The MonthlyPlancheta publication of theIndianapolis Coin ClubIssue # 451
Newsletter
July 2004
Membership numbers: ANA C-131170, CSNS L-600, ISNA LM 243
The Meetings of the Indianapolis Coin Club are held the fourth Monday of each month at
the Nora Library at 8625 Guilford Avenue in Indianapolis, Indiana. The Meetings consistof a business session, an intermission, educational program, and a numismatic auction.
Doors open at 6:00pm, meeting will begin at 7:00pm.

The next meeting will be Monday, July 26, 2004

July’s meeting isExhibit Night!
Every member is invited to bring anexhibit to show at the meeting. There will
be prizes for the best exhibits and aparticipation prize for all exhibitors. Therewill be different categories for exhibits: UScoins & Currency, World Coins, Exonumia,and Juniors. Your exhibit does not have to
be expensive or elaborate, just bring insomething you have enjoyed collecting andyou will have an opportunity to tell us about
it.This has been successful in the past and isa great opportunity to show off some ofyour collection.

The Monthly Planchet’s
Advertisement Rates:
Business Card: $35.00
for a Full Year!

Past President
Sgt-at-Arms
Board Member
Board Member
Board Member
Board Member
Board Member
Board Member

Jim Luckey
Jim Warden
Lawrence Wistoff
Coz RaimondiCharles AlberKarl Kreck
Donald Black
Allen Dove

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President
Vinton Dove
Vice-President
Dave Reid
Secretary
Jim Goaziou
Treasurer
Tom Ferverda
EditorAmy Eberhardt(fubacoin@aol.com) ph. (317) 837-5682

ICC
Don’t forget tobring yourauction items
and some money
to the meeting!

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The 2004 Indianapolis Coin Club
Officers and Board Members

Table of Contents
Exhibit Night - Cover“20c. Cent Pieces”- Pages 3-5

The Monthly Planchet is the official publication of theIndianapolis Coin Club. It is published monthly in Indianapolis,Indiana. All inquiries should be sent to ICC, P.O. Box 2897,
Indianapolis, Indiana, 46206.

The Monthly Planchet, July 2004

Secretary’s Report - Page 5
Upcoming Shows - Page 5
Page 2

Twenty Cent Pieces (1875-1878)
byMichael Schmidt
The twenty cent piece, so the story goes, was theresult of a lack of the smaller denominations incirculation in the western states after the end of theCivil War. The smallest coin in regular use appears
to have been the silver ten cent piece. The
complaint normally went that when someone
purchased a drink at a bar and offered a quarter forthe ten cent drink all they would receive in change
would be a dime, thus cheating the buyer out offive cents. (Or half of his next drink!) Somehow,
the powers that decided the solution to this lack ofsmall change was to create a new large
denomination! To keep that bar patron from being
cheated out of his nickel, we shall create a twenty
cent piece so that his dime change will be thecorrect change. Of course, it means he will
somehow come up with that special coin to buy hisdrink with and it doesn't help at all for otherpurchases where the change is any amount otherthan a dime.
"But at least we didsomething." (And besides it was one more
additional sop to the silver interests.) Well politics
won out over common sense and the twenty centpiece was authorized on March 3, 1875. Through afurther failure of common sense, this new coin,
which was only a half millimetersmaller in diameter than the quarter, was given an
almost identical design to that of the rest of thesilver coins. (And this was after 26 different
pattern designs with different designs wereproduced.)
The obverse of the new coin bears the sameseated liberty design then current on the dime
through dollar. The only difference being found on
the shield by Liberty's right hand. The word
LIBERTY on the banner running across the shieldis found in raised letters rather than incuse. (Forthis reason twenty cent pieces can not be graded
The Monthly Planchet, July 2004

the same way as other seated liberty coins.
Normally if three letters are visible a coinwould be considered a VG, and a Fine requiresa full LIBERTY to be visible. Since theLIBERTY is one of the highest parts of the coinoften some of the letters will be missing evenon a VF coin.) The date is found below themain device while an arc of thirteen stars
surrounds Miss Liberty. The reverse design, bylaw, was required to have an eagle as part of thedesign. Rather than follow the pattern set by thequarter, half and dollar though, the twenty centreverse was based on the design used on theTrade dollar. The eagle is in a standing defiant
pose facing to the viewers right. Unlike mosteagles on US coins there is no shield on theeagles breast and the image is reminiscent of the"scrawny" eagles found on the very first silver
coins of the US. The eagle holds three arrows in
its right talon (viewers left) and an olive branchin the left. The denomination is found at thebottom of the coin and the country name isfound in its usual place following the curve of
the rim across the top of the coin. The
mintmark, if any, is found below the overlap of
the arrows and the stem of the olive branch. Theedge of the coin does not have the reeded edge
found on the other silver coins. This was theone concession made to the problem of
distinguishing between the quarter and the newcoin. To make the coin more identifiable bytouch, it was left with a plain edge.
Just two months after it was authorized, thetwenty cent piece went into production. Coinswere struck at three mints that first year, thescarcest being those from Philadelphia with
only 38,500 coins being struck. This was to be
expected though since this was a coin intended
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to be used "out west". The western mints did havelarger mintages. Carson City struck 133,290 coins
and San Francisco pulled out all stops striking
1,155,000 coins. Proof coins were also struck with
Philadelphia making 1,200 and San Francisco
producing 12. These went over like a lead balloon.
It becomes apparent when the mintages for thenext year are examined. Philadelphia's coinage
dropped by more than half to 14,750 coins. Carson
City struck only 10,000 specimens, and San
Francisco didn't strike any at all! This would be
the last of the business strike coinage, and only afurther 2,610 proof coins were produced, one
thousand five hundred in 1876, five hundred ten in
1877, and six hundred in 1878. Even these smallcoinages would eventually turn out to be too large
though.
The coins proved to be very unpopular (imaginethat) and were quickly
returned to the banks andthere after by the banks to
the treasury in exchange
for dollars or other coins.
Between 1895 and 1954
the mint melted down close
to one third of the totalcoinage, these being twenty
cent pieces sent in forredemption. (Yes, the mint was still melting
twenty cent pieces as late as 1954! Makes you sickdoesn't it.) This unpopularity and melting
combined at Carson City to produce one of themajor rarities in US coins, the 1876-CC twenty
cent piece.
By Jan. 1876 the Carson City mint had managed
to issue some 129,000 of the pieces they had
produced the previous year leaving only 4,261 ofthem in the vaults. Most of the disbursal had been
early in the year though and during the Jan. to May
1876 period they only managed to average an issueof 247 coins a month. At that rate they had enoughcoins on hand to satisfy demand through mid
1877. So on May 1st the Superintendent of themint telegramed Director Linderman that nocoinage of twenty cent pieces was envisioned. But
Linderman was being pressured political tocontinue striking more silver coinage, so he
The Monthly Planchet, July 2004

telegramed back orders to strike a further 10,000
pieces and this was done between May 5th andMay 8th. On the 15th of May vault inventory
showed 13,315 twenty cent pieces.
Unfortunately requests for the coin continued todecline and over the next ten months only 954
coins were issued. The Carson City mint now hadover a ten year supply of the coins! Finally on
May 19th director Linderman sent a telegram toCarson City directing the melting of all of thecoins on hand and to deduct the loss against theSilver Profit Fund (Seigniorage account). Now
since the normal procedure was for disbursementsof coin to be done under a First In First Out
method of inventory control. This would meanthat all of the 954 coins paid out during theprevious ten months had been 1875-CC coins andall of the 1876-CC coins should still have been in
the vaults when the melting order came in. So
where did the dozen or soknown specimens comefrom?
The two main theories
have been that they werefrom the coins reserved out
and sent to Philadelphia forthe annual assay of thecoinage. There are
two problems with this. The number of coins heldout for assay from a mintage of ten thousand
would be less than the number of coins known
today, and two, at the time of the assay it would
not have been known that a melting order wasgoing to be made so there would have been no
reason for the assay commission members to havetaken action to save these coins. The otherwidely accepted route would be through the mint
workers replacing specimens with 1875 coins tokeep the weight and count right during themelting of the coins in 1877. This would bepossible but it brings up two related questions.
Why would they be concerned with saving thesepieces since coins were also made in Philadelphia
including proofs?
At that time almost nocollectors cared about mintmarks, and mostcollectors simply purchased a proof coin to satisfy
their requirement for current year coinage. Why
take the risk when collector attitudes made thePage 4

potential for a profit very small?
To my point of view, the most likely
possibility is one that has been discarded byother authors in the past. In the mint archives
are letters from local collectors requesting
examples of the new years (1876) twenty centpieces! One has stated that- to remove just a
few coins from the keg and not leave traces
would have been impossible. But by that timecoins were being kept in canvas bags not kegs
and it was the count that was important, not thecontent. At that time the mint officials weremuch more open to honoring requests of thattype an long as the requests were accompanied
by payment and postage. There were odd 1875
coins in the vault and I can very easily see anofficial opening a bag of 1876 coins, replacing
them with the same number of 1875 coins andresealing the bag using a wire and lead seal.
Then using the removed coins to honor therequests and logging them as normal
disbursements.

SECRETARY'SREPORTfor the meeting on June 28,
2004
Twenty-one members were present as President
Dove opened the meeting. Secretaryand Treasurer reports were presented by Jim
Goaziou and Tom Ferverda, respectively.
It was announced that longtime member Charles
Alber has been diagnosed with cancer. All wish
him a speedy recovery. President Dove instructed
the Secretary to send a get well card from the Club
to Charlie! Also, because of his inability tocontinue to provide the refreshments for eachmeeting, a volunteer is needed to do so in Charles’
absence.
Jim Goaziou reported on the Mid-America CoinShow at the Stephens Convention Center in
Chicago and discussed the upcoming (July meeting)Exhibitors’ Night with those present. Eachexhibitor will receive a participation award andthere will be awards in each of four categories - U.
S., World, Exonumia, and Juniors.
Dave Reid presented an excellent education
program with slides on Colonial Canadian Tokens.
President Dove reported that most members have
paid their 2004 dues and that copies of the bylaws
are available for each member.
The regular auction and dealer bourses were bothactive and exciting. President Dove adjourned themeeting at 8:45pm.
Respectively Submitted,J. W. Goaziou, Secretary

Earlier I mentioned in passing another great
rarity of this series which is almost totally
unknown today, the 1875-S proof. These twelve
coins were struck to celebrate the striking of
this new denomination. They were used aspresentation pieces and then disappeared until
the first one was identified in 1931. Today sixof the twelve pieces are known. Most of them
have come to light since 1964 with the mostrecent discovery being in 1975. All of them
have turned up being listed as cleaned
UPCOMING SHOWS
uncirculated coins. The dies used to strike thesecoins were only used for this proof issue and July 25th “Central Illinois Summer Coin Show” - Springfield,
they can be identified by a series of horizontal IL Northfield Center I, 3210 Northfield Dr. at Northfield Dr.
die file marks in the shield below the BER in & Dirksen Parkway (next to Xochimilco Mexican
LIBERTY, a spine coming off to the left from Restaurant). Hrs: 9am-4pm
the pole below Liberty's little finger, the left August“Lakeland Coin Club Show” Syracuse, IN Eagles Lodge
pendant of the T in cents is broken away as is 7th3760 Kern. Hrs: 10am-4pm
the lower serif of the S, and there is a file from 8th “71st Street Coin Show” Indianapolis, IN K of C Hall
the leaf above the T to the S. Take a look at 2100 East 71st St. off Keystone Ave. Hrs: 9am-3:45pm
21st “Comfort Suites” South Bend IN, off of SR 31/33 North
your 75-S.
and Cleveland Rd. Hrs: 10am-5pm
22nd “Wabash Valley Coin Club” Terra Haute IN, The
Hulman Center 200 N. 8th St. Hrs: 9am-4pm

The Monthly Planchet, July 2004

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