Super Slab from almost 60 years ago!
FEVER
Posts: 232 ✭
Was doing some research for an article and came across this ad in a May 1949 issue of The Numismatic Scrapbook Magazine. Thought some would find it interesting!
Edgar
Edgar
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<< <i>Pretty high on the coolness meter. >>
Very high.
It would be SUPER cool to see this in real life.
Here is a strange twist. If you Google that address, guess who is there now? Harlan Berk
"Business and financial district at 31 North Clark Street. This location has been a coin store since the 1960's and Harlan J. Berk, Ltd. has conducted its business from this location since 1983."
Maybe they know who was there before them.
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But 50 cents was big money in 1949 - I bet that is why it didn't catch on at that point in time. It would only be used on very expensive coins.
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<< <i>I agree that it is way high on the coolness meter.
But 50 cents was big money in 1949 - I bet that is why it didn't catch on at that point in time. It would only be used on very expensive coins. >>
Yeah, I think synthetics, like plastic and nylon, were still very expensive compared with today's prices. Only top rarities probably went onto those and the vast majority are now in modern plastic.
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My very first "slab" was a circ AU Morgan dollar in a 1" thick plastic lucite 4" by 4" slab. It sat on my Grandmother's mantle piece for years. I always admired it. I ended up with it in the mid-1970's and sadly to say.....cracked it out of its tomb. That was my first crack out.
In hindsight it would have been nice to keep that keepsake intact.
roadrunner
I recall one day, only a few years before Russ died, he and his wife Brenda (who collected glassware) visited me here in Maine, and I thought it would be a treat to take them to the Jones Glass Museum, a world class glass museum near Sebago, Maine. Little did I know that Brenda had been attending a week-long class at the Jones Glass Museum, and they were both very familiar with it. Once inside, Russ took me upstairs, to the very back, and there, high upon a display shelf, was the only known example of a piece of Thomas Cains blown glass stemware with a United States Capped Bust half dime in the knop!! I strained to see what die marriage it was, and Russ informed me that it was an 1831 LM-6/V1, an R1 marriage, and perhaps the most common die marriage in the entire series. It is amazing to me that this fascinating encapsulated half dime existed not more than 12 miles from my very door, but it took Russ Logan, from Cleveland, to point it out to me.
The knop was completely sealed to outside air, preserving the coin in "ca. 1840" air for 160 years. The coin was brilliant white, with no toning, although it was a lightly circulated coin. Certainly this must qualify as the first 'hermetically sealed' coin slab.
<< <i>Cool ad.
Here is a strange twist. If you Google that address, guess who is there now? Harlan Berk
"Business and financial district at 31 North Clark Street. This location has been a coin store since the 1960's and Harlan J. Berk, Ltd. has conducted its business from this location since 1983."
Maybe they know who was there before them. >>
Yes, I noticed that too. Before HJB, Rarcoa was in that location for years. In fact, I just checked the Rarcoa website and it says that they moved there in 1949, the date of the ad. I wonder if it was in some way related to them, or yet another coin business at that location. Maybe Capt. Henway will know.
'Fashioned of Clear PVC' is how it should probably read, though!
--Christian
<< <i>Very interesting, but probably not the first 'slab'. Several years ago Russ Logan wrote an article in the John Reich Journal (official quarterly publication of the John Reich Collectors Society) about a Massachusetts glass blower from the mid nineteenth century named Thomas Cains. It seems that Mr. Cains not only produced some of the finest blown glass items of the time, but he also added a little flair that to this day puzzles the experts. While blowing a glass item, such as a stemmed wine glass, for instance, as the stem was being formed and drawn, he would form a nodule, or 'knop', in the stem, looking like a glass bulb. All of Thomas Cains glass items were made of clear glass, and many contained this intriguing 'knop' in the stem. What made them all the more interesting was that Mr. Cains would somehow insert a coin inside the glass knop! No one knows how he was able to do that, but there remain a few extant items of beautiful Thomas Cains blown glass stemware with coins encapsulated inside the glass bulb in the stem. Many of the coins used were foreign, but a select few were United States Federal issues.
I recall one day, only a few years before Russ died, he and his wife Brenda (who collected glassware) visited me here in Maine, and I thought it would be a treat to take them to the Jones Glass Museum, a world class glass museum near Sebago, Maine. Little did I know that Brenda had been attending a week-long class at the Jones Glass Museum, and they were both very familiar with it. Once inside, Russ took me upstairs, to the very back, and there, high upon a display shelf, was the only known example of a piece of Thomas Cains blown glass stemware with a United States Capped Bust half dime in the knop!! I strained to see what die marriage it was, and Russ informed me that it was an 1831 LM-6/V1, an R1 marriage, and perhaps the most common die marriage in the entire series. It is amazing to me that this fascinating encapsulated half dime existed not more than 12 miles from my very door, but it took Russ Logan, from Cleveland, to point it out to me.
The knop was completely sealed to outside air, preserving the coin in "ca. 1840" air for 160 years. The coin was brilliant white, with no toning, although it was a lightly circulated coin. Certainly this must qualify as the first 'hermetically sealed' coin slab. >>
Now see? THIS is the kind of stuff that I wish the NN and CW had articles on.....
Thanks for posting it
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