivered and waited. But we definitely
got our tickets! And sure enough, the hordes eventually came but they had slept
in.
We took the
first tour of the day at 8:00am. Since you have to be at the door 30 minutes
early for security measures, we had less than half an hour to wait back in the
car. At 7:30 we were back out shivering until being invited through the metal
detectors and into a small museum.
Tourist are
given about 20 minutes to mill about and look at the coins on the wall. After
the Money Museum the day before, this collection wasn’t overly impressive but
there were still some interesting things to see. I was more enthralled with the
bathroom in the museum since I hadn’t had access to one for 2 ½ hours but had
needed one for 2 hours. Rest assured, there’s one there.
The tour itself
took about 45 minutes. The tour guide looked just like Brian Cranston but was a
lot nicer than Walter White. Unfortunately, the most you get to see of the
money making process is a bunch of pennies going by in little white trays. You
can’t expect much though since this is an industrial manufacturing plant. But
it would have been more exciting if the workers down on the floor were wearing
hazmat suits or were dressed like Oompa Loompas or something.
The tour is
more a guided museum walk with historic displays and the guide telling stories.
You do get to peek in a little vault and see a few gold bars (part of the much
larger store they keep there) and at the end of the tour see the original entrance
and lobby which are amazing.
After the tour we went through the gift shop and bought four, uncirculated, 2018 state quarters for the rock bottom price of $1.
I thoroughly enjoyed the Mint and my son had a pretty good time too. But after the tour, our numismatic day wasn’t over. We had one more event to attend to make it a trifecta. But that will have to wait until tomorrow’s post.
Last week my son Riley and I went on an epic, 2 day numismatic adventure through Colorado. Day 1 found us descending from our 11,000 foot Rocky Mountain apex to the measly 6000 foot depression of Colorado Springs. There, we visited the American Numismatic Association’s (ANA) Money Museum.
We saw amazing examples of coins, medallions and minting equipment. It might sound boring to walk around looking coins under glass but to a couple of coin geeks like us, it was a thrill. And we actually learned a lot (this was an educational trip after all).
The museum’s main exhibit focused on WWI numismatics but we were able to also see examples of ancient coins and early colonial and US money too. I hadn’t planned on spending long at the museum since we had a nearly two hour drive back to Denver to get to our hotel. But between the exhibits I’ve already mentioned and the amazing display of a 30 million dollar collection of gold coins, we were there almost two hours and still didn’t see everything.
My son and I are both ANA members so we were able to access the museum for free. Non-member admission is still cheap at only $8 for adults (free for kids under 12). But if going to museums just isn’t your thing, you can still see everything by taking a free virtual tour online. Check out https://www.money.org/money-museum-virtualtour. It’s almost as fun as being there in person.
Fall is finally here and the area milkweed is starting to release its seeds to ensure spring blooms. I love this plant. It produces stunning flowers and just as stunning seed pod openings.
Last Spring I was able to capture some great photos of milkweed blooms. I’ll enjoy seeing if next Spring I can get more but with a unique angle.
Milkweed isn’t only fun to look at. It also provides food for monarch butterflies. I don’t have any milkweed at home so I haven’t been able to use it to attract butterflies and photograph them. Hopefully I can change that next year.
It’s starting to get cooler outside and tomorrow is the official first day of Fall. I’m looking forward to getting out of the heat.
I love when seasons change. It always gives me a feeling of renewed energy creativity and opportunity.
Each season holds its own treasures. In Fall we see beautiful colors in the trees and get to celebrate Thanksgiving. It very well could be my favorite time of year.
I don’t really feel like writing this post today. So I thought I would cheat and just give the titles and maybe a sentence or two for each one. I’m not being lazy, really. Maybe I’m just getting bored with the book list thing. Well, I’ve got a week to think of something more interesting for next week.
Atom Land by Jon Butterworth. Subtitled A Guided Tour Through The Strange (And Impossibly Small) World of Particle Physics, Atom Land uses the concept of building a map of quantum physics to help the reader understand theories and ideas.
Never Turn Your Back on an Angus Cow by Dr. Jan Pol. The life of Dr. Jan Pol, Americas “Favorite Veterinarian”. I haven’t made it through this one yet and I’ve had it for a while. I need to get reading more.
I peered over the lip of the flower and came face to face with B. After a moment of uncomfortable silence, each of us trying to gauge the other’s motive, we simultaneously came to the conclusion that we were both there by chance. After shaking hands we parted amicably.
This week I’ve stacked my five books from smallest to largest and I’ll review them in that order. I considered looking at them from largest to smallest but that seemed psychologically demoralizing. Oh, and when I say small and large I’m referring to width and height and not thickness or number of pages. This has great importance although the reason escapes me.
Walking Your Way to a Better Life by Kimiko is both an inspirational and autobiographical book about a woman who used walking and proper “mental posture” to overcome depression and build an international training business. It’s refreshing to read a book by a Japanese author because their writing rhythm and cadence is so different than western authors. Although, after a while the repitition of a single theme and the sometimes wandering narrative got to me a bit. Also, while I’m a big believer in positive self talk (it can build real neurological pathways in the brain that in turn manifest in your attitude and body) I got really tired reading about the author telling herself that she loves herself.
A Unicorn in a World of Donkeys by Mia Michaels had potential (I always give potential points to unicorn references) but failed to impress. The subtitle is A Guide to Life For All the Eexceptional, Excellent Misfits. Seriously, I get the whole meaning of unincorns and donkeys but she mentioned unicorns and glowing horns so many times I felt like I was sitting in a pink bedroom surrounded by teacups and teddy bears and a couple of giggling girls who would suddenly curse for no apparent reason. It was a little disturbing.
“Do you stand in your uniqueness, or do you hide what makes you wonderfully weird?” Mia Michaels
I know creatives can sometimes be overly dramatic but there’s only so much “You’re amazing and should shoot for the moon” advice I can take. What’s worse, Michaels organized her chapters into a 12 step program. Oddly, much of the book read as if it was written for alchoholic mythical creatures.
Next up is the medium sized book In Chocolate We Trust: The Hershey Company Town Unwrapped by Peter Kurie. This was another book I had high hopes for that were never realized. I thought the book was going to be some sort of biographical history of the man, the company and the town. But in the pages I actually read (there was no way I wanted to finish this one) I felt like it was merely a blandly written institutional explanation of what a trust is, why the one that controls the Hershey company is now evil and why “Captalism is bad”. You know what, let’s just move on from this one. I’m getting depressed.
Now we get to my favorite book of the week. To be perfectly honest, I’m not finished with this one yet. But that’s because I’m actually enjoying reading it. If it weren’t for this whole size of book ranking thing this one would have been first, or last. The title is The Secret Life of Pronouns and it’s written by James W. Pennebaker. The premise of the book is that the pronouns we use in our speech and our writing reveal a lot about who we are. The author and his collegues have spent years developing software that can analyze writings and make predictions about the people who wrote them. Pick up the book and at least flip through it. Maybe you won’t discover any life changing conclusions but you might gain a bit of insight into how our words betray us.
The biggest book this week (6 1/4″ x 9 1/4″) is Into the Lion’s Mouth by Larry Loftis. The book is “The true story of Dusko Popov: World War II spy, patriot, and the real-life inspiration for James Bond”. The book is interesting and you can definitely see where Ian Fleming got many of the attributes for Bond. As mentioned in a former post, I’m fascinated by stories of WWII espionage so for me this book was a page turner. However, as in many historical books the documentation of the story sometimes gets in the way of the story itself.
Well, there you go. Five more books you should either read or run from.
