Prince Edward Island Numismatic Association
Notice of February 2000 Meeting
Notice of Meeting
The next meeting of the PEINA will be held on Monday, February 21, 2000, at 7:30 pm in the library of Colonel Gray Senior High School, 175 Spring Park Road, Charlottetown. Please park in the teachers' parking lot on the north side of the building.
The January Meeting
The January meeting, scheduled for the 17th had to be postponed one week due to a problem at the school. Perhaps this was just as well as the weather that evening was less than perfect. The January meeting did go ahead on a very snowy Monday the 24th.
Members present received the draft of the club's constitution, prepared a number of years ago but never officially adopted. After a brief overview of the document, the President suggested that members take a month to review this version and be prepared to discuss it in detail at the February meeting. The suggestion was made that we try to keep it simple and not get bogged down in too much legal jargon.
Any member not present at the meeting, who would like to have a copy for review, can contact the President.
Website
The club website was noted at the January meeting as having been included in the "links" of other pages on the internet, and the number of visitors to our site is slowly increasing. Club member Terry Woodhouse is to be congratulated on her very tangible contribution to our organization.
In case you have not yet seen our site, it can be found at the address listed in the masthead of this page.
Any member wishing to contribute to our website, with an essay on some aspect of numismatics, is most welcome to do so.
Junk Mail?
Receipt of mail-outs from various dealers has prompted the President to bring this material along to club meetings. Members can browse through the offerings, from colonial tokens to paper money to all manner of wonderful things. As Forrest Gump remarked about the box of chocolates, "you never know what you're going to find". Arrive early for the February meeting and have a browse!
Real Mail
Club secretary Harley Ings noted that our collection of recent CNA Journals has diminished greatly. Many borrowed copies have not been returned. Sinners are asked to bring their overdue copies to the February meeting. From now on, members are asked to sign out any material they wish to borrow.
Who has the "PEINA" rubber stamp? It was suggested that Journals and other items be marked and we believe there is a club stamp out there somewhere. If you have it please bring it to the next meeting.
This would be greatly appreciated. The Journals are indeed a valuable resource.
Newsletters
Also available to members are various newsletters received by the club. These too are available for perusal before and after meetings. Two recent and noteworthy arrivals are Pros And Coins from the Halifax Coin Club and The Atlantic Numismatist from the APNA. Both publications will repay a reading.
A.P.N.A.
At the January meeting the President circulated membership forms for the APNA, noting the modest annual cost and the many benefits to be derived therefrom. Also pointed out was the departure of Keddy's from the Dartmouth scene, consequently the Spring 2000 APNA Coin Rally has been moved to a new location, the Burnside Motor Inn, also in Dartmouth. May is the month, and several PEINA members are already said to be planning their pilgrimage!
The APNA newsletter is an impressive 28 pages in length. One newsworthy item concerns the Display Case Program, another is John Maclean's research into The Bank of Yarmouth. Other items are the President's Message and the proposed Junior Program. There is certainly lots going on and we should all be participating in this.
PEINA members will also want to commend Terry Woodhouse for agreeing to look after the APNA web page which is part of the Numismatic Network Canada, www.nunetcan.net/index.html . This good news is also mentioned in the APNA Newsletter
Speaking of the Internet....
Members attending the January meeting spent ninety minutes in one of Colonel Gray's computer labs, exploring the internet for coin-related sites.
Members learned firsthand that much numismatic information is available, but sometimes great patience is required. For example, several attempts to contact the Bank of Canada's Currency Museum now maintained by Industry Canada, took us to a collection of aboriginal art! In computer-speak, this is a "glitch". The Royal Canadian Mint's site was "under construction" but proved to be an attention-getter. In spite of the occasional glitch, however, members enjoyed this opportunity to surf the net. We'll have to do it again. Special thanks to member Garry Woodhouse for his help with first-time computer users. This was greatly appreciated.PEINA Annual Dues
The matter of dues was raised and the President thanked members who have paid their obligation for the year 2000. Thank you also to those who could not attend the January meeting, but forwarded their dues by mail. Please note, dues are now payable, $15 per member, $20 per couple, and $10 for student membership. With the rising cost of pastage we cannot continue to send our material to non-paying members.
Medallion
We've been asked to draw members' attention to sculptor Kim Perrier's Earth Medallion and his website at http://millennium.mns.net.au which will provide those interested with all the details. A price in Canadian dollars is available to Canadian collections. E-mail Kim for details.
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REMINDER:
February Meeting
Colonel Gray Senior High School, Charlottetown, at 7:30 pm on Monday, February 21
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Numismatics on the Internet
Earlier it was mentioned that at the January meeting there were unsuccessful attempts to connect with the Currency Museum of the Bank of Canada. Members John Haslam and Mark Holton tried without success to access this national site. Thanks to a message from Industry Canada, let us confirm the current Internet address as
http://collections.ic.gc.ca/bank and suggest you give it a try.
For the collector of Canadian material, this is a wonderful site to browse. The national collection contains some 100,000 items. The aim of the Currency Museum collection is "to portray the development of money through the ages with particular emphasis on the history of Canada's currency." Visitors to Ottawa can visit this collection and browse through eight galleries of treasures to their hearts' content.
The Currency Museum is in the centre block of the Bank of Canada complex, located between Wellington Street and the Sparks Street Mall. But if you can't travel to Ottawa, go to the website and explore. The Currency Museum collection on the Internet is divided into four main sections, the Pre-Colonial Period, the French Colonial Period, the British Colonial Period, and Confederation (to the present). Each section is further explained and illustrated with sub-sections ("Tokens and Army Bills", or "The Move to the Decimal System") with text and images and, with the click of your mouse, you can admire lots of "other images of interest" and read relevant text.
The Currency Museum deserves praise for sharing its collection with a virtual audience. Let us hope this programme can expand to present more coins and banknotes. Perhaps in time, too, images can be increased in size.
Another site on the Internet that is worth a visit is the exhibition and book "Bearers of Meaning: The Ottilia Buerger Collection of Ancient and Byzantine Coins at Lawrence University." This small American college celebrates the gift of this magnificent collection of numismatic treasures with the on-line publication of a catalogue and essays. Coins can be viewed and each is accompanied by a catalogue entry giving history, context, and provenance. The essays take a longer view of the collection and coins in general. For the collector of ancient coins, or for the collector keen on expanding their horizons, this is a site worth visiting. The address for this site: www.lawrence.edu/dept/art/ buerger/intro/contents.html.
One other Internet site is worth mentioning, one which includes the PEINA website in its links. That's Penny Lane, at www.geocities.com / rodeodrive/4044/index.html. Another way to get there is simply to use a search engine, type in "Penny Lane", and scroll through a bunch of 60s Beatles sites until you see reference to coins. Penny Lane is said to have the biggest collection of numismatic links on the Internet. Go there, and see links presented in alphabetical order and sometimes with an informative or amusing comment on what to expect.
One site I found there and began to explore, but didn't have time to finish, is the "Spanish Colonial Pillar Coinage (8-Reales Series)" site at www.iligan.com/~johnchen /pillar/index.html Run by John Chen in the Phillippines with a colleague in Chile, this bilingual (English/Spanish) site offers a good look at a coin series that was once common currency in Canada. Check it out! Barring snowstorms or high winds or floods, usernames and passwords will be available after the February meeting for anyone interested in surfing the net. -mbh
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Don't forget....
The next PEINA meeting on February 21 at 7:30 pm
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At the Next Meeting....
We must tackle the question of a formal constitution for the PEINA. As you probably know, Canadians and constitutional agreement seem not to go together very well. But this will not be our own version of Meech Lake or the Charlottetown Accord, a drawn-out process that made few people happy. We'll just try to put down in writing what has developed over the years by practice and custom, using the draft version as a guide.
Give some thought to what you think is important about the club, what you feel the rules ought to be, and be prepared to put this on the table at the February meeting.
We'll try to keep this simple. We shall go around the table to discover the views of members, then the club executive will prepare a draft for further consideration by members. We shall not have an all-night drafting session at the February meeting.
Any member who did not attend the January meeting and did not get a copy of the draft is welcome to call Mark Holton and one will be sent out or delivered to you.
Coin Week
Also on the agenda will be the matter of coin week (or is it now coin month?) and the desire (or not) of members to do something to mark this occasion. Do we want to do a special coin display in the cases at the Confederation Centre Library, assuming those cases are available, or do we want to do a display in the concourse at the Charlottetown Mall? Do we want to invite dealers to take part? Do we want to bring in a guest speaker? A dinner? Are there other ideas out there? Please come to the meeting and give us your thoughts.
Blank Space
Note that there is some blank space here, just waiting for your contribution to the newsletter. Mail or drop off or give your best writing efforts to Mark Holton who will be more than happy to use your contribution.
Need some ideas? Consider that neat feature of the Anchorage Coin Club newsletter called "Token of the Month". Who wants to write a piece in this area? Or what do you think of "Island Coin of the Month"? Or something about paper money? Coin design? This writer was struck (no pun intended) by the Cook Islands dollar circulated at the last meeting. Everyone had a chance to see the fantastic image from native culture which appears on this coin, and I could not help but think of a Canadian near-equivalent, the 1958 Canadian silver dollar with the British Columbia totem pole. The owner mentioned it had been purchased over the net. Any thoughts on the subject of buying through the Internet? Book reviews? An essay on a favourite coin or banknote? A profile of a numismatic personality, designer, engraver, dealer, collector? Give it some thought!
Gentle Reminder:
Don't forget to pay your dues for 2000. Many thanks to those who have paid up on time, or before time. And don't forget the next meeting on Monday, February 21 at 7:30
Programme for February
Good collectors rely on reference books. Breton or Charlton or what-have-you, we can't seem to do without them. What book(s) have you found the most useful? Bring it along to the February meeting where we'll talk reference books for the collector.
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