Word: mint
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Ambassador Stuart W. Rockwell chatted with General Mohammed Medbouh, commander of the King's military household. "We are the only ones who take golf seriously," sniffed Medbouh. ∙ A lavish buffet, which included lobster, smoked salmon, roast sheep and couscous, was laid out, along with champagne and mint tea. Hassan ate with his seven-year-old son, Crown Prince Sidi Mohammed, one of his five children, under a special canopy. Near by sat Habib Bourguiba Jr., son of Tunisia's President. Italian Ambassador Amedeo Guillet, who makes it a practice never to eat at midday, lounged...
Last year Franklin Mint literally coined $45.8 million in commemorative medals, which "honor" everyone from U.S. Presidents to the Hollywood stars. First-quarter sales for 1971 rose to $11.9 million, nearly double those of a year ago. The medals are sold in series of up to 200 to subscribers, who pay about $3.25 each for bronze copies, $10.50 for silver and as much as $1,000 for platinum. The intrinsic value of the silver, for example, is slightly less than a quarter of the sales price. Altogether, some 300,000 persons have signed up for one or another of Franklin...
Winner's Likeness. The 40-year-old Segel, who has never collected coins, got the idea for producing medals from a news photo of crowds lined up at the U.S. Mint in Washington in 1964 to buy the last bags of silver dollars sold at par value. Then part owner of a firm that promoted calendars, cigarette lighters and other giveaway items imprinted with corporate trademarks, Segel saw in the picture "an interesting marketing opportunity" for a kind of non-coin of the realm. Advertising in collectors' magazines, he initially signed up 5,252 people to join...
When production problems developed in striking early medals, Segel hired away from the U.S. Mint no less an expert than its chief engraver, Gilroy Roberts, who helped set up the Franklin Mint and became its chairman. Construction was financed in 1965 by offering 400,000 shares of stock to members of the Commemorative Society and coin collectors at $6.075 a share. Anyone who then invested $607.50 in 100 shares, which have since been split six times, today owns stock worth $24,600. Segel and his wife have more than $9,000,000 of it. In 1969 Segel sold the Commemorative...
...dismisses the dealers' grumping as plain envy. Sales of Franklin medals, he says, are already larger than the entire collectors' market for U.S. coins. He can also point to a growing number of other medal merchandisers that have entered the field, including Chicago's Lincoln Mint, New York's Medallic Art Co. and International Mint in Attleboro, Mass. It is still too early to tell whether such growth will eventually become new proof of the old adage that collecting can be profitable as well as fun. But the millions of stored-away medals are certainly proof...