Fact V Fantasy - The Role Of The Internet

As a numismatist who has spent over 30 years researching his specific areas of interest in his hobby one of the most frustrating challenges I have faced is getting the publishers of coin books in South Africa to rectify what are some glaring errors.

All too often the publishers simply go with the flow and parrot what has been published before under their name adding another layer of paint to the fantasy and hiding the reality.

In South Africa I have, for nearly ten years now, offered an open challenge to anyone who has recognised credentials in the early history of South African numismatics to publicly debate me on the truth behind the country's first circulating indigenous currency.

This debate has been extended to anyone - including Brian Hern who currently publishes the S African coin books and claims the Griquatown were bona fide coins and circulated for two years before being withdrawn (his source: Parson - 1927).

No one has ever accepted the challenge to my proposition that the Griquatown tokens (not coins) never circulated and were a complete and utter failure. The fact is that not one Griquatown token ever circulated as money.

I have debated the subject long and hard on the Bid or Buy forum in South Africa in the past with some of the country's best known collectors and dealers. When they were provided with specific references that they could look up which destroy the fanciful argument that the Griquatown tokens ever circulated at all they disappear into the proverbial bush but still hang onto the fantasy carried in Hern's books suggesting that they did.

The internet is a wonderful medium for education and research. Without it I would never have been able to put together the comprehensive argument that I have (based on fact) that a few key areas in the early numismatic history of South Africa as presented in so many recent coin books is complete fantasy and devoid of any truth or factual basis.

I live in hope that some day soon these fantasies will be corrected in a coin catalogue on South African coins.

This can only be good for our hobby.

Scott Balson