Welcome back to Something About Coins! I found a couple of new stories on the new Lincoln penny, a review of the Baltimore show, and a unique counterfeit coin detector. Those articles and a couple more are summarized below!
Coin Collector's Blog featured a video of Thursday's Lincoln Penny Ceremony in Washington, DC. The nine minute, B-Roll video from NewsInfusion includes sound bites of members from Mint, the presentation of the Presidency Cent, Director Moy handing out new pennies to children in the crowd, people exchanging cash for Presidency pennies, footage inside the Mint - making pennies, and it ends with the new design for the 2010 penny reverse.
Sales for the Lincoln Presidency Cent started strong. CoinNews.net stated 153,427 Presidency Two-Roll Sets have been sold since the Nov. 12 launch. That sales number translates into 15.3 million sold pennies. Earlier in the year, the Professional Life cents had a similar start, but the Rail Splitter cents did the best. CoinNews.net charted the 2009 cent sales figures.
CoinLink.com published Legend's market report after the Whitman Baltimore Coin & Currency Show this weekend. It said gold was hot and mentioned it in nearly every paragraph. High demand for gold kept dealers busy. The Coin & Currency show's high attendance signaled a strong interest in the coin market, and the Liberty Seated Club displayed three amazing collections. Outside of gold, however, Legend thought the supply for better material and properly graded rare coins was low. It said all nickels were slow. Legend believed the Bowers & Merena auction was "very strong" and described some of its notable purchases.
SilverCoinsToday.com described the Austrian Mint's Railway of the Future coin. It's the last coin in the 20-euro Austria Railways Commemorative Series. The image of the new high-speed passenger train, the 'Railjet,' is featured on the obverse, and the reverse is a freight yard in amazing detail.
Popular Science posted an article about a modified optical mouse detecting counterfeit coins. The device is only able to scan 2-Euro coins, but apparently that's good enough to detect 79% of all counterfeit coins in Europe, according to the article. It works by scanning the map of Europe on the reverse side of the coins.
Back on Nov. 9, I summarized an article about the designs for the first five America the Beautiful Quarters and recommendations from the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee (CCAC) and United States Commission of Fine Arts (CFA). Well, yesterday, the Billings Gazette put forth their recommendation, addressed it to U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, and told him to choose the Yellowstone design with the bison. It's a neat article giving pros and cons of the design choices. The Billings Gazette felt that the design with the bison drawn beside the Old Faithful geyser represented Yellowstone the best because the free-roaming bison were icons of the park as memorable as Old Faithful.
See you tomorrow!
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