EP020 — Forgotten History: Commemorative coins, silver fineness, and Ray Bows

Chris and Jeff talk with Ray Bows, an expert on gaming tokens used in NCO and other recreation clubs in Vietnam in the 1960s and '70s. He has used the tokens from slot machines to identify bases and military facilities named after fallen soldiers, in addition to compiling an extensive collection of the tokens. They also discuss U.S. commemorative coins celebrating places and events in the greater Chicago area in honor of ANA, which will be in Rosemont this week.

This episode of the Coin World Podcast was sponsored by the Coin World Marketplace:
https://www.coinworld.market/

Contact info:
Chris Bulfinch: cbulfinch@amosmedia.com
Jeff Starck: jstarck@amosmedia.com

Transcript

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Speaker 1 0:00

This episode of the Corn World Podcast is brought to you by the coin world marketplace. The coin world marketplace is the safest way to buy and sell your coins and bullion order from the dealer of your choice and pay safely and securely using our escrow checkout, visit cornwall.market to browse our inventory today. Welcome to the coin world podcast, your your host, Chris Bulfinch and Jeff Star

Speaker 2 0:37

[inaudible] .

Speaker 1 0:37

Welcome to another episode of the coin world podcast. I'm Chris Bulfinch and I'm Jeff Stark. We have a great show for you. As always. Today we're going to be talking about a few headlines in the news that concern gold, both lost and found. We are going to be talking about a number of popular and famous u s commemoratives that relate in some way to the town of Chicago as a nod to the Anais convention this week, and we have an interview with Roy bows , an expert on a relatively obscure area of American military x Noumea from the Vietnam War.

Speaker 3 1:09

But first I want to remind you that if you have found this podcast entertaining and informative, please follow us in whatever podcast platform you choose. We would be lost without you listeners. So now let's talk about gold that was lost or in this case stolen. There are major media reports I have confirmed with a source that the Mexico City mint, it's actually a sales office, somebody, or in this case we believe three robbers went in there and stole two point $5 million us in gold coins. These are the one ounce gold liber tod coins. They are about $1,600 us a piece. There's almost 1600 of them that were stolen back on Tuesday, August 6th and of course, the circumstances surrounding this theft are very suspicious. There are lots of folks who are speculating that this was an inside job. There had to have been some knowledge that helped the robbers gain access. They were able to disarm the guard or guards depending on what news service you're hearing, and in 10 minutes get out with a huge amount of gold. So if somebody offers you, I'm speculating, this is sheer speculation, that since the 2019 2019 libertads are not out, it's possible that those were part of this heist. Otherwise there are 2018 libertarians. We don't know nobody from the Bank of Mexico or the Casa de Monita . They may Haco , they're in Mexico City would confirm anything for me, but maybe, maybe will find out eventually that these are dated 2019 and if they ever show up in the marketplace, but are they really gonna because they might just melt them down. They would be melted. However, that doesn't mean that other 2019 coins wouldn't be still issued. I mean, there'll be an interesting story to go along with the 2019 liver . Todd's one way or the other and and coin rule. Of course. We'll keep in touch with it and share that with you. It almost, this whole story almost feels like something out of a Western movie. Can you see like the, you know, the Great Bank heist in Mexico City or something from [inaudible] ? Absolutely. In hundreds or something. And you know, there , there's a , an analog in Great Britain, the great train robbery and there've been these stories of great heist over the years now to most of us, you know, both Chris and I and most of you listening, two and a half million dollars is a lot of money, a lot of money. However, in the scheme of things it's, you know, that's got a huge amount. I'm not a huge amount of money. They made off billions or anything. No, no. Q Austin Powers one immediately on Dallas. No , exactly. It's a lot of money obviously. But in the scheme of things, 1600 less than 1600 coins, one ounce coins. So there's, the mintages are much higher. It's a drop in the bucket in some respects. However, I would, if somebody offered me two and a half million dollars, I mean I imagine it's more concerning to the Mexican authorities and to people the world over. I imagine it's concerning more for the flaws that it points out in, in potential security systems and stuff like that, that it is for the actual monetary loss . Oh, absolutely. I mean, you know, yes, I understand that there are always parts of the world that are unsafe. Bribery has been an issue in Mexican government for some time. It's possible that that's part of this, that there , you know, somebody was paid off. We don't know the facts though. And so at this point it is sheer speculation. Anything beyond, we do know, 1,567 of these coins were stolen, obscure, bonded , and now you know, we'll continue to see the aftermath, but that was gold lost in a sense. Chris is going to talk about gold that was found in a different part of the world than Mexico. A contrast to the , the bad luck or the ill fortune of the Mexico City meant with the good luck of an Australian pensioner who about a week ago, two weeks ago, ish now and last couple of weeks, found a 4.4 pound gold nugget in the goldfields of Victoria and southern Australia near the town of Ballarat , a hitherto unidentified prospector who was , you know, by all accounts, not a professional by any means, a pensioner . Actually, we don't know too much. [inaudible] retiree for Americans . Yes, they are retiring in American context, the pensioners , they might call them in Australia and the UK and the UK and Commonwealth nations probably. Yeah. He

Speaker 1 5:58

was just sort of for fun, just you know, metal detecting and sort of panning and you know, very interested in trying to find gold and in gold prospecting in his free time, he happened upon a 4.4 pound nugget, a huge amount of gold valued currently up to 150,000 and 200,000 us . And he named this nugget appropriately enough, you won't believe it. And according to Ballarat Gold, a major company that processes gold in that region of Australia, when they spoke to him about the nugget, it's unclear whether or not he has sold it yet. But when they talked to him about the nugget, he was apparently shaking with emotion and joy as so he was, yeah, that's, that's quite a windfall. So it's obviously nowhere near the biggest gold nugget to come out of the Victorian gold fields or elsewhere in the world. But it's still a really significant find that made a number of headlines in Australia and even some international news source ran a story on and I get call a couple of places did. So it's a story that it's definitely caught some people's eyes and for him he certainly got lucky. This man, whoever he is, is very grateful and happy for his fined for his good luck. So absolutely. So I just wonder though about this gold nugget, how much gold is in there? You know, gold can come in all sorts of purity levels. Let's explore what that means for our term of the week. Our at our term of the week. So the concept of purity is something that has been bandied about an all kinds of really problematic political contexts , but in the context of metals period of your first to the amount of a precious metal, gold, silver, platinum, palladium, et Cetera , that exists in a certain unit of weight. The idea being, you know, if in the case of a u s silver coin for example, a pre 1964 us circulating coin is 90% silver and 10% copper. So it's 90% pure. Now the term that people in the numismatic probably metallurgical and jewelry businesses, I imagine probably all use is fineness. Now the term finest , you can essentially think of referred to me and how fine. Oh Jeff, you are fine, my friend. Don't, don't, don't you doubt that for a second. But we're talking about coins here. Um, and it also applies to copper and other things. It's not prejudice , but it doesn't straight over here it as much. Yeah, exactly. All right, fine. This back to you. Generally speaking, as you pointed out, it refers to precious metals that we can refer to other things. So fineness refers to purity. So if a coin is 90% silver and 10% copper, the example I just cited, it is said to be 900 fine, 90% pure. So 0.9 fine. So because it's measured in thousands usually. Yeah . And these terms and certain levels of fineness , particularly in terms of silver actually have their own names. Sterling silver is, is 92.5% fine . Silver. So of a given weight. If you had a pound of silver, let's say, to use the English measurements, if you had a pound a silver and if 92.5% of that pound was silver, that be a a pound

Speaker 3 8:56

of sterling silver. Now that can be alloyed with copper or some other base metals . That is not a precious metal, but that is said to be sterling silver 0.9 to five fine or it's fineness is 0.9 to five is is how that would be expressed in numismatic terms. Yeah. The simple way to view this as divide that pile up into a thousand pieces, 925 are going to be silver. Yup . The rest is other stuff. Exactly. You mentioned sterling silver. There's also Britannia silver, which is nine five eight fine and and will coined silver or what's referred to in the United States as coined silver, which is 90% fine or you have, are there any other, cause I know silver fineness and coins and metals and tokens and things varies massively. I mean there are 10% they're speaking Mexico. There are 10% silver pesos from there are 20% 30% different. Yeah. All sorts of , see there's 64% silver coins. I mean, what a weird, what a weird number to pick out. I mean, that's, that's bizarre. But anyway, the point being fineness denotes the amount of a precious metal in a coin of a certain weight. And it's important when you're thinking about bullion because most modern bullion coin is three nines or four nines fine. However, that hasn't always been the case. The Brittania until recent years was struck of Britannia silver three, four years ago. The , the Royal Mint changed that to three nines fine because it's, they want to be more competitive, especially in the Asian market. And that was one way to do it. So that's your look and find that. Yeah. So, so if we ever are talking on the podcast or if you're out in the world of numismatics and you happened upon a , a certain number, you know, 0.925 fine or 0.8 fine. Or someone talks about the, the fineness of a silver or gold or platinum or palladium coin , you will now know what they're talking about. All right , so now that we have shared some knowledge, I want to test your knowledge. So that was good. So we're at the trivia this week. This is from the Coin Road Trivia game. This is along with the commemorative coins that we're going to refer to later. This is a commemorative coin question and I know that's a favorite series of yours or a favorite area of yours. I'd absolutely, I am a big fan of the classic u s commemoratives. This is a novice level question. All right. So I should be able to get it. You should be able to get it. Who appears on the [inaudible] of the Cleveland Great Lakes Exposition commemorative half dollar. So there was a coin issued from Cleveland, Ohio, Great Lakes expositions commemorative half dollar who appears on that coin. All right , I will, I will ponder that. I'll, I will plumb the depths of my u s commemorative coin knowledge and we will see , uh , we'll see what sludge comes out. Alright , yeah. Later on we'll have the answer at home. You think consider what you may have been exposed to in your coin show haunts or reading of coin books, that sort of thing. That's indeed. So now speaking of commemoratives ,

Speaker 1 11:54

we're jumping over to our series of the week where we have kind of a four part segment. We have a correction followed up by a three for, we're going to be telling you about three fairly closely related us commemorative coins, but right here at the top we, that is to say I need to cop to the fact that we made something of an error last week talking about Canadian death dollars now the political history of 19th century Canada, which I am much better acquainted with now than I was last week by dent of having been informed about this is pretty murky and the status of Canada relative to the United Kingdom and its position within the British Commonwealth has actually been a long contested and fairly murky issue. But we are here to set the record straight this week. So what we initially said erroneously was that the 1958 deaf dollar was created to celebrate Canada's independence from Great Britain. That's actually not in any sense. True. It was, the coin was invented in 1958 but 1958 did not represent the centennial of Canada's independence. It represented the centennial of the integration of British Columbia, put his today British Columbia into the United Kingdom, into the British empire, and so that happened in 1858 after a couple of centuries of Europeans in the descendants of Europeans colonizing different parts of Canada and generally the French controlling it, British Columbia, or what is today, British Columbia came into the control of the British in 1794 and it was basically a protected area, but it was not designated a colony until 1858 when it was brought into the fold. Now, Canada would not become functionally independent until 1867 with a Canadian confederation and British Columbia itself would not be integrated into the Canadian Confederation until 1871 now this does beg an interesting question. When did Canada actually become independent? It became legislatively independent. With what is today. The UK, Britain could not impose any rules on it. In 1931 they gained full legislative independence in 1931 but they actually did not fully set advertise. They are still a member of the Commonwealth but they did not fully sever every single symbolic imperial Thai until 1982 so full blown Canadian independence in the sort of purest sense actually did not occur until the early 1980s so to make our clarification clear, the deaf dollar was not commemorating the centennial of Canada's independence. It was commemorating the addition of British Columbia into the British empire which occurred in 1858. Thank you for clarifying that. We do not want to share incorrect information and work hard not to and will always correct the record as soon as possible. If that does happen, if you hear us goof up, if you hear us get a get a factor, a data or any , uh , anything wrong factually, please feel absolutely free. Reach out to us. We like to hear that. So now to our series of the week in which this week for this week for which you guys are you , you guys, gals and those who life twixt are lucky enough to get a three for this week. So we're talking about three different commemorative coins that are very closely related. So as a lot of us know, those of us who are very invested in the coin community and, and who, who participate in a lot of coin shows, the Ana, the American numismatic associations, big show. It's called the world's fair of money. It's the biggest coin show in America and it's occurring this take, you have a fun shows. Yeah . Andrea was very big, but it is , I've never been there, so I can't, it is among the largest coin shows in the nation and the world, and it is occurring this week in Rosemont, Illinois, which is a suburb of Chicago. It's just a little bit west of downtown Chicago, right? By the airport. Yes . Yes. Right by, right by O'Hare, right? Yes. Yes. I should clarify. There are two, two main airports in Chicago, right by O'Hare. So Chicago has hosted the ANA convention a number of times, Rosemont a bunch of a bunch of times. So we thought it'd be interesting to look at Chicago's role in American commemorative coins. Absolutely. It actually, Chicago has a pretty nd Greater Chicago area and Illinois. Yeah, seriously dude, Illinois is killing it commemorative wise. They have so many. And the first, they also have a fairly unique distinction of being the first location to have a commemorative coin in a sense in end . And they also have the distinction of having the very first ever u s commemorative coin. So Chicago was designated as the spot for the 1892 93 world's fair, which was designed to be the world's Colombian exhibition. The idea being that on the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus, discovering the continent of North America, the vikings had been there before. Lots of, lots of debate. But the belief of his travel there, the belief at the time was that Columbus travel and quote unquote discovery of the new world should be commemorated in the 400 anniversary of the world's fair. And Chicago was picked to be the location. So the u s meant contracting with officials at the fair, created two different commemorative coins in 1892 and 1893 that would be sold at the fair, the first one of which is the world's Columbian exhibition half dollar. It's a very nice looking coin, I think. And it was designed by Charles Barber and George T. Morgan. So two of the most famous designers and engravers in American history. Charles Barber being famous of course for the barbers subsidiary coinage that was issued between 1892 in 1916 and George T. Morgan , who's of course famous for the Morgan dollar that circulated and was minted between 1878 and 1904 and then one more time in 1921 so to the most famous coin designers in America worked on this coin together with Barbara Designing the odd verse, which depicts a Bust Columbus and Morgan designing the reverse, which depicts a 15th century sailing ship generally as stand in for the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. It's a beautiful 15th century sailing ship, you know, at full sail on the ocean and with two small circles out of the bottom that have a globe demonstrated on them to show that Columbus, like he discovered the new world he filled in the map for at least for Europeans, he filled in the map and , and they felt that it was worth honoring him with his half dollar that was minted at the Philadelphia Mint in 1892 and 1893 and they were sold and distributed and a lot of them actually entered circulation and a lot of them were minted making them very common today. Oh yeah. In some, like you say, some entered circulation. That was my first classic commemorative coin by I was , I was at a show in Wapakoneta, Ohio, which is just north of here, about 30 minutes. 20 minutes. Yep . The home of the Neil Armstrong Museum, most famous, you know, one of the great Ohioans. There was a show there about 12 years ago, 10 years ago. I got an example of that for $5 it was barely melt at the time. And that'd be a steal today. Anyway, so, so what else was there in Chicago from 1893 in 1893 so the world's Columbian exhibition, half dollar was admitted in 1892 and 1893 1892 is slightly more rare, but they're essentially the same price. Now the other coin, and this is interesting, the first u s coin to feature a real life woman was also issued for the Chicago world's fair and that is the Isabella quarter. So a lot of people are probably familiar with the story from elementary school, Queen Isabella and King Ford . 1992 Columbus sailed the ocean blue, exactly. Columbus, an Italian seamen , navigator, explorer, all kinds of other things and was contracted by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain to conduct a mission sailing west from Europe, Spain, Portugal, that area, the Iberian peninsula to sail west from the Iberian peninsula. In an effort to find a passage to India, India was a huge center for spice trade, tea , trade, opium, all kinds of, you can get all kinds of things there. And they wanted to find another route to get there that didn't involve , um , going around the Cape of Good Hope, which was a long, arduous and very dangerous journey. So they wanted to find another way. And they , we all know the story. Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492, Andy happened upon North America, which he thought was India. And basically the modern period of history, you continued from there. Now Queen Isabella became an 1893, the first woman to appear in the u s coin because the ord of lady managers of the Chicago world's fair wanted to create a commemorative coin to raise funds for their endeavors in their projects. And they just, they wanted a commemorative coin acknowledging a woman and they wanted to honor Isabella. So they had a quarter produced in 1893 at the Philadelphia Mint that features a bust of Isabel on the odd verse and, and on, on the rivers , a woman kneeling with a distaff and in a spindle, the idea being that they wanted that to be symbolic of the , the industry and the hardworking nature of the American woman. This was sort of the 1890s version of feminism. They wanted to demonstrate that women were apparently really good at household tasks according to them, and they wanted to also honor Queen Isabella who did play a significant role in Columbus as an expedition, which was the whole thing at the exposition. We'll try and talk about the first place. So you have two really famous commemorative coins, the 1892 and 1893 Columbus half dollar and the 1893 Isabella quarter, but you promise a three for I promised the three for. And a third is in the offing. In 1936 the city of Elgin, Illinois, which is about half an hour west of Rosemont, got its own commemorative coin. On June 16th of 1936 congress passed a law that allowed Elgin, Illinois to have a commemorative half dollar made celebrating their centennial as a city. So they elected to create this half dollar and then sell it. And all of the profits would be used to create a pioneer memorial statue or collection of statues . Yeah, monument in downtown Elgin. They wanted to create this, this beautiful municipal memorial to honor the pioneers moving west and in the Greater Chicago area. So they contracted an artist by the name of Trygve Rovell Stad to come up with the design. And what does that design have? The arm verse features a, it's not a real person, it's a representation of a pioneer wearing a coonskin cap and with a big bushy beard, you need that in the Chicago winters or Elgin winters as it were. And it also, oddly on the averse , right around the truncation we talked about that term and an earlier term of the week segment or under the truncation of the neck is that eight 1673 which actually doesn't refer to anything relative to Elgin, Illinois, but it actually refers to the first time that Europeans, in this case, specifically Louis Joliet and Jacques Marquette, so Joliet, Illinois, named for Juliet and Marquette, Michigan, named for Marquette . I did not know that they were the first Europeans to set foot in what would become Illinois in 1673 and so they included the date 1673 and 1936 as references to the first people said Footnote Illinois. And then the year 1936 commemorating the hundredth anniversary of the founding of Elgin, Illinois. Now it's really interesting is this half dollar, you know like most commemorative half dollars that had a relatively small mintage. Very, very few. If any saw circulation. Not all of them even sold, but I mean you're in the heights of the depression. 1936 was a high water mark for commemorative coinage production anyway. Exactly. So even though not all of them sold, a fair amount of revenue was still generated by the program. What's really interesting is the monument for which these funds were being raised actually wouldn't be completed

Speaker 3 23:46

for decades after the coin was issued and the revenue was generated and after the artists died, the artist who designed the coin, and then I believe he designed the Morial too , didn't he ? I believe so. So he died in 1990 and the city still hadn't gotten around to making the memorial that he'd been contracted to design and designed a coin for to raise money for the memorial that he designed. He died in 1990 the memorial wasn't completed until 2001 so you had decades of just no memorial and the artist actually died well before the memorial is ever completed. So Elgin Illinois, it sits about half an hour west of Rosemont, which is itself just a little bit outside of downtown Chicago. You're talking about an hour west of Chicago, then basically an hour west of downtown Chicago. Although depending on traffic, it could be two hours. Yeah. The streets of Chicago and the traffic and everything can make travel a little bit of a challenge about an hour as the crow flies, as the crow flies about an hour west of , uh , west of downtown Chicago. So we share all of this to say that the Greater Chicago area has a really, really rich numismatic history, specifically in the context of American commemorative coins. And since the A and a is going to be in Rosemont, we thought it was only appropriate that we would clue you in to some of the major Chicago area commemoratives that have been produced by the u s mint . Awesome. So that has been one exploration of history in a sense. I am going to share a nother, we always like to look back at what is happening numerous , magically in history this week as the podcast goes live. And the most fascinating thing I find from this week in history happened on August 12th, 1909 so 1909 that's key. What happened in 1909 well the San Francisco Mint Superintendent Edward Sweeney sent the mint director Robert E. Preston , a hundred examples of the 1909 s v d B Lincoln Center . So 1909 s VDB Lincoln sent . That is as many collectors know the coin to have for that series. And what does VDB stand for? Well, that's the designer of the Lincoln Center , Victor. David Brenner, a Lithuanian immigrant who came to the U S and was employed in designing the , the coin. The initials were put on there later taken off, I believe in the 19 teens, 1915 or somewhere around them , but 1909 s VDB. That is the one that my gosh, I think I would have a heart attack if I found one in circulation today. I'm more than a hundred years later, but a hundred examples of those were sent to mint director for review this week. 110 years ago, 10 years ago. All right . Now we've been talking about

Speaker 4 26:44

commemoratives, we've been talking about this weekend history now. I think we have a trivia answer for the audience.

Speaker 3 26:50

Yeah, absolutely. So the question was who appears on the Arbors of the Cleveland Great Lakes Exposition commemorative half dollar. The key was in the name Cleveland because, because the person who appears on the odd verse is Moses Cleveland, the city's namesake. Although the current spelling of Cleveland, the spelling that we all know is actually not how he spelled his name because his name has an a after the first e , that's what they cleave. It's like, like cleaving. Yeah, cleaver, beaver cleaver or a meat cleaver or right . But anyway, so yes, so that is the answer. They took the AI out. Interesting. Yes. Moses, Cleveland, Moses, Cleveland appropriately appears on the odd verse of the Cleveland Commemorative Half dollar. Absolutely.

Speaker 5 27:42

This episode of the Coin World Podcast is sponsored by the coin world marketplace. Are you selling your coins on the coin world marketplace? Put your inventory in front of buyers from around the globe. Is it coin world.market today and become a seller. And now back to the show.

Speaker 4 27:58

Now we really hope that you enjoy our interview with ray bows , an expert on the military, ex Noumea of the Vietnam War, specifically officers' club gaming tokens. It was a fascinating interview and we really hope that you enjoy it. We are joined today by ray bows . He's a researcher and an expert on the Exa Noumea and gaming tokens of military facilities in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. In addition to his work with the [inaudible] items, he also has done quite a lot of research on the namesakes of different military facilities. Thank you so much for joining us today, Ray.

Speaker 6 28:39

Well, thank you Chris.

Speaker 3 28:40

And you are also a veteran.

Speaker 6 28:43

Yes, I uh, I went to the army in January of 1963 is , uh , there's a 17 year old than I did 20 years in six days. I retired in 1983. I was the first sergeant in NATO, in Brussels belts from Nager , actually Negro support activity and I spent 16 in my, My , uh, 20 years overseas.

Speaker 4 29:06

Well, thank you very much for your service.

Speaker 6 29:08

Thank you.

Speaker 4 29:08

So your work, the work that has gotten you into the research you do now revolves around the tokens used in recreation clubs on army bases and other facilities in Vietnam. Explain to our uninitiated listeners what these tokens are, who produce them and who use them.

Speaker 6 29:26

When I was stationed in Korea in 1963, I thought all of these tokens were the same. I was a young man, you know, playing slot machines at a place called Camp Mercer in South Korea. In one day, a token popped out of the machine that was different from the one that I , the ones that I will use to . And I realized then and there that there were a variety of tokens that , that the military had issued. After stinting in Cheyenne, Wyoming, I realized that military installation by the name of 40 Russell , which is now Francis e Warren Air Force Base issued post exchange, Sjogren's back around 1892. And I became at that point fascinated with military money. Before I got to Vietnam, I visited a dead bull shit down at the A and a headquarters in Colorado Springs and told them I was interested in military monies and he put me in touch with a gentleman who's passed away now. His name was Shamus j Corto , who was , uh , the founder of the token and metal society back in the early sixties, late fifties. And , uh , subsequently , uh , Jim Cordeaux stirred my interest in the whole realm of military , uh, you know, whatever coke . And she had written a, a little monograph back in the, in the night in the early 1950s about his knowledge of military tokens, having had a son who was in the military and brought some back home to his dad. And subsequently he , he became , uh , just as enthusiastic and interested above these things that I did at the time. He had no knowledge that there were military tokens that were used in Vietnam. And subsequently when I found out that they were being used over there, I actually volunteered to serve in Vietnam in addition to the fact that I thought it was a worthy cause at the time. But I wanted to catalog all this military money on the ground as who was being issued.

Speaker 4 31:33

That's really putting some skin in the game,

Speaker 6 31:35

you know, when you're , when you're a 22 years old and enthusiastic button numismatics as well as my military career. It just seemed at the time, like the thing to do, the reason these tokens are were issued is because the entire country of Vietnam was placed off limits to soldiers unless they were on duty , uh, in other places in West Germany and South Korean, so on and so forth. The soldiers could go off post at night, go to a local , uh , bar, have a couple of beers, flirt with the girls and so on and so forth. But in Vietnam, none of that transpired. They were restricted to their compounds and the only recreation they had over there was having a few beers after duty hours in playing the slot machines.

Speaker 4 32:25

So then these tokens were only used in slot machines, or could they have been used in other kinds of gaming machines? And did they serve any other purpose?

Speaker 6 32:34

The slot machines were ubiquitous in the NCO club over there in military snack bars and there were run by the army exchange service. They did also have pinball machines in jukeboxes. So there were also the same form of Tokens, 2118 and 23 millimeter representing nickels, dimes, and quarters that were used in the exchange facilities. But they were a very , uh , limited issue as opposed to the ones that were, that proliferated in the NCO clubs.

Speaker 1 33:10

Now when you say NCO, for those listeners who aren't familiar with the military lingo, is that noncommissioned officers,

Speaker 6 33:18

right? That's correct. And there were several different client kinds of clubs over there. There were enlisted men's clubs in some of the smaller [inaudible] vases, which you corporated both the lower ranking soldiers. And the NCLS and then there would be a small officers' club or in the larger installations that would be an enlisted men's club, an NCO or sergeants club, and an officer's club

Speaker 1 33:48

who is responsible for producing these tokens. They weren't a product of the United States mint. And as I understand it, you and I have talked about this a little bit. Sega a company that produced electronic games and associated tokens that a lot of people know today for video games. Sega produced a lot of these tokens. So who produced these tokens? How were they ordered? How did they come about? What was the production process and what did that look like?

Speaker 6 34:13

Well, basically the chief of personnel or an Admin, a guy by the name of general Earl call was the one who actually authorized these tokens to be used within the clubs. And the reason they were used is once in July of 1965 once military payment certificates were used, which were military money that were used in combinations of 5 cents through $10 bills. At that time they were all paper. So of course they've couldn't activate a slot machine . So subsequently when these slot machines were authorized to be placed in these various clubs as a form of recreation tokens were needed, and the gis named these tokens as slugs. You know, today, collectors call them military tokens in slot machine tokens. But back in the day we view them strictly as slugs and nobody gave a second look to the legends that were on them. Even though every club in Vietnam was required to use a different token via a token with the location marked on it, the use marked on it, or the club name, or a picture of the unit mascot or a a a military insignia. Something had to be marked in these tokens, which designated one clubs tokens from another .

Speaker 3 35:41

So why were these used instead of us coins? Because you know , you mentioned that the soldiers were restricted to the compounds , so it's not as if US coinage would slip out into the local economy. Was it, what were the practical reasons for doing this and where would the exchange take place?

Speaker 6 36:01

First of all, you know, [inaudible] soldiers were restricted to the , to their basis during their off duty hours. That doesn't mean that during duty hours they didn't go down to the river to wash their vehicles are ended up on a convoy that was uh , stopped at an intersection where they came in contact with a certain amount of Vietnamese. And of course in the same respect in the largest cities , uh , Denang in Saigon, mostly the soldiers did have a certain amount of one of those cities they could get out in the boat a little bit. If we had used US dollars in Vietnam, the fear was that those US dollars within end up of course in the black market and then subsequent point lead with end up in north Vietnam and the communition would be able to use our US dollars to buy the equipment that would be used against us

Speaker 3 36:59

with all of these tokens were , were ordered by each local base. Like you said, each local base had to have and each club had to have its own individual tokens in order to have them issued when you first got to to Vietnam. And when you first became interested in cataloging all of these tokens, how did you go about acquiring them and how did you go about sort of putting together a on a quite exhaustive catalog of all of these different kinds of tokens and mules between different , uh , dyes and things like that?

Speaker 6 37:30

Well, I have to preface this by telling you this early in 1968 before I went to Vietnam, I found out that tokens were being used for credit at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois. And I drove up from where I was stationed at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri up to scar, the air force base for this specific reason of getting these, getting some of the tokens that were used in the Scott Air Force Base and Geo Club . And when I went in and approached the manager of this club, he flew off the handle, became totally irate, told me to get out of this club. And the air police literally escorted me off. Scott Air Force base. I don't know what the reason for such a firm convictions on the part of that. Then she , Oh , club custodian was, but the only thing I can think of is that nobody would ever believe that somebody was actually collecting these things because they were strictly utilitarian. And I figured that the NCO called Custodian of Scott Air Force Base must have thought that I was looking to obtain some of these tokens so that they could be counterfeited and then used in the club. That was, that's my only reason for his, you know, off the wall attitude. So when I got to Vietnam, I made it a point of letting people know through some, through publicity, through the army reporter and the logistician in some of the magazines over there , uh , that I was a sincere collector of military monies and that I had on , I owned military money that went back to the southern , the tokens of the civil war in the siege coinage and the Napoleonic wars. And that I was a serious collector. So when I went into these clubs, I could show him some of these articles and they said, okay , that's, you know, that's fine. That's great. In fact, there was an article, as I mentioned the other day that Bob Berman wrote four-point world back in March of 1968 and I used Bob's article about the slot machine tokens of Vietnam as my credentials so to speak, so that when I walked in and approached these people about these tokens, they understood what my motives were.

Speaker 4 39:55

So coin world played a small part in the history of this collection in the history of your research. So that's a , that's pretty interesting.

Speaker 6 40:02

The world played a pretty big part because it was an art until I had read an article back up probably the year before and I mentioned to you the other day, I don't remember, I don't have it at the top of my thumb right now, but it was coin world that uh , originally reported on these tokens being used in Vietnam. And I think they actually reported on that back in 65 or 66.

Speaker 4 40:26

Wow. So were worry part of the story at least that at least I have relatively small one

Speaker 6 40:31

coin world is definitely part of [inaudible] .

Speaker 4 40:35

From your token collecting and your trying to assemble a collection of as many of these tokens as you could find. You began to use these tokens for a very different kind of historical research and it's a branch of research that has seems to have really occupied you and presented, you know, quite a quite a daunting challenge and quite a lot of work over the years you've been using these tokens to identify firebases and and small camps and and sort of facilities that the, the army's record department or the Armed Forces Record Department for whatever reason didn't really deem worthy of recognition. You are finding the names and the biographies of the soldiers who of these camps were named after. Could you tell us a little bit about how you put that together and what that research has looked like?

Speaker 6 41:21

Initially I went to the Cashier d and memorialization branch. It is department of the army after my retirement in about 1988 and I had already written this small monograph on the tokens, Vietnam back in 1983 but in 1988 I went to the counselling memorialization ranch and I said, hey listen, I'm interested in , in this camp called friends l John's camp friends, all John's home of the one 99th white infantry brigade. And my thinking was, who the heck would name near kid friends ? Zelle , you know, and that kid must've gotten beat up in grammar school every day of his life with a name like friends l . But what I didn't understand was it the kip was actually named for two young men. It was named after Courbet friends l from Sacramento, California and Billy C. Jones from locally Oklahoma. And they will, the first two fellas killed in action from the one 99th wide inquiry brigade that went to Vietnam back in the era in the period 1966 while the carer memorialization branch said, we don't have all that information. Uh , we got rid of it after the war. Well through a , another turn of events, I learned that there was another vocation named the Freeman Anderson compound in sock train , who was also named after two soldiers killed in action and in contacting their families, which I was initially reluctant to do but urge to do so by one of my relatives. I learned that the camp that the family had been never been notified as this camp that had been named in honor of their loved ones in Vietnam. So subsequently I took on this project to identify all the camps, compounds here , fuels fire bases , landing zones in other facilities, including NCO clubs that issued the tokens that were named in honor of young men that were killed in action or in the line of duty. And probably about more than half of these families had never been told that a camp had been named in honor of a loved one. And I actually over the last 30 years and notified these people abuse on as per stored on their , uh, on their family members that were killed there in the Vietnam War.

Speaker 3 43:40

So how many different locations have you found that issued these tokens? And how many of those places have you been able to identify the soldier or soldiers named for these places?

Speaker 6 43:54

As far as the , the physical tokens go, there are less than a half a dozen that actually have the names of soldiers on them. But general van all shine had a token that was marked with his name that said VN all Stein open mass , which was in Quinan . It was a special portions location and rural Thomas who was a member of an age attachment. And then Kat had a club named it can't Goodman in Saigon in his honor . And uh , chief Holloway had tokens mark with his knees that were used at Camp Paul away, which was one of the bigger bases in the central highlands. And then club Montgomery was named after Willie Montgomery , who was another Green Baret who was killed over there early on in the war. The names of soldiers mark on the tokens are relatively sparse, but once you start doing the study of them, for instance, you will realize that tokens that have nothing more than more nine 90 h on them were issued by Camp Trans Gels . Youngers token said , say FLC forced logistic command, which was in Denang were used in the club on the base that was named by a , which named for a JK books . She was a marine that was killed over there and so on and so forth. So all the pieces of the puzzle fit together in the, in the shot .

Speaker 4 45:34

Do you think that that is the most important thing that the coin collector and token collector communities can learn from these tokens or are there all kinds of other stories and other pieces of information that can be gleaned from these things?

Speaker 6 45:49

The top piece of the Vietnam War are pretty much like a Rubik's cube. You can learn about the mascots if some of the units like coffee to tiger, who was the , who was actually a tiger cut , that was the mascot of the 93rd transportation company and SARC training . When we were still flying a she h 21 helicopters over there and there are other mascots who was saying the wonder dog in the train whose name is on the token . And there's a picture of Girard the groups who was the , uh , who was a mascot in guard boots of the , uh, of the dosing MACOM pound up in way and uh, just there's all kinds , there's just a myriad of different subjects. You know, the, the club corruption of the Vietnam War , uh , we have a small band of real criminal gangsters that impeded the, the NCO club system and they started it at the 24th Infantry Division in Augsburg, Germany back in the early sixties. And they all made their way to Vietnam and they control most of these clubs and they work siphoning money off from the slot machines and so on and so forth. So there's just a whole myriad of different aspects , uh , when it comes to the slot machine tokens in the Vietnam War.

Speaker 4 47:19

So this, this corruption you allude to of , of unscrupulous enlisted men or officers who were sort of engaged in this, I'm sort of skimming off the top, so to speak , uh , from these NCO clubs. Explain a little bit about how those NCO clubs worked and about how that graft and corruption took place.

Speaker 6 47:37

It was a sergeant major who had control of military personnel assignments around the world and he put in club custodians in to the different clubs that would rip off the slot machine tokens on literally a weekly basis. And I'm not talking about a couple of hundred bucks. I'm talking about, you know, the operation in Vietnam, they probably skimmed anywhere from a hundred thousand to $200,000 a month out of slot machines in Vietnam.

Speaker 4 48:10

And in the 1960s, that was not a small amount of money. Not that it's , it's a small amount of money. Today,

Speaker 6 48:16

these people were , uh, by the Senate subcommittee that investigated all this. These people were known as the khaki mafia,

Speaker 4 48:26

Khaki Mafia. They got themselves a name. These , um , NCO clubs were funded by the soldiers themselves, right? Like it wasn't, the army didn't supply all of it. The soldiers, you know, went in and patronize the business and the businesses existed on a paying basis.

Speaker 6 48:43

The U s government with our tape , you know, a little startup money so the clubs could be built, but most of the , the clubs were built out of, you know, all the ammo boxes in, in , in Straub's lumber and they can , artillery piece came into, into country, all boxed up date shell to the lumber and they build their, build their clubs . Some of the clubs were in bonkers , some of them were rather elaborate places with, with corrugated metal roofs and so-and-so with, well, once these clubs got going, they were self sufficient. They had to generate their own funds. If the soldier went into a club. So maybe, and he bought $5 worth of beer for he and his buddies and played another $5 in the slot machines. Any of the profit that the club got from that $10 bill that that soldier spent went back into the closet, either in reduced food prices, reduced meal prices or show from the Philippines or whatever. But this was a self-generating operation, but the soldier was supposed to get the money back, but instead of getting the money back, there was a select group of really ruthless in the CEOs and there were, you know, 30 or 40 of them that just took all this money and put it in their , in their pockets. They exchanged the slot machine tokens for NPC , exchange the NPC for dollars in the reverse process, got the money to Hong Kong and then got it into a Swiss bank accounts and got that. They were going to get away with this until the and that subcommittee came crashing down on your heads.

Speaker 3 50:30

When was that?

Speaker 6 50:31

The investigation begin , uh, in about 1969 and it went through about 1973. So the lasted four years. There are literally nine volumes of the, of the Senate report.

Speaker 3 50:45

Did that spell the end to the use of these slugs then?

Speaker 6 50:49

Pretty much so. I'm secretary of the army for Hulky backing in around 1970 said there will be no more slot machines and military clubs period. And I , he gave them, you know a few months to get these things out of the clubs. But from what I understand today they , there are slot machines, you know Americans have a tendency to repeat their, their old mistakes and there are today, there are, from what I understand overseas there are slot machines in some of the military facilities. Again,

Speaker 3 51:30

is there any evidence of a more modern incarnation of the same corruption that played these clubs back during Vietnam?

Speaker 6 51:37

Well I think the reason the military put them back into the, into the system is because they, they are in doubt all the kinks in the system and they thought that they, after the Vietnam scenario, they felt that they could put safe guards on slot machines. So this would not happen again. I've been out of the military since 1983 so I, you know, I don't have a dog in the fight. I couldn't, I couldn't tell you really what is going on overseas at active duty military installations at this point in time.

Speaker 3 52:13

It would be curious to know, and you alluded to not knowing, but it'd be curious to know if in the last 30 years these modern slot machines have used slot tokens as well. Certainly the regular casino industry has switched to the ticket in ticket out system, but that's really a development of the last decade or so.

Speaker 6 52:35

The point is that the military saw the last of its MPC quite a few years ago.

Speaker 3 52:41

Yeah, 73 I think

Speaker 6 52:43

the military is using has in fact , uh , some of the military installations have slot machines in their club clubs there they're back to using nickels, dimes and quarters.

Speaker 3 52:55

Ah, with all of the research that you have done into these tokens and with a pretty sophisticated knowledge as to, you know, the sheer number of different types, how many different types and dye combinations and facilities, how many of these, how many distinct types of these tokens exist.

Speaker 6 53:13

There are approximately 2000 different tokens, give or take. I never sat down and actually counted my, my catalog in the effort as far as, you know , which ones were our , how many have actually then issue . But there's about 2000 different types now. Those 2000 different types are broken down into, for instance, the um , eight field hospital and a, a nickel slot machine and token attention slot machine token and a 25 cent slot machine token. Now when by attrition, those things kind of ran out. One of two things happened. Either the exact same dyes were used again to restrike more tokens to replace those. That disappeared because Gis at the end of the Eaton , they took a few home in their pockets and after that happened, hundreds and hundreds of times those slot machine tokens did plated . So they had to be , uh , another issue had to be re struck . And sometimes the restrike was exactly the same as the previous issue. In other instances, for whatever reason, there was a new issue for that club and a slightly different dive variety or slightly different wording or a totally different image that was struck on the next token in line . So when I say 2000 Tokens, I'm talking 2000 different pieces that are collected would have the potential to occur .

Speaker 3 54:50

And how can a collector acquire these? How readily available are they and how can collectors learn more about the different iterations that are out there. I know Chris has talked to you about your research. I'd love to know more about how to access that. Just for my own interest.

Speaker 6 55:06

Every once in awhile , uh , you can, you can find some of the more common pieces on the Internet, on Ebay or whatever. There are a couple of individuals that do a water trading back and forth, you know, they're trying to boost up their own collections. If anybody has any specific questions on, on Vietnam Tokens in general , uh, they can always , uh, contact me through , uh , my uh , email address, which is numb more@hotmail.com that's an a m l o r e like folklore, but now more@hotmail.com.

Speaker 3 55:49

What kind of collector communities have sprung up around these tokens or what collector communities are interested in collecting these tokens? It seems to me that they would have a really broad range of, of appeal and that'll prod range of collectors might be interested in them, but they're sort of a dedicated slug, a collector base.

Speaker 6 56:08

There is no real new military token collector society per se. There is a new organization that collects military currency. It's an organization that's run by a guy. The name of Fred sworn , who was a former US army captain. Fred's interest is more into the military currency and prisoners of war, chits of World War II and that type of thing, but there are people that belong to what they call NPC fest that they have up in Ohio every year. A lot of them have a secondary interest to military currency, which are these slot machine tokens. Not only saw Mateen tokens of Vietnam that we use themself Vietnam, but you know that there have been tokens that were used in Germany, in France, in far off places like Iceland and Ethiopia and a lot of other places. Wherever we have, we had military assistance advisory groups. There were between 1950 and 1960 there were 44 military advisory groups around the world and many of those locations used the military payments depicotes which was an innovation that began in 1946 well, anywhere that there is slot machines and military clubs and military payments tickets, there were slot machines, specific slot machine tokens issued for that club. Vietnam being the most horrific of all those issues.

Speaker 4 57:45

It's funny that you mention a Fred Schwan , we actually interviewed him on an earlier episode of this podcast. So our a , our listeners have a, at least a broad sense as to uh , the culture around military payment certificates and other military currencies. But something I'm curious about is the rarity of these things. And you mentioned that there are some pieces, whether it they're rare mules or whether there are pieces that just the whole production run were destroyed, but there are some pieces that are incredibly rare, even unique. And you shared an example with me in a previous conversation we had about an example from Vung Tau. And I was wondering if you could elaborate on that story and talk a little bit about some of the really rare examples and what makes them rare.

Speaker 6 58:32

When I was in Vietnam, I was absolutely obsessed with salt machine tokens in Chits and in anything that was used by the military as currency. If I saw a soldier that had a patch on his shoulder that was not readily familiar to me, you know, one of the aviation units from one of the outlying areas and one of the infantry, infantry brigades and so on and so forth. I'd walk up to them and I'd say, Hey, my name's dre bows and uh , I'm interested in , uh, in the military installation that you're at, what your club name is and what kind of tokens you're using in your slot machines. If you have slot machine tokens. And these guys have looked at and looked at me like, you know, what planet are you from? Yes . First had no conception of what the heck I was talking about because the slot machine tokens were used specifically within those clubs. And nobody really looked at a n*****s , got a roll from the counter, plugged them into the machine and drank their beer and went home. Whereas the military payments to that forgets, which has pictures of pretty ladies with diamond tears and and big smiles and so on and so forth. And that's the imagery that are on the military payment certificates. So Gis, look at these, you know, military payment certificates, but they don't give 'em any or even a second look at or they didn't at the tokens. Well, when I would ask someone about do you have any tokens in your club ? Some of these guys were friendly about the whole thing. Other guys, like I say, thought I was completely out of my mind, but in one instance somebody, I talked to a fellow and he was with the eight Oh fifth transportation company in a, in Vung Tau. While it wasn't a place that I was ready, I could readily get to, I was running Kahn voice first for the Ford Transit Division and then for the 25th division and running convoys up by the Cambodian border and so on and so forth. So, you know, my time certainly wasn't on my own. By then at night I'd sit down and I'd figure out what apo number this eight or fifth transportation company was. And I wrote a letter to the, to the club chart. And then I said, hey, I'm interested in , in the seventh year tokens. This young fellow who was one of the corks in the clubs wrote back and he said, the chaplain that came in and saw that we had slot machine tokens in the slot machines a couple of weeks ago. We had to take them out in Vung Tau Bag and dump them all in the harbor, all the tokens and all the slot machines are gone. Well, I figured I would never find a token of the Oh fifth transportation company. And since I've been down here in Florida, I received a Accordion Club meeting one night and one guy came up to me and said, hey, I know you're collecting Vietnam. Slot machine tells me you can have these. And a , I'd put them in my pocket, took them home. And , uh, when I pulled them up and started looking through them , low and behold, it was a token of the atrial fifth transportation company, which is the only one that I know of.

Speaker 4 1:01:47

Huh. Awesome. What a great story now just goes to show you that local coin clubs and collectors communicating can often lead us to find some really wonderful things. So that's a, yeah .

Speaker 6 1:01:59

The other rare token, which we just talked about the other day , uh , is about this token discovery from Kevin McCoy . And he found an actual mewling of two tokens, which were , um, the reverse of a hundred and first airborne token that was used up in , uh, up in camp, go up around two why and they feel hospital token, which was the first medical to the real medical facility out in the field. That was way down in a [inaudible] , I say way down further south from Chu lie down in the train. And you know, I've been, I've been collecting these tokens for 50 years and I had never heard of a mewling of a token dust. And I , Kevin , uh , in trusting me with this token and, and sent it to me and I had it for about a week and I waited and measured it and inspected and under stereo microscope and everything else. And, and then I went through my records that I have not complete records, but I have many of the records from Sega that I received years ago from , uh , a gentleman who was with the Maryland paper money society through these numbers and drawings of Tokens. I have analyzed and , and walked all this stuff and figured out which tokens were used when by their purchase order numbers and subsequently determined that the a hundred and first had tokens struck at the secret facility just prior to the eight field hospital. Having tokens struck. And again, just after. So the feasibility of this being your mule is , um , is great and I believe it to be in the authentic piece. I don't think there were very many of them never struck like that, but this one, this one made it out in , into uh , into the circulation and it was something I believe that Kevin picked up on Ebay.

Speaker 4 1:04:03

Wow. Well that, that'll be a fabulous find and add one more incredibly rare entry into this , uh, this catalog of many, many different varieties that were , that we're talking about. So Ray, I just wanted to say thank you so much for your time. I know that our listeners and readers and people who follow coin world are going to be really interested in this and I know that especially given the fact that coin world has been a part of this story since the 1960s, you know, it's really cool to have this kind of continuity and kind of be able to follow out the story over all these years. So thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 6 1:04:37

One last thing I'd like to mention is my website. It slows military books, Dotcom, them and people can contact me through that addresses. Well in anything that I can do to help people as far as not only information about slot machine tokens in the military currency of Vietnam, but I have access to other information on , uh, locations and , and fellows that were killed in action over there and, and so on and so forth. And we try to maintain records so on all these things and answer questions that are simply other, other organizations aren't able to.

Speaker 3 1:05:19

That is wonderful. It sounds like a great manifestation of what it really, truly has been. A life's work. Thank you for your service to the country more so , uh, but also then , um , to the hobby as a much lesser level. And uh , thank you again for sharing this fascinating information with us today.

Speaker 6 1:05:42

Just one last thing I would like to say in that is we're at night for coin the rural back in the, in the mid sixties. And their willingness to, to lay the foundation for , for all that has come since I'm pretty sure that uh, all of this would never have happened in much of this information would have been , uh , would have been lost for all time . So my hats off to coin world.

Speaker 4 1:06:10

Well, thank you very much. We're, we're certainly proud of that and we appreciate all the work that you've done and for talking to us today. Thank you so much ray. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 6 1:06:18

All right , thank you.

Speaker 4 1:06:19

Alright , we hope that you really enjoyed our interview with ray bows . I know we learned a lot about the slugs that officers would use in gaming machines and we found the biographies that he has put together of all of these fallen soldiers to be tremendously interesting

Speaker 3 1:06:33

and we hope you learn something a little bit about commemorative coins, a popular subject, at least with Chris and I and hopefully more folks. Until next time, we are going to have a great time at the Ana this week. Hopefully you come by and see us. If not, you can't be there in any event. Happy collecting.

Speaker 7 1:06:55

Thank you for listening to the coin world podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and we'll see you next week. Send us your questions and feedback on Facebook at facebook.com/point or on Twitter at point B. The first to know about our next episode by signing up for our newsletter, go to [inaudible] dot com and click on free newsletter to sign up today.

Speaker 4 1:07:17

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