'Off-the-Radar' {news} Item ..{from, Mar. 17th}
California man gives $2 million aluminum penny back to U.S. Mint
A San Diego man who inherited from his father a 1974 aluminum penny valued at $2 million has surrendered it to the U.S. Mint to settle a lawsuit over ownership of the rare coin, a federal prosecutor said on Thursday.
Randall Lawrence, the son of a former Mint official, and Michael McConnell, the owner of a San Diego-area coin shop, sued the federal government in 2014 after it demanded the return of the penny.
Lawrence and McConnell had planned to display the coin at shows across the country and then sell it through an auction house, which estimated it would bring up to $2 million.
The pair turned it over to the Mint and relinquished all claims to ownership as part of a settlement, Laura Duffy, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California, said in a statement.
The settlement "vindicates the government's position that items made at U.S. Mint facilities but not lawfully issued ... remain government property and are not souvenirs that government employees can merely remove and pass down to their heirs," Duffy said. She did not disclose further terms of the settlement.
The aluminum cent was proposed to the U.S. Congress in 1973, at a time when copper prices had increased dramatically, according to the Smithsonian Institution.
The Mint made about 1.6 million of the aluminum coins and distributed them to Congress in anticipation of approval. When lawmakers rejected it, the Mint reclaimed the aluminum cents and destroyed almost all of them, leaving one to the Smithsonian in Washington, where it remains.
Lawrence inherited one of the coins and a third aluminum penny turned up in the possession of a U.S. Capitol police officer, who said it was given to him by a member of Congress, according to the Professional Coin Grading Service website.
The Plastics Collection to use $1 million donation to hire a curator
Rebecca Shays | Contributing Photographer
The Plastics Collection is located on the sixth floor of Bird Library and hosts about 2,500 artifacts.
“Just one word: plastics.”
These were the words spoken to Dustin Hoffman’s character Benjamin Braddock in the famous 1967 movie, “The Graduate,” but could also very well serve as a catch-all motto for Syracuse University’s Plastics Collection.
On the sixth floor of Bird Library are the Syracuse University Archives and Special Collections. One of its acquisitions, The Plastics Collection, is home to approximately 2,500 artifacts. The collection specializes in 20th century plastic materials and also contains books, periodicals and manuscripts on the topic of the synthetic.
In February, the collection received a $1 million dollar anonymous donation to fund a curator position and allow the collection to grow even bigger.
The Plastics Collection began with help from Harry Greenwald, a 1951 alumnus who is also a donor on the libraries’ board of advisors and prominent figure in the plastics industry. In 2007, Greenwald gave money to fund a temporary curator position for a collection started by SU and the Plastic History and Artifacts Committee of the Plastics Pioneers Association.
The collection was to be housed at the National Plastics Center and Museum of Leominster, Massachusetts. Even a year after its founding, the collection failed to take off, so the materials were sent to SU.
Ronald Thiele, assistant dean for advancement of Syracuse University Libraries, said this donation will allow the collection to grow even more.
In 2013, donor Glenn Beall made a gift of $100,000 to fund the creation of The Plastics Reading Room, a study space featuring a curated assortment of items from the collection on Bird Library’s sixth floor. Last November, Beall called to notify Thiele of a donor wishing to gift $1 million to the collection in order to hire a permanent curator for it. The donor wishes to remain anonymous, but is a prominent figure and original entrepreneur in the plastics industry.
“He felt he wanted to do something that would help sustain the plastics collection,” Thiele said of the donor’s intentions behind his philanthropy. “As much as plastic is a great material … some of these older things, they need to be stored carefully; they can deteriorate.”
He reflected a need for careful conservation of the older and rarer materials the collection is fortunate to be endowed with.
In just 30 days, Thiele said they were able to get the endowment agreement together and move forward with the advancement of the plastics collection.
Lucy Mulroney, senior director of the Special Collections Research Center, is thrilled with the donation.
There’s something in the collection for everyone, Mulroney said. Architecture and design students will be able to look at prototypes, sketches and drafts, and use that as source material for their own creative processes. She added that science students can use the collection is to think about the chemistry and the evolution of plastic as a biochemical medium.
Because the field of plastics is such a diverse and interdisciplinary one by nature, Thiele said the library is lucky to have such an abundant resource of primary source materials.
Mulroney said there haven’t been a lot students up on the sixth floor using the collection, but hopefully this donation will change that.
“Having this plastics curator come in and be able to work with the faculty to get students in is what we’re really trying to do,” Mulroney said. “Nobody knows about it — we’re a hidden gem.”
Published on March 22, 2016 at 10:11 pm