GMM's Mike Ellis and your author at Houston show
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foto album - Hand-hammered
coins foto album - Coin show report
Below: Here's a little report and some fotos about my visit
to the Gallery Mint Museum booth at the Greater Houston Coin Club's
annual "Money Show of the Southwest" that was held at the George R.
Brown Convention Center in Houston, Texas the last weekend of January
2005.
GMM's Mike Ellis and your author at Houston show |
I spent two afternoons with the crew from the Gallery Mint Museum
during the Houston coin show. On Friday I watched GMM chief coiner
Timothy Grat demonstrate the techniques and processes for producing
hand-hammered Greek-style coins and the same for the production of
pewter tokens on the GMM mobile mint.
The hand-hammering was the most exciting thing for me. Tim had a set-up
where he poured molten pewter from crucibles into the forms to make the
flans that he would strike into tokens. There was even an ersatz fire
pit set up there to make it look like how the Greeks would have been
doing it. Tim would take a cooled flan and place it on top of the
reverse die, which was set as a sort of anvil on top of an old tree
stump from Arkansas that they brought to the show. Then he would place
the obverse die over the seated flan, which acted like a bit of a
chisel. Once set, he would slam down a heavy hammer to impress both the
obverse and reverse images into the little piece of pewter. Boy, did it
make a loud noise! Tim gave several such demonstrations while I was
there and everyone who would come by had a wonderful time observing and
learning about ancient minting techniques, especially the children.
Moving over to the mobile mint display, Tim demonstrated that process
by pouring molten pewter in a set of forms to make ingots as the first
step to produce the token planchets. Then he slightly shaped the cooled
pewter by slicing off the ends in a guillotine-like cutting machine and
scissored off bits of flashing. The finished ingot was then put into a
metal roller and squeezed to the correct thickness. Then the rolled
pewter was cut into individual planchets on a hole punch machine. The
planchets were then put in a Castaing machine were the sides of the
token were impressed with the words "Gallery Mint Museum". The final
step was setting the planchets above the reverse die in the screw press
and then a couple of turns of the screw and there was a minted token!
I've been collecting these show tokens for a number of years now, so it
was great fun to watch how they are made. But this token was really
special to me, since it was for my local coin club and I am the one who
proposed the obverse design to the Gallery Mint Museum back in the
fall. On top of that, GMM was offering copper versions of the Houston
show token that provided a more authentic-looking example of the "2005
Double Die Lincoln Cent" design.
 Hand-hammered overstrike on 1911 Barber dime |
On Saturday I was fortunate to be able to spend some time with GMM founder and chief engraver, Ron Landis. Prior to that he had been busy engraving the names of members of the Original Hobo Nickel Society on their newly issued medals as well as talking with show attendees while working at his bench. Ron and I sat down and I did a bit of an interview with him for an article that I am planning to write. Ron told me about his various hand-engraved designs based on the Winged Liberty dime design by Adolph Weinman. Then the discussion moved on to other topics like his involvement in the "Peace 2000 World Coin Project", the designs he submitted for the competitions concerning the new "Golden Dollar" and the Arkansas state quarter, and more general stuff like the politics involved in selecting designs for U.S coins. He was also helpful in educating me on aspects of minting technology that I wasn't clear on, like die hubbing. I took a lot of notes for my tentative article and I got a lot out of him otherwise during that long and involved interview.
 Double struck double die error token |
On Friday, I bumped into GMM employee Mike Ellis just as I had just entered the bourse floor while looking for the GMM booth. He was very busy at another area of the show, so had little time then other than to point out where they were set up and send me on my way. On Saturday we had lots of time together, which was great for me since previous to that for some several months we had become online chat buddies on things related to GMM. I had Mike pose for and set up some foto opportunities, he let me go through the GMM mobile mint token boxes, made up a bunch of tokens for me to distribute locally and through the rec.collecting.coins newsgroup, helped trying to get an article I wrote about GMM published in the Krause publications who were also on hand at the show, told me lots of stories about Verne Walrafen's support for and interest in GMM, etc., etc., all in an attempt to facilitate making my visit with them as enjoyable and fruitful as possible. He's such a kooky guy!
 Ron Landis self-portrait Hobo Token with engraved initials on reverse |
For me, the best thing I got out of my visit with GMM during that show was the personal touch, and this is symbolized by a few items I came away with when I left, which are pictured above. Timothy Grat went out of his way to produce a few hand-hammered overstrikes on silver dimes for me to have. Mike Ellis made me a nice double struck error to make sure I finally got an example of some of the more creative techniques that GMM is capable of. And Ron Landis hand engraved his initials on the reverse of his 2003 self-portrait Hobo Token to suit my groupie tastes. It's been one thing for me to admire their work by reading about them in the papers, or by ordering out of a catalogue or keeping in touch online and a whole other level being with them up close and personal. And I know that the great treatment they provided me is no different than they would give any other collector, history buff, fine art enthusiast or whomever else would express an interest in the work they are doing. I come away from that show even more convinced about what a fabulous combination the GMM crew offers to the hobby. Great show, guys!