From: "MPCgram" To: Subject: MPCGram 952 Date: Tuesday, July 01, 2003 12:22 AM =========================================== MPC GRAM =========================================== Covering the entire World of Military Numismatics Series 004 - Number 952 Tuesday July 1, 2003 ANA SummerFest report by Joe Boling The non-festers attending the ANA summer seminar shake their heads and wonder how grown men can be so silly; the festers shake their heads and wonder why persons attending other classes seem to be so serious. And those on the ANA staff who know how the fest mentality works don't wonder why emotions run high when the basic course attendees get travel pay but the advanced course students do not. Related to the latter event, series 1944A MFC dinar appeared in the travel pay distribution today. This is conjectured to be a response to the recent appearance of two dinar notes raised to twenty. Monday was the first full day of class; the basic course started with AMC (not MPC, a break from tradition, but related to the fact that the initial pay was in Allied fest certificates rather than MFC). They got as far as AMC kroner by end of the day, leaving yen for Tuesday. The advanced course spent the morning working on a stack of Japanese and Manchou bonds; their task was to find the SB number for each piece. In the course of doing this, a glaring omission in SB was discovered; the table of numerals, denominations, and dating systems that appeared in World War II Military Currency (1978) (Appendix 1) was not carried over into World War II Remembered (1995). If you use the later book often for material bearing these attributes, and are not already comfortable with Chinese-style numerals (including their more formal forms), Xerox page 226 from 1978 insert it someplace in 1995. In the afternoon, the four advanced course students worked on their independent research projects. The YN auction hounds have been scouring the campus for lots for their sale Wednesday night. One significant anonymous donation, received today, is a Series 1934 $1000 Federal Reserve Note (district K, in dirty fine condition, if my quick glance at it was sufficiently discerning). An equally significant donation is a Series 1944A MFC 30 dinar note, serial number C00000001*. When asked to place an estimated value on the piece, the donor was hard pressed, since the value of the dinar had slipped to D1.5 per US$ by close of business today, and there is no guarantee that the entire series might not be replaced in a currency reform if the local economy continues to erode at this rate (an annual inflation rate of over 12,000%). The donor finally settled on $25 as an appropriate starting bid for the piece, the face value of which is $20 at this writing. I am willing to execute bids for anyone wishing to bid in absentia on this piece, but I must have instructions by email NLT midnight (local) Tuesday (joeboling@aol.com). In news from other fronts, the finance officer was surprised to receive DFs from several advanced course students requesting conversion of series 031 MFC into dinars, on the grounds that they had just arrived in theater and needed walking-around money (their travel pay having been held up by inefficiencies in the travel computation section). Their requests were honored, but that still did not seem to generate enough cash for a poker game, as they continued to speculate on ways to create suitable exchange media for poker (the supply of cigarettes has also been constricted, by recent anti-vice policies promulgated in the theater). Stay tuned to this station for more reasons why you should have been here. =========================================== Editorial/opinion =========================================== Gram 951 was only sent out about an hour ago, but Joe was able to get his column to me so we wanted to get it out right away. In addition to the items that he told you about, an advance peek at the YN auction catalog reveals that there are some AFC dinar specimen notes. We will try to give you a detailed report tomorrow in time for you to get some bids in. Because of the timing described above, I have killed the rest of this Gram. There is no mail call or standing features. ===== MPC Gram is published by BNR Press and papermoneyworld.com as a free service to the community of military money collectors. Your suggestions, criticisms, complaints, editorial contributions, letters, and even praise are very welcome. The entire contents including linked illustrations are copyright protected by the publishers. In the case of contributors, the copyright is protected on behalf of the creators. Please send all correspondence regarding the gram to MPCgram@yahoo.com. Thank you very much for your participation. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com