DESERT MOON NEWSLETTER, ISSUE 9, June 25, 2025

Summer Doldrums But Numismatic Coins Are Red Hot!

Desertmoonnm.com

Hi Folks,

            Well I missed putting out a new Newsletter in May, alas.  After I returned home from a very successful CSNS show, I spent 2 weeks doing imaging.  Some of the coins I obtained just did not turn out to my expectations for images worthy of listing on my site, even though the coins themselves are excellent and worthy.  It’s me, not them.  New types of coins (to me) that I had never imaged before. Trying to capture their eye appeal and beauty to at least 95% satisfaction for me, is not always a first take.  Sure, I have Capped Bust Quarters nailed, and several other series I collected, and imaged for a long time.  But each type of coin, and each individual coin, has its own nuances and even though I have been imaging coins for almost 2 decades, there are still challenges and learning with each new coin. But I can’t, and won’t, put an image up on the Desert Moon Numismatics website unless I am happy with it.  Part of why I am now selling is to diversify my coin photographic skills, learn and evolve.  This part of the hobby is so enjoyable to me but it takes time. 

            So by the time I was ready to start posting newps from CSNS, time had crept up to the next travel adventure and TBBFT!, just never got the newsletter up.  Next thing I knew we were headed to Amsterdam for a month in Netherlands and back mid-last-week.  A few days into this trip, we hopped a barge and were off on a great bicycling adventure for 2 weeks (Hence ‘Bike & Barge Holland Tours’ is the company name).  My wife and I lived and slept on the barge with 24 other adventure seekers, two guides, a great cook, and the barge captain.  We would disembark on bikes and ride on to the next destination, where the barge would be waiting for us at the end of the day.  We experienced rain, cold, big winds, and a few warm days near the end of the trip. Some of the highlights: visited a farm for the famous Friesian horses, cycled on one of the West Frisian Islands for a day, big old Dutch windmills, quaint Dutch villages, castles, canals, museums, rich countryside, and on.  We finished up with a delightful day of riding through the countryside along the Amstel River (yes it was flowing beer, LOL) then riding through the city streets of Amsterdam to meet the barge. If you have never been to Amsterdam, welcome to the mosh pit.  10’s of thousands of cyclists intermingle with pedestrians, auto traffic, light rail, buses, all together on the same roads, yikes.  Sure there are individual bike lanes, but they seem to be full of everything else using these streets as well.  Our guide was very important that day as he had to guide us in a line through this and back to the barge in its permanent mooring next to the Nemo Museum and Centraal Station.  All in all an amazing tour! 

Only one numismatic opportunity in this month of being Dutch.  At the Rembrandt House in Amsterdam, we learned about the masters life:

rembrandthuis.nl

  In one room they had part of his collection.  Yes besides painting masterpieces, he collected!  Rocks and minerals, antiquities and stuffed creatures from foreign lands, sculptured busts, and coins and medals to name a few. He pretty much collected everything.

In the Collection Room, they had a coin cabinet in fine lacquered wood, some of the drawers were opened to show medals.  Nicest coin cabinet I have ever seen and I was thinking how nice it would look in our home LOL.  The medals looked great but too far away to see what they were. Apparently collecting was Rembrandt’s demise. He spent all of his money on his collection and basically went broke in mid-life from it.  At that point he had to sell everything to pay his bills, some of which they were able to re-acquire for the museum in his original house.  After he went broke, he basically worked for his son who marketed Rembrandt’s paintings and got him gigs to paint portraits of rich folks.  His son was clearly a much better business-person and saved his dad from living on the street.  Sometimes genius does not come along with management skills.

One highlight I am happy to check off the bucket list.  One day we took the train down to Den Haag and went to see the ‘most famous girl in the world’, the Vermeer painting of ‘Girl With A Pearl Earring’:

https://www.mauritshuis.nl/en

Vermeer - Girl With A Pearl Earring

There are many parodies of this famous painting.  This is perhaps my favorite:

Cat With a Pearl Earring

Or maybe:

OMG why are you painting me?

Let me finish by saying the market for “quality” numismatic items is red hot.  We haven’t been able to win an auction item in months.  Just getting blown out of the water. All of the newps we will be posting over the next few weeks were primarily in-hand selected at FUN and CSNS.    Some selections of the newps just listed on the website are shown below. You can contact us at desertmoonnm@yahoo.com for inquiries about our numismatic offerings.

Thanks for reading!

Best, DM