Catching scent of cent at Minot show
Coin club holds 14th annual event
Submitted Photo Minot Coin Club show chairman Josh Hummel, left, examines a rare 1793 Wreath cent with retired Col. Steve Ellsworth from Brentwood, Tenn., who brought the cent to the show Oct. 3-4. Photo by Roger Riveland.
Submitted Photo Minot high school girls, from left, Kennedy Visocsky, Averi Erck, and Tatum McGinnis had heard about the $12,500 cent and wanted to see it for themselves. Coin club treasurer and historian Bill Erdman looks on as the girls visit with retired Col. Steven Ellsworth, the Tennessee dealer who owns the coin. Photo by Roger Riveland.
Submitted Photo The slabbed 1793 Wreath cent was popular at the Minot Coin Club coin show Oct. 3-4. This example was not graded due to environmental damage but the details were said to be XF (extra fine). The 2027 Red Book coin price guide values the coins at $2,250 in Good-3 (which means the date and devices are clear enough to identify) to Mint State 60 at $54,000, a coin just as it came from the mint. Photo by Roger Riveland.
Submitted Photo Minot Coin Club show chairman Josh Hummel, left, examines a rare 1793 Wreath cent with retired Col. Steve Ellsworth from Brentwood, Tenn., who brought the cent to the show Oct. 3-4. Photo by Roger Riveland.
Submitted Photo Minot high school girls, from left, Kennedy Visocsky, Averi Erck, and Tatum McGinnis had heard about the $12,500 cent and wanted to see it for themselves. Coin club treasurer and historian Bill Erdman looks on as the girls visit with retired Col. Steven Ellsworth, the Tennessee dealer who owns the coin. Photo by Roger Riveland.
Submitted Photo The slabbed 1793 Wreath cent was popular at the Minot Coin Club coin show Oct. 3-4. This example was not graded due to environmental damage but the details were said to be XF (extra fine). The 2027 Red Book coin price guide values the coins at $2,250 in Good-3 (which means the date and devices are clear enough to identify) to Mint State 60 at $54,000, a coin just as it came from the mint. Photo by Roger Riveland.
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Prize drawings, expert appraisers and dealers' displays that looked more like exhibits than sales tables attracted coin enthusiasts to the Minot Coin Club's 14th annual coin show on Oct. 3-4 in the Sleep Inn & Suites.
The coin show was well attended and gave people a chance to buy and sell coins, tokens, currency and precious metals. The show had prize drawings every hour and gave away one gold coin each day. Dealers from across North Dakota and other states were in attendance.
The show offered a great resource to the general public, with many experts there to evaluate coins people had acquired. For children younger than 18 the coin show offered free admittance and free coins for their own budding collections or to spark an interest in starting one. There was a small tub bursting with coins and tokens from which children could select the coins they wanted to adopt.
Coin show chairman Josh Hummel said the biggest surprise to him this year came when a former American Numismatic Association (ANA) president contacted him for an application to have table space at the show.
Headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colorado, the ANA is the world’s largest nonprofit organization dedicated to the coin collecting hobby and the study of money and was chartered in 1891. The ANA has more than 24,000 members.
Hummel said his first thought was, "Right, someone of that caliber is really going to come to our coin show." Well, he indeed did come.
Retired Col. Steve Ellsworth, who was ANA president from 2019 to 2021, resides in Brentwood, Tennessee, and owns Butternut Coins. Seen as a hobby celebrity, as well as a prominent figure in the coin collecting world, Ellsworth showed up and brought some interesting coins along.
Ellsworth brought a 1793 Wreath cent, which, when word got around, drew people from the nearby mall to see the $12,500 coin. Ellsworth is a renowned collector of USA large cents, of which the Wreath is one of many designs.
The Wreath cent was the second design of the first year cent coinage, made on the federal level at the official USA mint at Philadelphia. The first design was called the Chain cent. The cents are so named due to the design on the reverse of each coin. The Chain cent design was quickly replaced after only 12 days of manufacturing, due to the public heavily criticizing the chain, seeing it as a symbol of bondage or slavery.
The Wreath cent replaced the chain with a laurel and trefoil wreath on the reverse. Both Flowing Hair designs were replaced with the Liberty Cap design later in 1793 because critics felt Lady Liberty looked in fright, wild or crazy, describing her hair as messy and her facial features as too mannish.
Ellsworth said he had exhibited at coin shows in all 50 states except Alaska, Maine, North Dakota and Rhode Island, and he decided it was time to come to a North Dakota show. This, however, was not the first time Ellsworth had been to North Dakota.
He riddled a question to three Minot high school girls who ventured into the coin show, with one of the girl's fathers in tow.
Ellsworth said, "I have flown into Minot twice now but this is the first time I have actually landed in a plane. Do you know how that can be?"
He said he had done a winter parachute training drop into Minot Air Force Base when he was in the Army. Ellsworth was an Army Green Berets commander, as well as an overseas Joint Service Command and special assistant to the Chief of Staff of the Army.
Of his visit to the coin show and Minot, Ellsworth said, "It is going good, and the people are terrific."