VIEWPOINT: A 2025 Silver Eagle

The package was simple, mailed via the United States Postal Service (USPS), and it arrived, as was informed, with one 2025 Silver Eagle.

A 2025 Silver Eagle. Just another modern bullion coin, one among hundreds of thousands.

But this Silver Eagle was unique. It is the final, last, and concluding remnant of the Lorian Numismatic Association (LNA) of Ohio. It is all that is left, and it was a departing gesture to the few remaining members.

Tracing a proud history back into the 1960s, with its famous corn roasts and wooden money issues, along with gathering monthly and at social events to revel in our ‘world of money’, the LNA came to an end.

There were no services, no ‘celebration of life’, or even a simple memorial, plus certainly no grave. LNA was dead, cold dead, and gone, ‘gone with the wind,’ to paraphrase a famous movie.

Across our grand nation plus into our northern neighbors in Canada, there are local coin clubs, some packed and excited with attendance and activities, some just getting by, and some, well, that struggle.

The reader might retort Why would a native Californian even bother with a small local coin club in the Buckeye State that he never attended? Because I was a member, at a distance of thousands of miles, for over thirty years and over the three decades, I faithfully renewed plus carried correspondence with some who have joined the ‘big coin club in the sky’. Once, I won the $5.00 Door Prize, which was kindly mailed to me.

In my five-plus decades toiling for our ‘world of money,’ I have witnessed the death of local coin clubs, which is the best descriptive noun, and buried three local coin clubs.

These local coin clubs-- remote and far from the bright lights and glitter of national and mega-regional organizations with suit and tie elites-- are the ‘grassroots’ and ‘the trenches’ of our ‘world of money’

These local coin clubs, collectively, have more members than the national and mega-regional organizations.

These local coin clubs offer the opening venture and opportunity for new hobbyists in a community center back room, church hall, veterans’ building, or public library, all remote and far from the bright lights and glitter of the luminaries that command our ‘world of money.’ There, with those infamous metal folding chairs, a poorly made pot of coffee, and simple snacks from COSTCO or nearby Safeway, members-- just simple everyday guys and gals-- come together and share ‘the world of money’ and welcome others who wander through the door.

I have joined local coin clubs around California, across our grand nation, and even in our northern neighbor Canada because I believe in local coin clubs. It was over fifty years ago that I wandered through that proverbial door. My first mentors and most of my best friends are from those local coin clubs, yes, even in New Hampshire, Alabama, Florida, Ontario, and elsewhere.

I am not dismissing the elites and luminaries of the distinguished national organization and the superior mega-regional organizations; rather, I am submitting to them this as a eulogy for a once simple local con club in The Buckeye State, now gone.

All that was left was a 2025 Silver Eagle. Not much of a testimonial or remembrance for those before who served and sustained over the decades the Lorain Numismatic Association.

For me, it shall endure in my vast accumulations as my most treasured Silver Eagle.