Ellen R. Feingold - The Value of Money

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Copyright 2015 by Smithsonian Institution

The text of the introduction, chapters, and back matter sections of this publication was created by an employee of the U.S. government and is not copyrightable. The rights to all other text and images, including cover and interior designs, are owned either by the Smithsonian Institution or by third parties. Fair use of materials is permitted for personal, educational, or noncommercial purposes. Users must cite author and source of content, must not alter or modify copyrighted content, and must comply with all other terms or restrictions that may be applicable. Users are responsible for securing permission from a rights holder for any other use.

All photos by Jaclyn Nash unless otherwise credited.
All images courtesy of the National Museum of American History unless otherwise credited.

The objects that appear in this book have been enlarged and reduced in size. Information about the actual dimensions of objects in the National Numismatic Collection is available on the National Museum of American Historys website www.americanhistory.si.edu.

Cover and title page image: Eight real coin, Mexico, 1762 (). Eight real coins were widespread in colonial America and were the worlds first global currency. They reflect and symbolize both American history and global history.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Feingold, Ellen R. (Ellen Roseanne), 1983
The value of money / Ellen R. Feingold.
pages cm
A Smithsonian contribution to knowledge.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-935623-80-9 (cloth : alkaline paper) ISBN 978-1-935623-81-6 (ebook)
1. NumismaticsExhibitions. 2. MoneyExhibitions. 3. CoinsExhibitions. 4. Paper moneyExhibitions. 5. CoinsHistoryExhibitions. 6. MoneyHistoryExhibitions. 7. CoinsCollectors and collectingExhibitions. 8. MoneyCollectors and collectingExhibitions. 9. National Numismatic Collection (U.S.)Catalogs. I. Title.
CJ41.W38F45 2015
737dc23

2015010822

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-935623-81-6
ISBN (cloth): 978-1-935623-80-9

v3.1

Figure 1.
Gold coin necklace, United States, twentieth century. Donated by Estate of Doris M. Brixey.

The story of money is a global one. For thousands of years, communities around the world have designated objects to represent value and facilitate transactions. Objects that at first seem to have no relationship to one anothertiny metal coins, massive stones, and colorful seashellshave become associated through their use as money, connecting them and the communities that used them through this shared aspect of human history.

The practice of collecting monetary objects, both by individuals and by museums, has brought together a vast range of material and created money collections, with which local and national histories can be compared in the context of wider global histories. The National Numismatic Collection, the Smithsonian Institutions collection of money, is one of those collections. Composed of approximately one and a half million objects, its holdings represent every inhabited continent and span more than 2,600 years.

The National Numismatic Collections vault contains the objects many would expect to find in a money collectionnamely, metal coins and paper notes. But it also holds other forms of money and objects that are related to the history of money and exchange. Coin dies and molds, sketches, plasters, and printing plates are part of the collection and capture the history of the production processes for creating coins and notes. The collection also includes official financial documents and apparatuses, such as bonds, personal checks and banking materials, and historic correspondence relating to the American financial system, as well as financial ephemera and temporary currencies. These objects are housed with a remarkable range of commodity or traditional currencies such as wampum, Medals also offer opportunities to make connections between monetary objects and sculptural art and design as well as political and social history.

The bulk of this diverse collection was acquired by the Smithsonian after 1950, but numismatic objects have been part of the institution since its establishment in National Museum of American History and became the foremost institution in the nation dedicated to exploring and understanding the American experience. Since then, some have wondered how useful an international collection of money can be to a museum about American history.

The Value of Money exhibition celebrates the value of having a geographically and chronologically diverse numismatic collection in the National Museum of American History. It demonstrates the power of using monetary objects to explore American history and its connections to global histories of exchange, cultural interaction and expression, political change, and innovation. By integrating American objects with objects from around the world spanning nearly three millennia, the exhibition uses money as a vehicle to engage with not only the American experience but also the human experience. It embraces the world cultures and practices that have made monetary objects at once so diverse and so similar.

This new exhibition continues a long tradition of galleries and displays featuring the Smithsonians numismatic treasures. The small numismatic collection of the nineteenth century was first shown in the Castle and later, intermittently, in the National Museum Building in traditional numismatic style with displays organized by country or region, metal, and denomination.Glovers collection of East Asian coins, allowed curators to feature beautiful and rare international material from an early stage.

In 1914, the Smithsonian installed its first major numismatic gallery, showing more than 6,000 coins, medals, and tokensa significant portion of the collection at the time. This transfer nearly doubled the size of the Smithsonians numismatic holdings and gave it some of Americas rarest coins.

Figure 2.
One sovereign coin, England, 15581603. Transfer from U.S. Mint.

The addition of the Mints collection was a watershed for numismatics at the Smithsonian. It helped to raise the numismatic collections profile, and in 1948, numismatics became a separate division with a dedicated curator,