? What can you tell me about the counterfeit design of the Standing Liberty quarters that appeared in the Denver area in 1918?
It seems like you got the tail end of a story that was fantasy rather than fact. When the redesigned Standing Liberty quarters hit the streets of Denver, the rumor got started that they were counterfeits because of the design change. It took several public pronouncements by the then-superintendant of the Denver Mint, Thomas Annear, before the public settled down and accepted Liberty with more of a dress and the eagle flying above three stars on the reverse.
? Did the 20-cent piece survive long enough to get a nickname?
Whether it was nicknamed while still in use is questionable, but in later times it was referred to as a ?double dime.? That moniker was widely used by early catalogers and dealers, especially Haseltine.
? I found a piece I thought was a coin until a dealer told me that it?s a ?kettle coin.? What can you tell me about these pieces?
They are not coins. They are gaming counters from Kettle & Sons of Birmingham, England. In the early 1800s the firm produced counters that were close reproductions of earlier coins. Gaming counters were similar in purpose to our modern poker chips.
? Silver dollars I know, but ?Iron? dollars?
As a transplanted Yankee who grew up in New Hampshire, I can trace this back to New England, where a nickname for the silver coins was ?iron? dollars. The reference was not complimentary, as they were disliked for their weight and bulk.
? What on earth is a ?fandango dollar??
It was the appellation applied to a short-lived scheme to ship Colorado silver to Mexico to be minted into ?dollars? to use up the mountains of unsalable silver resulting from the repeal of the Sherman Silver Act in 1893. The main backer of the idea was the governor, Davis H. Waite.
? What is the practice on Presidential Inauguration medals if the President serves more than one term?
To correct a statement in the Feb. 27 column, an inaugural medal is normally issued for each term of office by the private inaugural committee.
? What is a hamburger coin?
This was a lay press term applied to the first clad coins in 1965.
