LOOSE CHANGE: MAY 9, 2021

In 1938, Felix Schlag won a $1,000 award for his Jefferson Nickel design. Schlag won the award in a competition that involved 390 or over 400 other artists, depending upon your source of information.

Schlag's victory continued a policy that Theodore Roosevelt had initiated in 1907 when he asked Augustus St. Gaudens to redesign American coinage. St. Gaudens work was ultimately limited to the $10 and $20 gold coins, but it set the trend. From 1907 until 1938, outside artists created all of the new designs for regular issue coins. That string would not be broken until Mint Director, Nellie Tayloe Ross, pushed hard to give John Sinnock the opportunity to design the Roosevelt Dime in 1945-6.

Recently, engraver, Ron Landis, issued 100 sets of the Jefferson Nickel with original Felix Schlag design. Landis first issued coins like this in the early 2000s for the Full Step Jefferson Nickel Club.

To read the complete thread, see:
Felix Schlag's original Jefferson Nickel design (https://www.cointalk.com/threads/felix-schlag%E2%80%99s-original-jefferson-nickel-design.379075/)

Officially, this cool little place is known as Crater of Diamonds State Park, a 911-acre, teardrop-shaped bundle of land two miles south of Murfreesboro, Arkansas, population 1,641. It is 232 miles from Dallas to the southwest, and 240 to Memphis in the northeast. The park has walking trails and 47 campsites and a gift shop selling souvenir pins, patches, and spoons, but most people come here to dig, and dig they do, for this state park is the world's only diamond-bearing site accessible to the public. What you find, you can keep. And despite the triplets striking out, other prospectors have struck it rich. Really, really rich.

Arkansas has nodded to its diamond-producing legacy in myriad other ways. In 1912, a five-person committee from the Pine Bluff, Arkansas, chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) voted to approve a design for the state flag: a large white diamond on a rectangular field of red. In 1967, the state designated the diamond as its official gem. In 1993 and 1997, Hillary Clinton wore a naturally flawless, uncut, pillow-shaped 4.25-carat yellow diamond found at Crater of Diamonds at her husband's presidential inaugurals. The Arkansas state quarter, which launched in 2003 and depicts rice stalks and a mallard flying above a lake, has a cut diamond front and center. All celebrate the simple, indisputable fact: that there is no other U.S. state that offers visitors the chance to get so close to actual diamonds.

The park records one to two diamond finds a day, says Waymon Cox, who is originally from Murfreesboro and has been a park interpreter at Crater of Diamonds since 2008. With enough dedication and looking in the right places in the right ways, your chances of finding one are good. (Cox himself has found three.) Though the average diamond found at Crater of Diamonds is the size of a match head, between 20–25 points of weight—too small to be cut—1,021 of the diamonds found have been more than one carat. (There are 100 points in a carat.)

Contrary to popular belief, you do not need to be a professional gemologist to hunt diamonds at Crater of Diamonds State Park, which makes 1,500 tickets available online per day to visitors—you just need to be willing to get a little dirty.

To read the complete article, see:
Deep in southwest Arkansas is a state park that charges visitors $10 to search for gems that can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. (https://www.afar.com/magazine/digging-for-diamonds-at-crater-of-diamonds-state-park-in-arkansas)

Celebrate International Museum Day as we travel into the past and learn about the whimsical Peale family and their historic museum!

Join Museum Education Coordinator Ali Rospond for this informal and fun virtual tour about Charles Willson Peale, his family, and the first successful public museum, The Philadelphia Museum. Discover the mysteries of the Great Incognitum, examine fossils, learn about the origins of common museum practices today, and most importantly, have fun!

In the words of Charles Willson Peale Amuseument here with Science is combin'd, To please, improve, and cultivate the mind.

This program will take place via Zoom and is an informal event. Registration is required.

Joel Orosz writes:

For more information, see:
The Whimsical World of the Peales (https://www.amphilsoc.org/events/whimsical-world-peales)

In this presentation "Their Secrets Revealed!" John Sallay exposes the history of early American college secret societies and their medals.

The conference on medals and medal collecting presented by Medal Collectors of America and MHS, included a series of presentations on the role medals have played in America history, the evolution of medallic art, and the ways medals have reflected American culture up through the 20th century.

MHS is proud to partner with the Medal Collectors of America, a national organization dedicated to the study and collection of artistic and historical medals. For further information, please see www.medalcollectors.org.

To read the complete article, see:
Medal Conference - Sallay - College Medals (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OcIuhf7Ghk&list=PL1FU5Ln1f9NUiUPLqE9d0iclcC1_dOPnG&index=4)

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
VIDEOS: ART AND MEMORY: THE ROLE OF MEDALS (https://www.coinbooks.org/v22/esylum_v22n41a08.html)

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web