List makes it handy

I am counting down the days until I go to the American Numismatic Association World’s Fair of Money in Anaheim, Calif.

Getting my office work done ahead of time and putting a schedule together for the week, Aug. 9-13, that I will be rubbing elbows with thousands of numismatists can be daunting tasks.

Fortunately, there are individuals who come up with good ideas to save precious time for the many convention attendees.

One of those good ideas came to me from Illinois token dealer Rich Hartzog.

Tokens have a solid place in numismatics. They were critically important to the economy during the Hard Times period that began in 1837 and ran into the early 1840s.

They repeated their essential service to the economy during the Civil War when gold, silver and then even cents were hoarded by the public and disappeared from change.

However, despite their importance and rich history, most coin collectors simply do not collect tokens.

Those collectors whose focus is on tokens have to wade through many more dealers of coins to find the token dealers they are looking for.

Hartzog has created a short-cut for them.

All of the token dealers who will be attending the ANA event have been put into a guide by Hartzog.

If you follow the link to his web page, you can see that 17 token dealers have been confirmed for the ANA.

They are listed numerically, is very handy to those of us walking the aisles on the convention floor.

Rather than alphabetical, this list orders the token dealers by table number so you can start at the low number the walk table to table until you are finished.

You might call this the walking tour list of the token dealers who plan to be at ANA.

If you have an interest in Hard Times tokens or Civil War tokens, or all of the other tokens that are out there, start your hunt at the ANA Aug. 9-13 with Hartzog’s list.

Buzz blogger Dave Harper has twice won the Numismatic Literary Guild Award for Best Blog and is editor of the weekly newspaper "Numismatic News."

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