Collecting Friends: Wonder and Awe

Wonder and Awe

Steve: The April 3, 2024, Wall Street Journal had a quick review on a book by Helen De Cruz titled Wonderstruck: How Wonder and Awe Shape the Way We Think. It discusses stage and street magic, apparently an ancient art, and the reviewer said: “It’s captivating precisely because it inspires a sense of awe: Magicians do apparently impossible things, and the onlooker’s astonishment arises from not quite knowing how.” 

The wonderous, or unexpected, makes life exciting and we feel it when we experience something that we don’t quite understand. Freshness – a first encounter with wonder – should be celebrated and forms curiosity. Things that are unexpected, like a rainbow after a rainstorm, can be explained by science. However, rituals like the Jewish blessing upon seeing a rainbow help bring notice to the wonderful. 

For me, I remember seeing an ad in CoinAge magazine from Jay Parrino’s The Mint in Kansas City with a group of early U.S. large cents. At the center of the ad was a Professional Coin Grading Service certified Mint State 69 Flowing Hair, Wreath cent. That such a coin could survive was amazing to my teenage self (it still is incredible!). It was offered most recently at Stack’s Bowers Galleries in 2013 where it sold for $558,125 and was presented as, “The Single Highest-Graded Early Large Cent of Any Type or Variety,” with the cataloger adding, “to study the surfaces is to study a portrait of numismatic perfection in a product of the early United States Mint.” That it was produced on a great planchet with a razor-sharp strike, avoided contact and carbon spots, and remains, is a wonder, especially considering that the Philadelphia Mint was new in 1793. 

Image: It’s a wonder that some coins have survived, like this 1793 Flowing Hair, Wreath reverse large cent graded MS-69 brown that approaches perfection and is the only large cent in this grade. (Courtesy Stack's Bowers Galleries)

The review concludes, “It remains for each of us to discover the best ways to bring awe and wonder into our lives, but Wonderstruck offers a persuasive reminder that we really should.” 

Dennis, have you ever experienced a sense of wonder related to the hobby?

Dennis: Two thoughts immediately come to mind.

First: We often hear about a “childlike” sense of wonder. It can be easy to lose that sense of magic in a hobby if you’ve been collecting for many years. One way I’ve been able to stay connected to wonderment is through the eyes of my daughter (the Tiny Boss Lady™, as I call her), who’s now eight years old. 

I started my family in my mid-40s, with the delightful side effect that into my early 50s I’ve read thousands of children’s books old and new, revisited favorite childhood movies, and experienced how fresh and amazing everyday life is. That extends to numismatics, too. Some of the wonderment is very personal to my own particular “life story” in the hobby. I tell the Tiny Boss Lady (or TBL) about working with my favorite authors, publishing their creativity, and how books are made—“work” that’s actually fun and pretty darn wonderful, when I pause and think about it. 

I explain to her how coins and medals aren’t just money, but works of art, little sculptures, and the way they start as pencil sketches and go through a long, fascinating process to get to our pockets. She’s a budding artist, so she gets it!

I remember how happy I was when the Tiny Boss Lady was three or four years old and she wanted to touch and hold and look at the silver and bronze art medals and national medals displayed in my office. That was a turning-point moment for me. My gut feeling was, “No, she can’t touch them, she’s only four, she’ll drop them, she’ll get fingerprints on them, she’ll damage them.” But then I had a flash of clarity. This was a chance to connect (literally) my daughter to numismatics, on her terms. If a $40 medal got a $10 thumbprint, so be it.

It wasn’t long before she started talking about her own coin and medal collection.

My second immediate thought is how the United States Mint keeps the sense of wonderment and awe alive in me. I served on the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee for eight years, an experience that immersed me in the world of modern coins. I’ve seen the incredible progress the Mint has made in the past five to ten years, in terms of technology, creativity, process, and artistic innovation. When collectors say, “You can’t put fine detail on coins,” I point them to the 2019 American Legion $5 gold piece [image], about the size of a nickel, where you can see every rivet on the shield of the Legion emblem. Or the 2022 Ely S. Parker dollar from the Native American series, where every detail of General Parker’s uniform is clear: each button on his coat, even the oak leaf on his epaulet! At the Philadelphia Mint I’ve seen new technology that will soon bring eye-popping levels of detail to everyday circulating coins. To any collector who’s lost their sense of wonder and awe, I say, “Stick around.” It’s a great time to be in our hobby.

Be on the lookout for another installment of Collecting Friends next month or subscribe here and never miss a post! In the meantime, explore beautiful coins from the ANA's Edward C. Rochette Money Museum Virtual Exhibits.

About the Collecting Friends Blog

Hello! And welcome to the ANA’s blog series, “Collecting Friends.”

We decided to approach this much like a conversation between friends. One of us starts with a topic, then the other responds. Simple as that. Along those lines, we’ll keep the tone conversational as much as possible. 

We both write about coins professionally, and will keep our relative style guides in our writing. For Dennis, Publisher at Whitman Publishing, that means capitalizing “Proof” and italicizing Red Book and never saying anything bad about Ken Bressett, who’s awesome anyway. 

For Steve, who’s written with Coin World for 15 years, it means Winged Liberty Head dime instead of “Mercury” dime, and similar nuances and oddities. And, it means writing A Guide Book of United States Coins (better known as the “Red Book”). 

Both of us started collecting when we were little, introduced to coins by a chance encounter with an old coin that sparked our curiosity. One of Steve’s interests is coin valuation, and he gravitates towards the intersection of art and coins. Dennis enjoys medals and world coins, and studying modern U.S. coins in the context of older series, what came before.

We met in 2012 at the American Numismatic Association World’s Fair of Money in Philadelphia at an event hosted by the Austrian Mint where there was both a Ben Franklin and a Betsy Ross impersonator. We’ve become great friends in the past decade. We even were appointed together to sit on the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee starting in 2016, but Steve resigned soon after he was appointed to accept a full-time job at the Treasury Department while Dennis was re-appointed in 2020.

We taught a course together on numismatic publishing and writing a few years ago at the Summer Seminar, and while life has gotten in the way of us teaching another class, we jumped at our friend Caleb’s suggestion that we write a column. We hope you enjoy it! 

About the American Numismatic Association

The American Numismatic Association is a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating and encouraging people to study and collect coins and related items. The Association serves collectors, the general public, and academic communities with an interest in numismatics.

The ANA helps all people discover and explore the world of money through its vast array of educational programs including its museum, library, publications, conventions and numismatic seminars.