Excerpt from the Journal of Antiques and Collectibles

Hawaii has always been an exciting place in my imagination. When I was a pre-teen, I was collecting coins, stamps, and old books. In those days, there seemed to be rare stuff all over the place. I would dig through piles of old books and came up with treasure after treasure for 10¢.

By the time I was 12, I often could spend as much as $5 or $10 for a coin, stamps, or a book. For me, the trio was a natural to collect. I found A New Voyage, Round the World In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, and 1771 Undertaken by Order of His Present Majesty, Performed by James Cook, In the Ship Endeavour. The title goes on, but the really rare things about this book is not only the subject matter, but the fact that it was printed in New York by James Rivington in 1774. Books printed in America before the Revolution are rare, and this subject was very popular.

Four years later in 1778, Cook discovered Hawaii and was killed there shortly thereafter. For a few dollars I had purchased Cook’s Voyages With an Account of His Life by A. Kipps published in Philadelphia in 1838. This was followed by History of the Sandwich Islands With an Account of the American Mission Established There in 1820. This rare little book was printed in Philadelphia in 1831 by the American Sunday School Union.

The coming of the Missionaries doomed the Hawaiians. Soon most of the Missionaries and their families spread fatal western diseases that all but wiped out the Hawaiian population. Then the men of God and their families grabbed most of the land, and eventually overthrew Hawaii’s last ruler, Queen Lilinokalani in 1893 with the help of U.S. Marines from a U.S. warship in the harbor at Honolulu. Read Full Article

By Thomas K. DeLorey – Copyright – Reprinted with permission. Harlan J Berk

Photos used with permission and courtesy of Heritage Auction Galleries

When asked to write an article on the ten most significant U.S. commemorative coins for this issue, I chortled and thought to myself what an easy assignment this was going to be! I had just that day finished reading galleys for the commemorative coin section of the Coin World “Comprehensive Catalogue and Encyclopedia of U.S. Coins” edited by David T. Alexander and myself, and all of the material was fresh in my mind.

However, when I went back over the listings with a consideration in mind of their national importance rather than a straightforward documentation of them, I suddenly realized how hard it was going to be to find ten pieces that were truly significant! After weeding out the 14 state commemoratives and most of the town, county, island, mountain, trail, bridge and music center commemoratives, there were scarcely ten pieces left that were both national and significant. Here’s what I came up with, though you might disagree.

Number one on my list is the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition half dollar of 1892 and 1893, in part because the fact that Columbus landed in what we now call “the Americas” in 1492 was one of the major historical events of the last millennium, and in part because it was the first U.S. commemorative and set the stage for all that followed, good or bad.

The design of the coin is not the greatest, but it is ruggedly handsome after its own fashion, adequate to the task and not an embarrassment to the nation as some of its modern successors have been. Though some have complained that the portrait of Columbus is not accurate, there is no known portrait of Columbus taken from life, so nobody can prove that it is not accurate. The designs of the 1992 Columbus commemoratives are perhaps more imaginative, but as they repeat a theme already covered I have chosen not to include them in my top ten listing. (more…)

Before the invention of money, the only way to trade goods was via barter. If you had a spare goat but wanted a big pile of wheat, you had to find someone in the reverse position. This would have been fine in a community where the only possessions were wheat and goats, but once you threw a few more items into the mix the limitations of the barter system became glaringly obvious.

First, there was the problem of matching up desires. What if the person with the wheat was only interested in swapping it for hand axes? It could be a long time before the first man found an axe-rich individual in desperate need of a goat. In the meantime, he might starve.

Second, what if the wheat man did want a goat, but not until his daughter’s wedding in three months’ time? Had they been able to read and write, the protagonists could have drawn up a contract, but at this stage there were no literate societies. Even if there had been, a system relying on written records of who owed what to whom would have become hopelessly unwieldy once there was a reasonable amount of trade going on.

As it was, the parties to the deal would have had to rely on memory. This was open to abuse (“What are you talking about? I never said I’d give you a whole goat!”) and still more liable to become overtaxed (“If Ug owes Stig seven axes, Stig owes Rok four clubs and Rok owes Ug two goats, how many bear hides does Stig owe Yed?”). And there was always the risk that the poor old goat might turn up its toes before the wedding day. (more…)