US Notes
An Interview with Smithsonian Coin and Currency Curator Richard Doty
By Maribeth Keane and Ben Marks — When I was 8 years old I had a friend named Jimmy Hood. His father was in the army, and he had been on the staff with General MacArthur when MacArthur was effectively the boss of Japan right after World War II. Jimmy had some Japanese and Chinese coins, so we swapped a few things, as kids will do. And at that point, in 1950, I just got hooked on coins. I also had some paper currency when I was a kid, thanks to a friend who had been in the Flying Tigers. He brought back some Indian rupees...
Tony Swicer Explains How He Started Collecting Kentucky Bank Notes
By Maribeth Keane and Anne Galloway — I started collecting when I was about 10 years old. My father was in the Air Force, so he got me started collecting everything—coins, stamps, military insignias, baseball cards, all kinds of stuff. I settled on coins, maybe because they’re worth the most money. I don’t know why particularly, but I just did. I collected coins from probably 1959 to the late ’70s when I sold my collection. I collected dollar-size metals for 10 years, and I sold that collection in about 1990. Then I...