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The children who come to watch Kenneth Hopple operate the historic Coin Press No. 1 are amazed to see how this big, old machine takes blank pieces of copper and turns them into works of art.
And Hopple gets to do something almost no other coin collector has ever done - use the same press that created actual coins.
"I get to show people how this works, and if they are lucky enough and want to stick it out,
I take it apart and show them how it goes together, and how they did things in the old days in the 1800s," Hopple said.
On Friday, Hopple was stamping medallions to commemorate Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday as part of the Carson City Mint Coin Show, at the Nevada State Museum. Running the press in manual mode, Hopple put
copper blanks in one at time, handing the shiny finished medallions to his wife, Karen, who designed the face of the medallion. She places the medallion in a display with room for the four special Lincoln pennies being produced by the U.S. Mint to honor the 16th president.
"He looks pretty good for being 200," Hopple said, pulling another freshly minted medallion out of the press.
The show also featured the display of three one-of-a-kind error coins minted in Carson City in 1873. Two of the coins were struck together, with one sticking to the die and stamping its image on the next coin in line. Hopple said almost all of these kinds of mistakes were melted down immediately, but these three coins were dug out of an old vault in the mint about a year ago. Hopple said that these errors are so rare that experts could not even calculate a value the coins would have on the open market.
The historic mint building was also host to 30 coin dealers selling all different varieties of currency to collectors. For some of those coins, it is probably the first time they came back to the place they were made.
"It's going to be pretty exciting around here for these two days," said Deborah Stevenson, curator of education for the museum. "I'm expecting about 1,500 people here this weekend, and I think it will be one of our most successful shows. We've had a real steady crowd, all the dealers are happy, and people love the new concourse."
Stevenson said they did not have the coin show last year because of construction on the museum's new concourse. Also, she said it was the first time they did the show on Friday and Saturday, since budget cuts have forced the museum to close Sundays.
The show also featured gold panning for kids, and food sales by Friends of the Nevada State Museum. There were also $5,000 worth of raffle prizes donated, including the grand prize, an 1876 $20 gold piece minted in Carson City, worth $2,000, donated by Northern Nevada Coin.