Numismatists bring funny money to town
The vast majority of the time that I’m thinking about money, it’s along the lines of not having enough of it or what I would do with more. What never occurs to me, as my savings account can attest, is to gather my money in one place and just hang onto it.
“It’s history in your hands,” says Douglas Mudd, curator of the American Numismatic Association Money Museum in Colorado Springs, Colo. His attitude is more contemplative than mine. “If you know what [currency] you’re looking at, you can get all sorts of information about what people [who minted it] looked like, what they were thinking.”
Beginning Thursday, the Orange County Convention Center will host the National Money Show. The event attracts investors and collectors from around the country looking to sink their dollars into … other dollars, or to find out what their money is worth.
Numismatists are people who collect coins and currency. (I always giggle at the technical names for collectors, such as philatelists for stamp collectors, or Streep for someone who collects Oscar nominations.) You know the Marshmallow Test, where you give a kid a marshmallow and tell them that if they wait to eat it, they can have two marshmallows? Collecting money seems like the ultimate version of that.
But Mudd sees much more than just the means to pay a water bill. “Whenever you go to a new country, almost the first thing you’ll see is their money,” says Mudd. “That money will create an impression.”
In addition to the vendors and appraisers who buy and sell money, there will be several exhibitions. One focuses on Floridaissued notes while another takes aim at currency errors, because everyone likes laughing at someone else’s mistakes.
“Almost everything gets caught,” says Mudd about misprinted money, “but every once in a while … something will escape to the public.” This can be anything from torn corners to inking errors (blotches of ink) to serial numbers printed upside-down. For some reason, screwing it up makes the money worth more. (I truly wish it was the same thing with this column.)
All my money collections are probably doomed from the start. But the American Numismatic Association does a lot of outreach with children, including scholarships and its Coins for A’s program. So maybe taking the kids and getting them used to the idea of money as something you save isn’t a bad idea.
The National Money Show is open 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Thursday-March 10, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. March 11. General admission is $8, free for children under 12. Details at money.org.