New Corrected Coin Book On South African Coins

As a regular numismatic amateur who could hardly give a ch*rp about 19th century South Africa, here's my (hopefully reasonably independent) summary of the situation as I understand it:

- the Griquatown tokens were definitely intended for circulation in said place
- they were successfully sent for said circulation to South Africa
- they were, for multiple reasons, all kinds of unpopular, and are not known to have ever actually circulated (in Griquatown or anywhere else)
- supposedly (I'm unsure of the details) there in fact weren't any people at all in the time and place where they could have possibly circulated (I doubt this is true as stated)
- for a while, confusion in research led to a belief that they widely circulated, which is now known to be untrue
- supposedly some catalogs still hold to that position (makes sense, obsolete info is often hard to dislodge)
- if they did circulate (and, apparently, if they did, it was a very minor affair), they would have been the first circulating currency of South Africa that was not also a circulating currency of some other place
- if not, this title goes to an even more obscure series, which apparently did circulate, but not much else is known about them aside from that
- Scott Balson and, apparently, Ann Stuart believe that the Griquatown tokens did not circulate, and at least the former definitely gives the "oldest" title to the more obscure series mentioned above
- Pierre Nortje and Brian Hern (and whoever Karel is, if they're not either of those two) believe that the Griquatown tokens did circulate and hold the respective "oldest" title, and Nortje in particular had escalated all the way up to major legal threats in his efforts to defend his position
- I'm currently siding with Scott (and Ann), but mostly only because of the "legal threats" part (since, as far as I understand, the side in a dispute - any dispute - that ends up resorting to things like that is almost always wrong, and might in fact already know it)
- the dispute had definitely been somewhat uncivil on all sides (but more so on Pierre Nortje's side)
- we will probably never know whether any of the Griquatown tokens ever actually circulated as money, but if they did, it was a very minor affair
- and I highly suspect that any Griquas who did get a hold of those tokens ended up throwing them away at some point, anyway (the lack of a hole didn't help), so any circulating examples, if they ever existed, would probably not be extant today
- TL/DR: it's a moot point, in both meanings of the word, but Nortje is undeniably wrong by resorting to legal threats


...I'm reminded of a surprisingly similar modern example - the coinage of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Specifically: there is some circumstantial evidence (if you want, I could try to dig up the specific reference) that a few of their coins were actually sent there for circulation in 2005 or so.
There is otherwise no evidence that those coins ever actually circulated, and there are some reasons to believe they did not circulate much, if ever (most notably, because the denominations were tiny - IIRC, the largest was around $0.03).
So, did Nagorno-Karabakh ever have any circulating coinage, or only NCLT?


...Sorry for the wall of text, incidentally.

I wouldn't quite say that the Griqua Town tokens really have no place in numismatic history. They surely have no less place than, let me think of a South African example, the coins of the Orange Free State (which never made it to circulation either).

Wikipedia fudges by calling the Strachan tokens "first widely circulated", which is probably true as stated (depending on the evidence on whether they did, which I don't know much about, if anything - but the Griqua Town tokens apparently, if they did circulate at all, certainly didn't circulate widely).

Hi augsberger, apologies if that is what it comes across as, but it's not who I am and what I meant. For the record, I do not own either coin.

However, I will quote Mr Balson, from his website posted in 2003 "Individual Strachan & Co tokens are rarely sold today. The growing global demand for this currency will mean that the prices will rise".

FROM THE HORSE'S OWN MOUTH:

From: Pierre Nortje
Sent: Saturday, April 1, 2017 6:18 PM
To: Michael Laidlaw
Subject: Re: South African Numismatics



Michael

I have decided to bury the hatchet for once and all - I have publicly acknowledged that I have personalty attacked Scott Balson on the forum.

I also acknowledges that I have copied some of his research so that I can reply to it.

I have now publicly and unequivocally apologized to him - see my latest post on the BOB forum.

I do not know how to return my NNS plaque (to whom must I send it?) but will do it if he wishes me to do that.

I do not wish to be in confrontation with Scott anymore and have posted the reasons for this publicly on the forum today.

Can you please forward this email to him?

Kind regards

Pierre

I note that Nortje edited his post to remove any suggestion he had apologised on the BidorBuy forum at just before 8.30am Sunday morning 2nd April (South African time). You can see his latest edit time at the bottom of the post linked in my post above.

So the link above will now reflect his latest edit and the screen dump here, which I had the foresight to make (knowing this devious man), will reflect what he edited out: http://gwb.com.au/nortjefraud.jpg

The screen dump was taken at about midnight, eight hours earlier.

What is interesting to me is that Karel aka Nortje (or his voice) keeps on suggesting in this same Bidorbuy forum that the book I published on the Strachan and Co tokens with Prof Clive Graham in 1978 was published in 1976.

Nortje knows this is a lie but does not EDIT that very old post seen here: http://forum.bidorbuy.co.za/forum/b...o-token-scam. When you read his comments you will quickly see why a 1978 publication date does not fit.

For the record Prof Michael Laidlaw is a very well respected South African numismatist who will confirm that he forwarded Nortje's email (as cut and past above) to me this weekend.

We now know who Karel on this forum really is.

You can see the facts here while tokencoins.com is being updated: http://www.gwb.com.au/nortje.htm (some links to this page might not work for obvious reasons)

My last observation in this thread.

I spent thirty years researching this subject - material I personally unearthed that resulted in the rewriting and acceptance by just about everyone that the Griquatown tokens failed completely. Before my research it was claimed that they circulated widely for two years. In my view and most others not one Griquatown token ever circulated as money - if they did circulate back then it was as a gift or trinket.

Nortje spent two weeks selectively plagiarising this online research and writing a PDF which claimed the tokens circulated. For that he was given an award by the NNS whose Secretary is Brian Hern author of the coin catalogues that claimed the tokens circulated widely.

Nortje's work was fraud; mine was a lifetime of dedication.

Those are the facts.

Actually the shoe is on the other foot.

How can anyone take you seriously when you claim to be a pillar of the community?

Nortje in his email above belatedly admits to blatant selective plagiarising of my research - something I exposed over 18 months ago - something he earlier refused to admit to even though it was a no brainer.

Is plagiarising research fraud?

Plagiarism is the appropriation of another person's ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit. One form is the appropriation of the ideas and results of others, and publishing as to make it appear the author had performed all the work under which the data was obtained. A subset is citation plagiarism - willful or negligent failure to appropriately credit other or prior discoverers, so as to give an improper impression of priority. This is also known as, "citation amnesia", the "disregard syndrome" and "bibliographic negligence". Arguably, this is the most common type of scientific misconduct. Sometimes it is difficult to guess whether authors intentionally ignored a highly relevant cite or lacked knowledge of the prior work. Discovery credit can also be inadvertently reassigned from the original discoverer to a better-known researcher. This is a special case of the Matthew effect.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scien...c_misconduct

You obviously know little or nothing about research. What is described above from Wikipedia is exactly what Nortje did and one of the main reasons he has now agreed to return his NNS award. (See his email above).

As someone who researched the Griqua for 30 years let's be quite clear about one thing.

The overwhelming majority of the Griqua at Griquatown in 1817-20 had no understanding of money. (This view is supported by Prof Arndt - yes they understood traditional barter like beads which they could string around their neck.)

Not only that but the findings of both Ann Stuart (undertaken recently on behalf of the publisher of the catalogue) and I are that there is no record anywhere of a single token actually circulating. In fact her report is headed the FAILED tokens....

Intent does not equal success regardless of how much money the LMS threw at it it.

The publisher of the catalogue has quoted the wrong word used by Helm... he states and I quote - according to your post:
"The fact that it is recorded (Helm 1821) it was distributed at too cheap a rate only can be accounted for that it was issued but unfortunately not recorded as received. Yes, distribution must mean something given in return but we could not account for what that was..." The word used by Helm is DISPOSED NOT distributed - distributed is only ever used by Nortje in his fraudulent research. Disposed means to get rid of permanently - it does NOT imply circulation. Stuart and I quote the correct word DISPOSED, used by Helm, in our research.

As the publisher of the catalogue also points out on Stuart's research "As to the influence of who and how many understood money at the time - this was not part of the report and we can only speculate that..."

That is the difference between my 30 years of research on the people and Stuart's very focused research on just the tokens. I have a very clear understanding of the environment at Griquatown at that time - where Stuart had no understanding of this. How you can ignore the environment of the people back then defeats me.

I give you the six key facts confirming that not one Griquatown token ever circulated - there are many others. It's plain logic:

1 When Anderson returned to Griquatown from Cape Town in 1814 the people there had lost faith in him. In fact the major Griqua families left Griquatown leaving the settlement a ghost town until 1820.
2 There was no shop in Griquatown in which to trade the tokens.
3 There was no hole in the tokens to facilitate carrying them with their beads.
4 The people there had no understanding of money (Prof Arndt)
5 The tokens are never listed as assets anywhere, at any time, by the LMS at Griquatown
6 There is not one reference to them by Campbell in his second book covering his trip to South Africa and Griquatown in 1820. In fact Campbell's only related comment in this book is that "regular trades do not exist in Griquatown".. the resident missionary at the time, Anderson, makes no reference to them at any time despite writing a large number of letters and keeping journals.

The publisher of the catalogue advised me a couple of weeks ago by email that although he recognises the Griquatown tokens were a complete failure he would be speculating that a few might have circulated. I have no understanding of the outside forces that might have forced this concession by him but speculation is not fact.

As a direct result of this speculation I have withdrawn my support of his coin catalogue. I advised him a couple of weeks ago that he could not use my research on the Strachan tokens in his coin catalogue. I had earlier freely supplied this to him at his request. I withdrew my permission because I could not ethically be seen to support what his new coin catalogue claims.

I am happy to wait for the time when logic prevails and speculation is cast aside and the FACT that not one Griquatown token ever circulated as money is finally accepted.

The fact is that until a direct reference from that time to the tokens circulating is found it is incorrect to claim that even one circulated. This fact is not rocket science.