DesMoines Register
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Retiree V.E. "Felix" Augspurger of Des Moines has been asking about them in recent years and says he finally was told that their whereabouts are unknown.
Nearly 40 years ago, Augspurger was a state employee who helped arrange a display for the coins at the state's former historical building. For the past few years, he has been trying to find out what happened to them.
"At this point, we know the coins are not in their appropriate place," said Jeff Morgan, a spokesman for the museum. It's unclear whether they were misplaced or stolen.
Jim Saunders, spokesman for the Iowa Department of Public Safety, said he could find no report indicating the coins had been stolen, but when he checked with the staff of the State Historical Building this week, he learned that the coins were missing.
"The Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation is interested in pursuing that information," he said. "If anyone knows anything about the coins, we'd like to have them call the DCI." The phone number is 725-6010.
The coins are copper trial strikes made from dies used some 140 years ago by the U.S. Mint. Trial strikes were often made in lighter metals as presentation pieces; the process let the U.S. Mint show what the coins for the next year were going to look like. The collection included two examples of each coin so both sides could be displayed at one time.
It's not the first time something has gone missing at the State Historical Building. In 1997, staff members reported Civil War-era firearms were missing. Some eventually were found in a storage area, but others still are missing, Saunders said. In the past three years, some documents went missing from the building. They later were located, and an arrest was made.
Morgan said security officers no longer patrol the building day and night as they did before budget cuts of the early '90s.
"We are eager to work with the (DCI) to develop leads," he said, referring to the missing coins.
Four of the original 34 copper trial strike coins are still in the museum's permanent collection of 110,000 artifacts.
Here's what museum officials know:
The coin collection was checked after the guns went missing in 1997.
In 1998, it was noted that the coins were not in the spot listed for them.
Nine years later, an investigation is being launched.
The coins apparently came to Iowa through John Kasson, a U.S. representative from Iowa who was chairman of the Committee on Coinage, Weights and Measures. He also was first assistant postmaster general in President Abraham Lincoln's administration in 1861.
It's not known whether the coins were on display in Iowa in the late 1800s, but when they were rediscovered in 1961, they looked awful.
Former State Curator Jack Musgrove found the coins in a cardboard box and gave them to Augspurger, who remembers taking them home and cleaning them in his kitchen. Augspurger said he knew that cleaning coins is not recommended, but he said that at the time he had no choice. The coins were badly tarnished and were covered with some kind of dark material.
John Holden of Garwin made a special display case for the coins in the shape of the state of Iowa. The collection included pennies, 2-cent pieces, 3-cent pieces, half dimes, dimes, quarters, half dollars, and "gold coins" (made of copper) in all denominations. The $20 trial strike pieces are worth about $11,000 each today, according to Steve Contursi, president of Rare Coin Wholesalers of Dana Point, Calif. He estimated the value of a complete collection of cleaned trial strikes from 1867 at $176,000.
Reporter Tom Alex can be reached at (515) 284-8088 or talex@dmreg.com