• Contents of this Issue
  • Notes
  • Minutes of the 1273rd Meeting
  • Roman Imperial Portraits in Coins and Sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago
  • Exhibits
  • Minutes of the Chicago Coin Club Board
  • Upcoming Meeting
  • Important Dates
  • Chatter Matter
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Chatter

Editor’s Notes

This Chatter issue is earlier and smaller than usual, because it is being sent before I go to the ANA’s NMS in Atlanta. The minutes of the CCC’s February board meeting will be in the April Chatter issue.

Reminder: 2025 dues are due by March 31. The December Chatter started with a dues-are-due announcement. If you are emailed a link to the online Chatter, the email to the December issue stated your 2025 dues status at that time. If you are mailed a printed Chatter, check the top right corner of the current mailing label – a single digit of 4 means that your 2025 dues were not yet paid (as of a week before the mailing).

Paul Hybert, editor

Minutes of the 1273rd Meeting

The 1273rd meeting of the Chicago Coin Club was called to order by President Melissa Gumm at 6:45pm on Wednesday, February 12, 2025. This was an online-only meeting due to snow storms in Chicago. Attendance was 43 members and three guests, for a total of 46. Guests were the program presenter, one guest applying for membership, and one guest attending for the program.

Club Meeting Minutes

The January club meeting minutes were approved as published in the Chatter, both in print and on the CCC website.

New Members

Secretary Scott McGowan completed the second membership application readings for Joseph Stypka of Chicago, Illinois, a collector of Canadian Large Cents, and Daniel Montoya of Oak Park, Illinois, a collector of US Classic and Modern coinage. The club voted to approve both members. The first reading was completed for Brian Hobdy of Franklin, Kentucky, a collector of ancients and medieval coinage.

Treasurer’s Report

Treasurer Elliott Krieter presented the December 2024 and January 2025 period treasurer’s reports: December income of $595.00 (Banquet, Dues), Expenses $2,528.73 (Banquet, Chatter expense), for a period total of -$1,933.73; January income $920.00 (Dues, Banquet Apps), Expenses $17.00 (Corp fee, Bank fee), for a period total of $903.00. The report was accepted and approved by the club membership.

Old Business

1. President Melissa Gumm reminded members that 2025 dues are now due. Pay by check to the PO Box, or via ZELLE banking app and use treasurer.chicagocoinclub@gmail.com
2. Committee Reports: Special Projects and Hall of Fame committees indicated no report. Legacy committee – Dale Lukanich reported that interviews will resume in April, and we have time for two interviews on Wednesday, April 23 at 4pm at the CSNS convention.

New Business

1. Melissa Gumm reported CCC members took awards at the Florida United Numismatists (FUN) show, taking two of the seven first place Educational exhibit awards at the FUN SHOW. Richard Jozefiak took first place in Medals, Orders, Decorations & Tokens for his exhibit “Token for an Ice Worm Cocktail in Alaska.” Mark Wieclaw received first place in the Foreign Coin Category with his exhibit titled “A Selection of Ancient Mint Errors, Oddities, and Curiosities.”
2. Melissa noted that a FUN show attendee mentioned that he had spoken at the 2024 World’s Fair of Money and had received a beautiful speaker’s medal, had thought it a great gesture, and was very proud of the CCC speaker’s medal. Also, an article in the February issue of World Coin News made mention of the CCC members sharing their collections with exhibits at the 2024 ANA convention.
3. Secretary Scott McGowan relayed a communication to the club members from Bob Leonard about the 2027 International Numismatic Congress in Frankfurt, Germany. Bob wrote: “While it is over two years away, if anyone has important research to present (such as mint errors on Roman coins and their implications, etc.) in a 20-minute PowerPoint lecture, now is the time to start planning and obtaining the applications. Frankfurt is very easy to get to from O’Hare, and German is not necessary to enjoy the Congress. Even if you don’t have anything to present, the knowledge you will gain will be great. I didn’t offer a paper the first time I attended INC. Also, it is possible to offer a ‘poster paper’ – no PowerPoint, just a big poster showing your work (coins, maps, and text); an hour or two is allotted during the Congress, during which the presenters stand by their posters and answer questions from other attendees. (A very low-key way to present information, and I learned from one of these posters a few years ago that the small copper medieval coins of Northumbria circulated throughout much of Britain.) The last Congress was in Warsaw in 2022, and the Proceedings are in the process of being published in FOUR volumes! The Congress is heavy on Greek coins, less so on Roman, but includes ancient Jewish, Byzantine, medieval, Oriental (you will hear opinions not printed in the standard references!), medals, and literature. There is very little on modern coins and paper money, but I would encourage anyone wanting to offer a paper on Bosnian propaganda ‘currency,’ say, to give it a try.” Details are at https://inc2027.org/

Featured Program

Elizabeth Hahn Benge on Roman Imperial Portraits in Coins and Sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago. The presentation looked at imperial marble portraits through a preview of the upcoming exhibition “Myth & Marble: Ancient Roman Sculpture from the Torlonia Collection,” which opens at the Art Institute of Chicago on March 15 and runs through June 29, 2025.

Show and Tell

Second Vice President Ray Dagenais announced the nine Show and Tell presentations for the evening.

President Melissa Gumm adjourned the meeting at 8:42pm CST.

Respectfully Submitted,
Scott A. McGowan, Secretary

Speaker’s Wor[l]d
Roman Imperial Portraits in Coins and Sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago

by Elizabeth Hahn Benge,
presented to our February 12, 2025 meeting

Elizabeth opened her presentation with a slide showing the Chicago Coin Club 100th anniversary medal that was presented to the Art Institute in 2020 as a gift, and she reported on how nicely it is preserved and cared for in the museum archives and special collections (housed along with other Chicago related items).

She then began her talk with a quick summary of a new exhibition opening at the AIC next month – Myth & Marble: Ancient Roman Sculpture from the Torlonia Collection – and used that as a segue to look at some of the Roman coin collections at the museum. The Torlonia exhibition is a big deal for the museum because ancient art rarely holds the headliner showplace at the museum and it’s been since about 1978 that the museum last had an ancient art headlining exhibition (this was when the anniversary Pompeii exhibition came to Chicago).

The Torlonia Collection contains an impressive 620 works total, which includes portraits, scenes of mythology, funerary monuments, and more, and it is arguably the largest private collection of its kind in the world. The collection was long unseen to the public after its formation in the 19th century, aside from a catalog of black and white phototype illustrations published in 1884-85 by Carlo Ludovico Visconti (1818-1894). Access to the collections was highly restrictive. In late 2020, a number of the sculptures were conserved and exhibited at the Capitoline Museums in Rome, the first time they had been made available to the public in over seventy years. The show then traveled to Milan in 2022, and in the summer of 2024 to the Louvre in Paris. After closing in France, an entirely new exhibition featuring a different selection of works from the collection will make its North American debut at the Art Institute of Chicago. The exhibition, which runs from March 15-June 29, 2025, will feature fifty-eight outstanding sculptures from the collection, twenty-six of which have been newly cleaned, conserved, and studied specifically for this project. After Chicago, the show then travels on to the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas and then ends in summer 2026 at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

Although the artworks that will be on view in the exhibition are predominantly ancient Roman marble sculptures (along with one over life-size bronze), themes of the show have parallels in other media, especially coins. Elizabeth used examples from the Torlonia installation to discuss the Art Institute’s robust collection of Roman imperial coins (especially aurei) and used Marcus Aurelius as a case study to explore some of the features seen in portraits executed in sculpture and on coins.

Although the museum does rely heavily on loans to fill thematic gaps in the display narratives, the department does still actively (though infrequently) acquire through both purchase and gift as a way to grow the collections. The galleries are always changing and especially in the last few years some things have been moving around, including coin displays. They also recently hired a Kress Interpretive Fellow to work specifically on coin displays and their presentation in our galleries. Although there are currently only 34 ancient coins on display in the gallery with another 50 or so planned to go out this year, all are photographed and online and fully searchable on the museum website (https://www.artic.edu/collection).

The emperor Marcus Aurelius is well represented in coins and sculpture both as a youth and as a mature adult. His youthful appearance – with rather lively hairstyle and near-absent facial hair – on early gold coins aligns with his similarly beardless and youthful sculpture types as seen in the Torlonia example. Marcus’s portraits continued to evolve, with increased beard growth and a more mature countenance, likely indicative of his changing physical appearance and advancing age in real life. After he became emperor in 161 CE, more restraint can be seen in the hairstyle, a much fuller and curly beard, and a still more aged and calm demeanor in both coins and sculpture.

Portraits of members of the imperial family, especially its women, were also important and reflected contemporary fashion trends and hairstyles. This is visible in elements of the portrait of Faustina the Younger, the wife of Marcus Aurelius and daughter of Antoninus Pius. Her changing hairstyle has been used to classify her portraits, and her profile on the obverse of an aureus in Chicago depicts a typical hairstyle of wavy locks, gathered in a knot at the nape of her neck and parted in the middle at the forehead, that appeared in her portraits made after 161 CE.

Marble sculptures could be re-carved, damaged, and restored, both in antiquity and in modern times, and a number of examples in the Torlonia Collection have been re-carved, which has caused scholars to reattribute some identifications over time. Elizabeth concluded by looking at a few examples of those from Torlonia and how they pair with Art Institute aurei.

Details for this exhibition are at https://www.artic.edu/exhibitions/10257/myth-marble-ancient-roman-sculpture-from-the-torlonia-collection

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Show and Tell

Items shown at our January 8, 2025 meeting,
reported by Ray Dagenais.

1. Tyler Rossi displayed a propaganda banknote issued by the German occupying forces in Slovenia during the People’s Liberation War in Slovenia in 1944. The obverse states: This denar is as worthless as the promises from Moscow and London. The reverse is a copy of a lithographed 10 Lir/Dinar note issued by Yugoslav partisans (Slovenian National Liberation Committee) in 1944.
2. Zach Filis continued his introduction of George Mills, the engraver from the early 1800s. During the creation of historic medals, Mills struck artist proofs, or trials, of his engravings prior to striking the final version of his medals. These proofs were struck so that he could make slight adjustments to the medals, if needed, to accurately represent what he wanted to convey.
   1. A copper artist proof showing the bust of Benjamin West before any adjustments were made; the reverse is incused with the bust image. In the close-up of the obverse, one can notice a series of lines or cuts around the bust made by Mills in order to make any adjustments that he deemed appropriate. West is known as the father of American painting. He was an American from Pennsylvania who left to study in Italy and upon his return, he stopped off in England and never returned to America. West opened a studio in London where he was selected as the court painter for King George III. West was one of the founders of the Royal Academy of Arts in London. He opened his studio and home to young painters from America who wished to study in London; these students included some of the greatest painters in American History.
   2. An example of the finished product; this bust was struck with a few different reverses. West regarded Mills as the first medalist in England – very high praise.
   3. A silver artist proof of Sir Henry Charles Englefield, a President of the Society of Antiquities among other prominent positions and honors. As with the earlier proof, the reverse is incused.
   4. An example of the final medal. Among the previous owners of this proof were Samuel Henry Hamer and Francis Stewart Cokayne; both men had spectacular collections. Francis was a London stockbroker who specialized in 18th and 19th century tokens. Hamer was known for having a token collection that was probably second to none.
   5. A photograph of Hamer sitting in front of his cabinet, examining one of his treasures; who knows – possibly this one. Zach said that it is unusual to find an image of a previous owner in front of his cabinet where the artist proof shown would have been stored.
3. Laurence Edwards followed up his previous presentation with a little more information on Chicago coin dealer (and active member of the CCC), R. Green, who was active in Chicago a few years before Laurence was old enough to be interested. R Green is the name of a husband and wife firm: Charles Elmore Green and Ruth Scrivner. Charles was wounded in WWI. In the very first edition (October 1953) of Central States’ The Sentinel (later, The Centinel) appeared, “Greetings from the Chicago Coin Club.” Included was an announcement of the Annual Banquet, which would feature an auction run by R. Green. Early Blue Books and Red Books acknowledge R. Green as a contributor. This past month, Laurence saw an eBay a listing of four price lists from R. Green. Laurence does not generally collect old price lists, mostly because they just make him sorry that he couldn’t have bought more back then; but he acquired these price lists from 1950, 1951, and 1955. The firm’s address changed several times: 1945 Crosby reprint – Board of Trade, 141 W. Jackson; 1950-51 Bargain List – 220 S. State St, 14th floor; 1955 Bargain List #49 – 180 W. Washington St; and November 1955 – a PO Box in Skokie. In the last of these lists was a note: “Due to the ill health of both my husband and myself this long established and profitable coin business is offered for sale … profit has increased more than 250% during the past four years … $100,000.
4. Richard Hathaway showed a French 1637-M (Toulouse) ½ Franc in an NGC holder graded VF Details - Graffiti, but the label has mis-attributed the coin as a 1637-L (Bayonne) ¼ Ecu. This coin has some mild/moderate graffiti on the reverse, but is otherwise a very well preserved piece with an even gray patina. The coin is 0.833 fine silver. Monnaies Royales Francaises Et De La Revolution by Arnaud Clairand lists 3 varieties for the 1637-M ½ Franc that year – one with a star before the date, one with no mark, and one with the letter ‘B’ before the date. This example has the letter ‘B’ before the date, the mark for the new mint master who took over operations beginning November 2, 1637. Thus, this coin was minted in either November or December 1637. Clairand estimates the mintage for this variety at 36,018.
5. Mark Wieclaw began his presentation with the question, “What in the World Happened on June 4, 1361?”
   1. He showed a $20 Federal Reserve Note with the serial number PK00641361A, and proceeded to describe the the Battle of Visby, July 22, 1361, showing a map of the Scandinavian countries and a map of the island of Gotland, followed by a drawing of King Valdemar IV of Denmark (1340-1375) and a drawing of a fierce battle. After the Gotlanders surrendered, the fortress was penetrated; three large beer barrels (empty) were placed in the city center, and Valdemar demanded that they be filled with silver and gold – if not, the city would be pillaged. The barrels were filled before nightfall. Mass graves were excavated between 1905-1928; among the dead: more than 1800 Gotlanders (men, women and children), and more than 300 Danish soldiers. This is the largest medieval mass grave and the best preserved medieval wall in Scandinavia.
   2. A silver Roman denarius (18.5mm, 3.26 grams) showing Julia Domna, wife of Septimius Severus (173-211), on the obverse and the Goddess of Virtue on the reverse.
   3. A Roman antoninianus (23.0mm, 4.66 grams) depicting Venus on the reverse. Things ended badly: Severus died in February, 211 while on an expedition; his son Geta was murdered in February, 212 by order of his brother Caracalla; Caracalla was murdered in April, 217 while on patrol; and Julia Domna commited suicide by self starvation in 217.
6. Deven Kane showed two coins.
   1. A bronze coin from the city of Philippopolis in Thrace, 26mm in diameter and weighing 10.89 grams. The obverse features a draped bust of Faustina II, wife of Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, while the reverse features a standing Demeter, holding grain ears and torch. Philippopolis is one of the names of the ancient city situated where Plovdiv is today – other name were Thracian Eumolpia/Pulpudeva, and Roman Trimontium. The city became one of the largest and most important in the region, and was called “the largest and most beautiful of all cities” by Lucian. During most of its recorded history, the city was known by the name Philippopolis after Philip II of Macedon. Philippopolis became part of the Roman Empire and the capital of the Roman province of Thracia. According to Ammianus Marcellinus, Philippopolis had a population of 100,000 in the Roman period.
   2. One of the first coins from the Empire of Trebizond – acquired when a close-to-opening bid won a silver Aspron Trachy of Andronicus I Gidon (1222-1235). This scyphate (cup-shaped) coin is 26mm in diameter and weighs 2.83 grams. One side features a standing facing Virgin, while the other side features Christ Chalkites standing, facing, and nimbate.
7. Kurt Hyde recently bought a number of Karl Goetz medals at an auction. He showed us one, remembering the Hindenburg catastrophe that happened on May 6, 1937. The death toll was 35 of the 92 persons on board, plus one ground crewman.
8. Gerard Anaszewicz showed two ancient Roman coins.
   1. A silver denarius of Trajan (96-117) showing his portrait on the obverse and Trajan’s column in Rome on the reverse. Trajan’s column celebrates his victories over the Dacians of Eastern Europe, who lived between the Carpathian mountains and the Black Sea.
   2. A bronze sestertius of Julia Mamaea, circa 222-225AD, featuring her portrait on the obverse and Venus holding Cupid on the reverse. Julia was the mother of future emperor Severus Alexander. Venus is the Roman god of love, and Cupid is the god of Desire.
   These were the first coins he ever bought; acquired from the coin department in Marshall Fields while he worked at that store, purchased on an installment plan.
9. Jeff Amelse showed the progression of die states of a relatively common Civil War Token (Fuld 47/332). His slides showed five of these tokens, in die states with progressively more die cracks on the obverse and swelling and crumbling areas on the reverse. In the final die state, the obverse has a heavy internal cud and the reverse’s design was weakly struck opposite that heavy cud; the dies probably failed soon after. Civil War Tokens were privately issued, so quality control was not a high priority.

Reminders:

• You can email to Ray a description of what you will show at a meeting, to give him a start on this write-up.
• Send it to cccshowandtell@gmail.com
• After a meeting, all members who viewed the meeting should email him their scoring sheet – a listing of each exhibit number followed by a score (from a low of 1 to a high of 10) is all that is needed.

Minutes of the Chicago Coin Club Board

The minutes of the February 19, 2025 CCC Board Meeting will be in the April Chatter.

Our 1274th Meeting

Important Dates

Unless stated otherwise, our regular monthly CCC Meeting is in downtown Chicago, and also online, on the second Wednesday of the month; the starting time is 6:45PM CT.

Chatter Matter

http://www.ChicagoCoinClub.org/

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Club Officers

Correspondence

All correspondence pertaining to Club matters should be addressed to the Secretary and mailed to:
CHICAGO COIN CLUB
P.O. Box 2301
CHICAGO, IL 60690
Or email the Secretary at Secretary.ChicagoCoinClub@GMail.com
Payments to the Club, including membership dues, can be addressed to the Treasurer at the above street address.

Payments

Renewing Members Annual dues are $20 a year ($10 for Junior, under 18). Annual Membership expires December 31 of the year through which paid. Cash, check, or money order are acceptable (USD only please). We do not accept PayPal. Email your questions to Treasurer.ChicagoCoinClub@GMail.com Members can pay the Club electronically with Zelle™ using their Android or Apple smart phone. JP Morgan Chase customers can send payments to the Club via Quick Pay. To see if your Bank or Credit Union is part of the Zelle™ Payments Network, go to https://www.zellepay.com Please read all rules and requirements carefully.

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