Marie Goe
Mina Stafford, Curator of Education at the Nevada State Museum in Carson City, introduced Rusty Goe to a roomful of museum tour guides in the museum’s south gallery on September 21, by way of mentioning books authored by Rusty. Stafford showed tour guides copies of Rusty’s first book, the award-winning The Mint on Carson Street (2003), followed by his award-winning James Crawford: Master of the Mint at Carson City (2007), and then Rusty’s recently published three-volume set, The Confident Carson City Coin Collector, the Numismatic Literary Guild’s 2021 Book of the Year.
For the next hour, Rusty presented a PowerPoint program that covered topics ranging from the establishment of the Carson City Mint in the 1860s to the transformation of the mint building into the Nevada State Museum in 1941. Rusty summarized the Carson City Mint’s coinmaking period, spanning 1870 to 1893. He reviewed rosters of the mint’s superintendents and coiners, and briefly profiled the rarest coins that have survived from Nevada’s mint.
During the presentation, tour guides learned pertinent facts about the three different coin presses employed at the Carson City Mint, as well as seeing a step-by-step walk-through of the coinmaking process.
Toward the end of his presentation, Rusty emphasized the significance of the museum’s world-class, main 109-piece “CC” coin collection. He highlighted four of the collection’s premier coins, currently ranging in value from $100,000 to $600,000 apiece.
A lively question-and-answer session followed the presentation. Many hands went up in the air, as tour guides solicited information from Rusty about interesting topics.
Overall, the three hours we spent at the Nevada State Museum on this eventful day proved very rewarding.
