Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee meeting at Summer Seminar

Well, it has been two weeks since I sat thru the marathon gathering of the CCAC which was held in Colorado Springs during the ANA's Summer Seminar.

Has my impressions of the work done and the people involved changed? Not much.

The committee is is a tough situation. They have hugh restrictions placed on what they can or can not select based on the enabeling law for a coin or medal design. So, most of the blame for bad design must rest with our law makers. First problem.

The committee backgrounds are art historians, collectors, political friends. So some of the group is goofy, another looks backward and the third is disconected.

There are many forces at work, Modern commemoratives need to have a proof background to bolster sales rather than design beauty. One point totally not under consideration is that if commemoratives do not circulate, why do they have to be struck to coin depth tollarances? Why do they need to just have coin finishes rather than a handsome patina finish. These items are limited in nature, so they could spend some time in their production.

And then there are totally wrong conclusions, such as the point made the the group of wheat reverse was a Nazi coin design...well, if they just had access to a reference, like the Standard Catalog of World Coins, the committee would have realized that the group of wheat design was introduced on various denominations of the Weimar Republic in the 1919-1923 period.

A two level design of a flag, sorry to say, is no better sculpture than the designs available on video arcarde tokens.

George