PREV ARTICLE
NEXT ARTICLE
FULL ISSUE
PREV FULL ISSUE
GOLD DROPPED IN CHICAGO SALVATION ARMY KETTLESLen Augsburger passed along this Chicago Tribune article about Salvation Army kettle donations to me and Tom DeLorey, knowing Tom handled these coins from time to time while working at Harlan Berk. -Editor
A gold coin and a gold bar were anonymously donated at separate red kettles Saturday, according to Salvation Army spokeswoman Katie Heinz Pfingsten. A $50 American Gold Eagle coin was donated at a Jewel in Bartlett and the gold bar was dropped in a kettle outside a Jewel in Mundelein. Each is valued at $1,800 to $1,900. Lt. Scott Smith, with the Salvation Army's Tri-City Corps, said the gifts offer some reassurance that things may not be as dire this year as first thought. "It 100% gives me hope. Every year, every Salvation Army corps is going, ‘I hope we can make our goal this year,' " he said. "But the reality this year is, I hope we can make our goal and then some, and that God will continue to provide what we need in order to help the people that we're helping." His corps will get the proceeds from the coin since donations serve the communities where they're made. "The gold coin is huge," he said. "That's more money than would come in on multiple kettles on a regular day." Nearly three-quarters of the Salvation Army's annual budget typically is made up of donations from the winter Red Kettle drive. So far, the money collected in the kettles is down 50% for the year in the Metropolitan Division, which runs from Rockford to Lake County, Indiana, according to Heinz Pfingsten.
To read the complete article, see:
Tom writes: "One time I dropped a Krugerrand wrapped in a silver certificate into one of the kettles outside Marshall Fields, and a few days later the Officer who was in charge of donations brought the silver certificate into the store along with a few other odd gold and other pieces. "Worried that somebody might have pocketed the coin, I asked him "What about the Krugerrand that was wrapped in it?" Which of course told him that I was the person who had dropped it in. He laughed and said "Oh, we know what those are, but we had never seen a dollar bill like this!" "We always made very strong offers on the older U.S. gold and other stuff that came through the kettles, but they always put them up for auction and got way more than our offers from people who wanted to make a donation that way. I am sure they were just using our offers as starting prices." I dropped some bills in a kettle the other day, and encourage all of our readers to give something this holiday season. It's been a very tough year for a lot of people. -Editor 
Wayne Homren, Editor The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org. To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor at this address: whomren@gmail.com To subscribe go to: https://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/esylum All Rights Reserved. NBS Home Page Contact the NBS webmaster 
|
