Encased Quick Reference Maverick Index
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Encased Quick Reference Maverick Index Provided by Bob Perdue with permission to post on the TokenCatalog.com website Users of the site are welcome to use this reference Permission has NOT been given for users to download or otherwise redistribute. Contact Bob Perdue with questions or requests for alternate uses. February 26, 2016 Introduction Back in the fall of 1995 Jerry Binsfeld began the Associated Collectors of Encased (ACE). One objective of ACE was to catalog all of the known encased in each state. When these state listings were completed there was to be a book printed containing these listings. ACE folded before this project was completed, but in its existence did manage to make public the known encased in many states. As with most other exonumia clubs a regular column was dedicated to the identification of maverick encased. It was thought that it would be most beneficial to have an index of maverick encased to correspond with the actual books of encased listings. The user then could refer to the index to find a maverick encased and then go to the appropriate state catalog to get complete listing information. I volunteered to catalog the maverick encased and this continued effort is a result of that initial project. Though ACE did cease to exist, the hobby of identifying maverick encased has been one that I have retained. There has been much added to the first published edition of this index. Many people have contributed in various ways, and you can find that information in acknowledgments. Using The Maverick Index This work will deal exclusively with the subject of encased maverick coins and so at the outset it might be a good idea to consider exactly what a maverick is. Almost all authors have a slightly different definition of what a maverick is but a consensus definition would be that a maverick fails to bear enough information to identify itself to a specific location or event. An obvious example would be an encased with the wording Joe’s Bar / 112 East Main Street. In this example no city or state name appears on the encased and the collector is left wondering as to where it where it came from. Another common example would be an encased with the wording First National Bank. In this example only the bank’s name is given and no other identifying information at all is included on the encased. An encased with the wording United School District Spelling Bee is an example of an encased created for a specific event and would require significant research to identify. Unlike tokens in general almost all encased bear some secondary information and that is the date they were circulated in. The exception would be encased that used circulated coins for encasement or customers who requested a specifically dated coin for an event. In order to make positive the identification of a maverick then it is also important to consider not only the date of the encased coin, but also the date of the reference used to identify it. Citing a 1978 Dun & Bradstreet as a reference to identify an encased dated in the 1920’s is a bit slipshod. In this modern era it seems there has been a trend to encase older coins in new encasements as a novelty and not to commemorate a certain event. I’ll suggest there is a stronger motive for profit by individuals here than the good of the hobby. While the definition of a maverick never changes a maverick may not be considered to be a maverick to all people and that is something that leads to confusion. A maverick encased with the wording Walton Motors / Skokie may not be considered a maverick at all to a collector living in Illinois or the Midwest because they know Skokie is located in Illinois and they conclude that the encased bears enough information to identify itself to there. A person living in Oregon may not possess this same geographical knowledge and may be unsure if Skokie is in Illinois or Indiana. Then to them this is a true maverick and does require research to identify. I have a maverick encased for Sitar’s Esso / Carteret. I searched for the identity of this maverick for some time not knowing that Carteret was a city in New Jersey. Once I found that out it was an easy matter to look it up and find the listing. Along the same line of thinking a common mistake is to look at an encased with the wording Richmond Auto Parts and automatically assume that this is from Richmond, Virginia. Richmond could be a reference to a surname, city, street, or district within a city. It is always best to do at least a bit of cursory research before assigning any maverick an identity. I’ve often thought that if it had been known that encased coins would have became collectable then no mavericks at all would have ever been issued. National and regional stores and brands may have intended their encased advertising to reach a wider population, but locally distributed encased coins were used as advertising in a specific neighborhood and the recipient knew exactly where they came from. The owner of Joe’s Bar may have passed out encased at Christmas time or at an annual event such as a picnic. It was not intended that these keepsakes appear or were even circulated in other cities. Patrons of a bank were given encased because they banked at that location. Advertising in a peripheral market was not the intended purpose of the encased so no city or state appeared on some. It seems to me that this is especially true in mavericks from bigger cities because residents lived, worked, and shopped within a small radius. In more rural communities people came and left and often worked and shopped in bigger cities so in these smaller communities the need to include a city or address to benefit from advertising was far more critical. There will always be debate on definitions and rules and I detest both because every time you make a rule soon after the need arises to create an exception to it. Among most collectors and catalogers the basics align, but there are cases of contention. One of the most obvious examples would be encased with a well known personality on them. If you found an encased with only the wording John Doe For Senator on it you might question as to where to identify this to, some would say it should be identified to his birthplace. Others might say well John Doe was born in Ohio but he grew up in Indiana and so that is where it should be identified to. Yet others will say the correct identification is the place he held or ran for political office in. I believe there is no right or wrong answer to these types of identification questions. It is more a question of preference by the cataloger or collector. I doubt there will ever be a uniform rule and even if there were it would never be uniformly complied with. I will suggest that individuals should use caution when adding these types of entries and a footnote to explain the rationale is most beneficial to the user so that they may draw their own conclusions based upon their own preferences. As stated above, the original index was to accompany a book and the user could refer to the index to get a reference as to where to look in the books to get the complete listing information. The publication for ACE was named The Casement and in each issue various state catalogs would appear as well as the regular maverick column. When a new entry was added to the index the corresponding issue of The Casement was used as the reference for the user to refer to get complete information: Encased Location Reference A-A Liquors Los Angeles, CA 18 In this example the listing information shows that the encased maverick for A-A Liquors was identified to Los Angeles, California in issue 18 of The Casement. This would have all been well and good had not ACE folded, but it did and there was no longer a way to cite the corresponding issue of The Casement as a reference. Those with back issues of The Casement can refer to those issues for additional information. Those index users without previous issues are in a bit of a quandary because they have no way to ascertain the validity of a maverick identification. I have given some thought to doing away with these references completely and making all of the listings uniform, but then again I think there is valuable information to be garnered for those with a curiosity. When a maverick encased appeared in The Casement in one of the published state catalogs, the two digit state abbreviation corresponding to the state the entry was taken from will appear in the reference column. Encased Location Reference AK-SAR-BEN Paints Omaha, NE NE In this example the maverick encased for AK-SAR-Ben Paints appeared in the Nebraska listings. The user could then refer to the Nebraska catalog for complete details on this entry. Some state catalogs were never published in The Casement and in those cases individuals from various states may have contributed entries. When an entry has the word Fankhauser in the reference column that means the information to identify this encased was researched and used with the permission of Bryan Ryker. Bryan has devoted much time and effort to the Fankhauser encased and his work is the standard to judge others by.