Talk about your cartwheel!

Bruce

Last night I picked up a 2 pa'anga from Tonga, 1968, KM#19. This thing dwarfs a Morgan dollar!

1jester

Bruce, I have no idea what that coin looks like. But I do like massive coins. For example, the Siberian 10 Kopek piece like this one.

lordmarcovan

<< <i>Talk about your cartwheel! >>


I have a Cartwheel penny on the Holey Coin Vest. Does that count?

lordmarcovan

PS: speaking of Tonga, in my youthful artistic training I was briefly apprenticed to a man named Dudley Moore Blakely (I think he was English by birth). Mr. Blakely, or Dudley, as we knew him, was an artist and sculptor of considerable talent. He was to teach me the art of woodcarving and sculpture. Unfortunately, I showed little aptitude for working in three dimensional media, though I have some modest talent in drawing. Anyway, what I was getting to was Tonga, and coins... bear with me here...

Dudley and his wife Judy were both Knights of Baha'u'llah- a VERY important station in the Baha'i Faith, and I don't think there are any of those left. (My family are all Baha'is and the Blakelys were members of our local community in the last years of their lives- they knew my parents). The station of Knight of Baha'u'llah was granted to the first Bahai's to bring the Faith to a particular country, and now there are Baha'is in just about every country on the globe- so the Knights of Baha'u'llah are a breed long past. The Blakelys were the first Baha'i Pioneers (missionaries) in Tonga, in the late 1950's/early 1960's. Their house here on St. Simons Island was full of South Seas memorabilia and carpeted throughout with grass mats. Dudley drove a gorgeous white 1956 T-Bird and had 1959 Hawaii plates on the front bumper!

Dudley was the engraver of Tonga's first coinage: the 1962 gold 1/4, 1/2, and 1-koula pieces (KM 1, 2, and 3), with the standing figure of Queen Salote Tupou III on the obverse. I believe the Queen posed personally for Dudley's sketches, and I think it was she who personally presented a set of the coins to Dudley.

Now, here's the kicker: I can remember hearing about the coins, and vaguely remember seeing a set of the first strikes, and I distinctly remember seeing the clay models in the workshop!

The story has a rather sad ending, though- Dudley died of a heart attack in a local restaurant one day, at an advanced but still-active old age. Judy, who was quite old and frail, had to go into a nursing home. (This was the early '80's and I later learned from her gravestone that she'd been born in 1894). A man named Dennis Palmeron was given power of attorney over their estate, for some reason. I don't think the Blakelys had any family besides one other. Mr. Palmerone (Palmerone?) sold the house and all the Blakely's worldy goods, claiming he liquidated the estate to pay Judy's nursing home bill, but my parents and the Blakely's friends were of the opinion that he also lined his own pockets in the process. They had to stand by helplessly and were unable to do anything about it. Judy gradually faded away in the same nursing home my grandmother died in. She and Dudley are buried next to my grandmother, on Saint Simons Island. (My grandmother, Jean Shinnick, was a prolific artist, a fine painter, and my first art teacher. She was probably the first Baha'i in our family and was a friend of the Blakelys. She died shortly before them, in 1980.)

So... here's the big numismatic question... what happened to those coins? And is their provenance intact, or does somebody somewhere have a 3-piece 1962 Tongan gold proof set, and no clue that the set was once presented to the engraver by the very queen portrayed on the coins?

One day I will need to add proof examples of Tonga's first three gold coins to my personal collection, as a memorial to the man who designed them, and who once taught me, albeit briefly. My mother still has a carving I did in his workshop.

Aethelred

A brief search on Google yielded nothing about the first coin of Tonga or Dudley Moore Blakely, but I learned that Dudley Moore did not design any coins!

1jester

Cool story, meLord!!

ccrdragon

Wonderful story, LordM! It's stories and anecdotes like that one that make it worthwhile to spend time here!

Bruce

I thought I would scan one next to a morgan dollar, although the picture has been downsized to be under 50kb, the portion of coin to coin has remained unaltered.

historygeek

Interesting faith LordM. LINK

lordmarcovan

Interesting link, HG. I knew about the site, but had never read it.

Aethelred

Keep Geek away from Tim, if you don't he'll never get away!

lordmarcovan

HG, that is a reference to a mutual friend of ours who is a Baha'i (Aethelred isn't). Tim is rather zealous.