Smithsonian Collection visit

[RWB]

A recent research visit to the Smithsonian Institution National Numismatic Collection produced some interesting data and photos of pieces made by International Nickel Co. (Inco) in 1964. Here’s an example of the company’s first test design, called, obviously, the Test Piece design.

Test Pieces were made only for Inco internal use at their Bayonne, NJ lab, and not distributed outside the company. These were reportedly made in a bewildering array of pure metals, alloys and laminates (clad), only some of which are known today. These are generally R-7 or R-8 (unique).

Anyone with some in their collection please PM me, as this research is in progress.

[physics-fan3.14]

I can only imagine what sort of treasures are buried in the Smithsonian that researchers have yet to fully appreciate! 

[Zebo]

I need to make another trip there and spend a bit more of time. 

[RWB]

The place needs a generous infusion of cash so that sufficient SI staff can be hired to oversee volunteers who are expert in various areas of US numismatics (coin, medal, currency, tokens, etc.)

[Conder101]

That's what the SI commemoratives coins were originally supposed to do.  As originally proposed the surcharges from the coins were to be earmarked as an endowment to the Numismatic collection for such research.  As if finally ended up the NNC got a pittance and the rest went into the SI's general fund.  I believe the amount the NNC got went to fund the curators salary for a few years.

[RWB]

I think the money went to improve security. There are new secure vaults with limited access and other smaller changes. The collection needs evaluation by experts, none of which are at SI, so they would have to be volunteers and that required direct, constant supervision.

[physics-fan3.14]

Wasn't there a fundraising effort a few years ago to move the NNC out of the American History museum into its own dedicated museum? I would love to see that happen - at which point, sufficient expert staff would need to be hired. 

[RWB]

Such a plan would have mimicked the Postal Museum. But PM has a dedicated stream of funding from the Postal Service. The Mint cannot do that. Plus, one has to consider the amount of visitor traffic such a place wold generate on its own -- probably minuscule. The first floor of Mint HQ could have been a very good space, but there were several problems including security.

[RWB]

PS; The Postal Museum was organized and created by a very strong SI curator - Jim Bruns. There is no equivalent numismatic person there.