Interesting ANA Summer Seminar Item

cmerlo1

I bought this yesterday at the Houston Coin Show, in an 'Everything $1' bin because I thought it was interesting. It is a piece of soft metal about 3" wide with a hole punched in it and struck at both ends with a pair of dies that has a 3c nickel piece obverse (dated 2004) paired with an 'ANA Summer Seminars' reverse. I'm assuming this was used in a seminar about minting coins- can anyone tell me more about this piece?

BillDugan1959

Most likely Gallery Mint (Landis and Rust). Those folks were regulars at the Summer Seminar in that era.

Zoins

I agree this is a Gallery Mint Museum piece by Ron Landis and Joe Rust. I should have some of the regular tokens in my “cataloging desperately needed” GMM collection. For $1 you did really well. I collect GMM pieces and would pay over $100 for that.

ECHOES

@cmerlo1 said:
I bought this yesterday at the Houston Coin Show, in an 'Everything $1' bin because I thought it was interesting. It is a piece of soft metal about 3" wide with a hole punched in it and struck at both ends with a pair of dies that has a 3c nickel piece obverse (dated 2004) paired with an 'ANA Summer Seminars' reverse. I'm assuming this was used in a seminar about minting coins- can anyone tell me more about this piece?

Cool

dcarr

@cmerlo1 said:
I bought this yesterday at the Houston Coin Show, in an 'Everything $1' bin because I thought it was interesting. It is a piece of soft metal about 3" wide with a hole punched in it and struck at both ends with a pair of dies that has a 3c nickel piece obverse (dated 2004) paired with an 'ANA Summer Seminars' reverse. I'm assuming this was used in a seminar about minting coins- can anyone tell me more about this piece?

That is neat.
Most likely made out of pewter (tin & zinc "white" metal).

It appears that the hole was punched prior to the die impressions. The hole was distorted (non perfectly round) by the nearby die strike.

Treashunt

really neat item.
I'd have paid a whole $2!

astrorat

It's a pewter piece likely NOT made by Ron Landis or Joe Rust, but by a "Mini Mint Seminar" participant following the Gallery Mint Museum's presentation and demonstration at the ANA's Summer Seminar. Ron and Joe would let participants play with the mini mint and strike whatever they liked as long as the soft, pewter blanks, planchets, or strips were used.

Ron and Joe (and other Gallery Mint Museum staff, would lead the participants through every step of the process of striking coins like the first US Mint. The demo was of planchet strip rolling, blank punching, edge lettering, and striking. The mini mint seminar was a hoot and a favorite of the Summer Seminar.

ricko

Nice find and for $1 a great buy.....Cheers, RickO

Mr Lindy

I executed a couple similar ones at the 1996 Summer ANA Seminar.

messydesk

I think Joe Paonessa does most of the Summer Seminar dies now, although I don't know if this was the case then. These are struck at the ANA's "Mini Mint," which can be scheduled by classes at the Summer Seminar. They have a hot plate for melting pewter, ingot molds, a pasta machine (not really) to draw the ingots into strip, a punch press for making the blanks, a Castaing machine to do edge lettering, and a small screw press. We take the Morgan Dollar class there on the last day to have some fun striking stuff and seeing how errors come to be. All they ask is that we don't clash the dies.

Dave99B

Pretty darn cool.

Dave

carabonnair

Sometimes Ron would step in and make one. He demonstrated a "Teddy Bear" and gave it to Mrs. carabonnair when we attended the CREATIVE ERROЯS seminar.

JBK

Incredible. Someone left a lot of money on the table and someone (you) got a great deal.