Michael Schmidt
ECI #216
Indiana

“My interest in coins began back when I was five years old and in my school lunch money I found a quarter that had a small letter D on the reverse below the eagle. I had never seen one like that before and I wanted to know what it was for. So I began reading the books in the school library and soon learned that it was a mintmark and that it meant the coin had been struck in Denver. Unfortunately I had to spend it for my lunch but I swore I would find another one for myself. Well I never found another one. You see this was 1966 and the books in the library, being several years old, had never heard of clad coins.

That started my interest and I spent the next six years reading everything I could on numismatics. I cleaned out the school library, the local library and finally went on 10 mile bike trips to the main library in downtown Louisville and read everything they had. Unfortunately being just a kid and having no money, actually collecting was out of the question. Fortunately the Boy Scouts came to my rescue.

When I was eleven my parents were always pushing me to earn more merit badges. Hmmm OK, can I earn the Coin Collecting merit badge? ‘Sure, What do you need?’ Well the badge wasn't going to be hard to earn but once it
was done I'd be right back where I started. But one of the optional requirements was to identify and mount at least fifty different coins from at least ten different countries. Hmmm, ‘Hey dad could you help me with this?’ Well it worked. We got the books and a bunch of foreign coins and in the identification, classifying, and mounting of them I managed to get my father bitten by the bug. Now that I had HIM collecting, I had a funding source!

I'm not your typical collector in at least one way. Unlike most collectors who start young I never went though a period where I didn't collect. So I collected, added to my collection, my library, and eventually joined more organizations.

Clubs I belong(ed) to:  Louisville Coin Club - Derby City Coin Club (Founding member) Offices held, Secretary -
Falls City Coin Club (defunct) - Muncie Coin and Stamp Club Offices held, Secretary - Old Fort Coin Club Offices held, Secretary, Newsletter Editor - Celina Coin Club (no longer a member) - Union City Coin Club (defunct)

State Clubs: Kentucky State Numismatic Association Offices, Vice President, President Bourse Chairman 1980, 81, and 82. - Indiana State Numismatic Association - Ohio State Numismatic Society - Michigan State Numismatic Society

Regional Clubs: Central State Numismatic Society

National Clubs: American Numismatic Association (Have been a member on two occasions, but not currently - Early American Coppers - Colonial Coin Collectors Club (C4) - American Nickel Collectors Association (Founding member, club defunct) - John Reich Collectors Society - Liberty Seated Collectors Society - Conder Token Collectors Club - Associated Collectors of Encasements (charter member, club now defunct) - Encased Collectors International

Online organizations: Every country collectors - USA-Coin Group - Society of Pattern collectors - Shield Nickel collectors Group - World International Numismatic Society (defunct) - The E-Sylum - PCGS Collectors Forum (banned by PCGS) - NGC Collectors Forum - CoinPeople Forum - CoinTalk Forum - Coin Community Forum

I think that's all but there may be some that I have missed.

Publications

I’ve written several articles on Shield Nickels to the American Nickel Collectors Association newsletter. In one I described and gave the source of what has since come to be known as Longacre Doubling. There is still debate over why it exists, but I believe my descriptions were the first published discussion of the subject. (1986 or 87)

I’ve written an article in The Gobrecht Journal, publication of the Liberty Seated Collectors Club, where I identified the 1873-S V2 half dime as a new variety.

For at least the past five years I have been the editor of the Old Fort Coin Club Newsletter during which I have written at least 60 editorials, and over 80 articles on different numismatic topics. Many of these articles have also been picked up by other club newsletters.

I’ve written one guest editorial in Coin World

For two years I was the publisher of The Score, which is a die variety census for the early date large cent collectors. After a hiatus of several years I am once again the publisher of the census.

I have written An Attribution Guide for Draped Bust Large Cents 1796 - 1807. Which was published in 1985 as my first work. It worked well but is somewhat ‘clunky‘. I don't even use it myself anymore as I have written a better one (unpublished)

I’ve written Legend Index of English Conder Tokens which was published in 2001 and is now out of print. A second revised printing has been requested.

I’ve written Third Party Grading/Certification Services & Slab/Certificate Varieties which was published in 2003 and had two printings. It is now out of print but there has been a growing demand for more. I'd like to finish a
second edition but I'm far enough away that I'm afraid I'm going to have to have a third printing done of the first edition before its finished.

My Other ‘claims to fame’ Discovered the 1873-S V-2 half dime. - Discovered the Shropshire 11bis variety Conder token. - Discovered the Shropshire 13bis variety Conder token. - Discovered at least two new edge varieties in the Conder token series. - Rediscovered the Shropshire 11 Conder token variety. This variety was listed in the standard reference, but was considered to have been a misidentification error because no one had seen a piece that matched the description since the book came out around 1910 until I found one in Feb of 2008. - Assisted in the discovery and identification of the counterfeit ANACS, NGC, and PCGS slabs coming out of China


I've collected many things over the years, but I would have to say I'm now concentrated in three areas. Early date large cents I've collected early date large cents since early 1985. At first I only worked on the draped bust die varieties but over time I had to expand out into the other dates as well because I could no longer find items for my primary set. But that collection has pretty much reached an end now. I currently have 249 of the 295 Sheldon numbered varieties and I lack only three varieties of being complete from 1795 to 1814. (I don't include S-79, a pattern, or S-80 a non-mint product.)

In 1992, while looking to find some way to expand my collecting interests, I finally managed to get my hands on a copy of Dalton & Hamer, the standard reference for Conder tokens. I had always liked these early copper tokens,
but I could never afford the reference book. Once I got it I was overwhelmed. There are some five thousand varieties in the series. I decided to just start out trying to get one piece from each of the English counties. I quickly learned the shortcoming of the D&H book, no good index. Many of the tokens don't say on them where they are from, so the only way to find them was to page through the book until you saw it. With 5,000 varieties that could take awhile. So I wrote an index for all the token inscriptions. If you look up the inscription it would tell you all of the D&H varieties that came with that inscription. If you look up both the obv and rev inscriptions and see which varieties used both of them in most cases you then either knew which one it was or had just a very small number to
check and you could go to them directly. I printed up four manuscript copies and gave a copy to a fellow collector and one to a dealer who did a lot of Conders for testing and proofreading. By 1997 I was ready for publishing it when my apartment burned. I lost my manuscript copies and the computer system the files were on. Then came the real problem. My copy of Dalton & Hamer was also lost in the fire. I needed one of the surviving manuscripts to recreate the files, but the people who had them wouldn't give them back! They used them all the time and were afraid they wouldn't get it back! I finally got the dealer to agree to loan me his copy on the condition that I run right out, photocopy it, and bring it right back to him. I then went about recreating the book on the only computer I had available, the one at work. I got it all in, reformatted, then started the proofreading process all over again. Just about had it finished and ready for publishing again when I came back from a long weekend to discover that they had swapped out my computer. Back to the beginning, do it all again. All this delayed the publishing by almost four years.

In the meantime I had finished the country collection and expanded. I had moved to the Genuine Trade Tokens. These were the tokens that were issued by the various merchants with the intent that they actually circulate as money, and advertised the issuers business, either directly or by name as where they were redeemable. Not including edge variations there are some 654 different GTT's. I have some 560 of them. It has become difficult to find the pieces I need now so I have branched out into the rest of the English Conder tokens. I now have around 800 different pieces.

My interest in slabs paradoxically results from my hatred of them. I have been collecting since before the first certification service ever existed. The first services were authentication services, a concept I could agree with. But when they started adding grading to their services I opposed it. Grading is a needed skill and one that really isn't too difficult to acquire. So why pay someone else to tell you what you should be able to figure out for yourself? Besides, although many people say that slabs protect the beginner who can't grade until they learn how, I believe that they encourage them to not bother learning how to grade at all. Then later as the Mint State grades expanded from three to five then six and finally eleven it reached the point where no one could grade with consistency, including the grading services. Collectors, especially beginners, were now believing in a level of precision that just doesn't exist. So over the years I watched the grading services come and go but never participated in the racket. Still I began to realize that the history of slabbing and the different companies was a part of numismatics that was being ignored. I sometimes thought about trying to put together a set of all the companies and holders that had been used but never did anything about it. Then one day in 1998 the question came up in an online forum as to how many grading services there had been. As the thread continued it bogged down around about ten companies. I realized that I knew of a lot more companies than that so I posted a list of twenty two companies. I later expanded that to twenty five, and I began to wonder myself just how many companies there had been that I hadn't known about. So my search began and I started building that set of companies and holder varieties. This work eventually led to the book I published on the subject in 2003. It lists and gives a brief history of eighty two companies and lists 231 production varieties of holders. It also covers Sample Slabs, Novelty Slabs, Presentation slabs, Body Bags, and has a section on Miscellaneous material. In all some 300 different holders are pictured. The second edition, when it is finished, will be even larger. I currently list over one hundred fifty companies and three hundred forty production varieties.

The book has done fairly well and it has actually begun encouraging the collecting of the slabs themselves. Some of them are quite rare, but so far only a few bring significant premiums for the holder.

My involvement with encased coins probably comes from exposure to them from various sources, and the fact that I am interested in just about everything involving numismatics. I am fortunate enough to be a member of the local coin club where Bryan Ryker (ECI #51) lives and which he joined when he was trying to learn more about his grandfather-In-Law, Earl Fankhauser, an encased coin salesman. I provided him with some of Fankhauser’s early advertisements for his book.

I don’t collect encasements at all and only have a small handful of pieces, none of them very special. The ones I find most interesting are those that were produced as souvenirs for major events such as the World Fairs and expositions. I also like the pieces that were created for businesses to actually distribute to their customers as a form of advertising (like many of Fankhauser's).

I find modern pieces that are usually created either to just have something cheap to commemorate some small event, or created simply to have something new as a collectible are of very little interest. An item manufactured to be a collectible isn’t a collectible. Actually my most frequent contact with encasements is from having to explain to people, ‘No you have not found some valuable new error coin. What you have is just a damaged coin that was removed from an encasement.’ Then explain why the rim and edge of the coin looks like it does and how it results from the process of making the encasement.”