Boy With A Coin

#29

01.29.10

Photo

T, Q and I were walking through an open air market on Bonaire Island when T spotted a black velveteen pouch with a Jolly Roger logo, and suggested we buy it to organize the shells Q had been collecting on the different beaches we were visiting.  The bag cost $2.95US, and I remember being annoyed that it wasn't just $3US.  Selling something for $X.99 or $X.95 doesn't make sense to me in the U.S. of A., and it doesn't make sense to me on Bonaire Island.  I guess there is marketing psychology behind it; but to me, it's just another demonstrative case of "we're all idiots".  If we're more willing to buy a $2.95US velveteen pouch than a $3US velveteen pouch, well, then we're all dunces and half-wits and don't deserve to reproduce.

Where was I?  Ah, yes.  The pouch.  Fortunately for me, haggling is not customary on Bonaire.  I loathe haggling.  In fact, I actually have my own way of "reverse haggling" that I developed over two years in Guatemala.  When the vendor seems hell bent on haggling, I go along with it until we reach an accepted price.  Then I pay 10-25% more than the original asking price and we all walk away happy.  The last thing I want to do is talk down the price on an article that will potentially feed and clothe humans who are likely living in meager conditions.  I'm no saint, just a guy with a conscience and a guy who feels right lucky to have been born when, where, and to whom he was.  That might be the least intelligible sentence I have ever written.  I think I'll keep it!

Back to the pouch.  Since we weren't forced to haggle, I gave the vendor $3US and was just about ready to walk away when I saw the lady hold out a Buffalo Nickel.  Imagine that!  A real, live, bonafide, genuine U.S. standard issue 1935 Buffalo Nickel.  Wikipedia says the likelihood of getting a buffalo nickel from circulation these days is about 1:25,000.  I bet I haven't gotten a buffalo nickel but twice in the last 15 years.  And it is, above all others, the most beautiful coin ever made

The hard part is photographing the thing.  I've tried photographing neat wheat pennies, mercury dimes and buffalo nickels before under excellent lighting conditions and with a macro lens on the camera... and usually they turn out crap-appy.  So to attempt an iPhone photo of my prized coin was borderline ridiculous; but I was determined to at least try. I'd been carrying it around since I got it last week, and today while at work I had the chance to experiment under different lighting conditions and backgrounds.  (You'll note I had to actually go to work to find time to do something non-work related.  Sigh.)

It turns out it matters a lot what you choose as the background when photographing coins.  I shot it on my laminate desktop (crappy photo); plain white paper (crappy photo); small brick of polished granite (crappy photo), a slab of raw pork rump roast (crappy photo), and then a standard cheap-o napkin from the cafeteria (relatively nice photo!).  I think it has to do with undesirable light reflection from the prior surfaces, and more desirable light absorption by the latter surface, but that's coming from a guy who bothers to fret over why people respond psychologically to penny or nickel discounts in merchandising.  So don't pay me too much mind, please.  Instead, put it to your physics professor neighbor who likes to raise rabbits in his or her backyard and who wears his or her polyester pants up near his or her armpits.  He or she will have a better idea than I do.

I think the detail in the shown obverse (front) of the coin is quite nice, considering the focal point for the iPhone camera is pretty long and this coin is pretty small.  The photos all came out with the coin looking golden; so I had to increase the exposure by about 25% and then sharpen it... and I'm quite pleased with the result.  I'll post some other attempts I made, but feel the cheap napkin worked the best.  It also adds a little texture to the photo, and I like the random element of cropped ink writing, too.  

Here were other shots, including the reverse of the coin with the buffalo:

Gorgeous!

This was the original of the reverse shown above that I had cropped and processed digitally using Photogene.

Shot on plain white copier paper; less detail and less focus, no?

Same as the shot above, except I "cooled" the temperature a bit in an attempt to get the nickel more "nickel", and less golden, and the paper less beige.  I think it worked, but the focus is still less than when shot on the napkin, in my opinion.

This is the shot on a slab of raw pork rump roast; not much better than the plain white paper.  (And don't even think about asking why I have a slab of raw pork rump roast in my cubicle - did your mother teach you no manners?!)

Music

Boy with a Coin by Iron & Wine is a wonderful song off the 2007 album The Shepherd's Dog. Iron & Wine is really just one guy - a folkie singer-songwriter named Sam Beam, who got his start in film making rather than music. His music is released on none other than SubPop. What a diverse and epic label!  His music is compared to two of my favorite musicians of all time, Nick Drake and Elliott Smith, so it was a no-brainer that I'd migrate toward him.

His vocal delivery is usually whisper quiet, and I like how he features some hand-clapping in this track which reminds me of sunny afternoons in the Plaza Mayor of Salamanca circa 1992.  This song is super-deep.  If you listen to it 20 or 30 times you might have 20 or 30 impressions of what he is referring to.  I've listened to it more than 100 times, perhaps 10 times just today in preparing this blog entry.  In my estimation it deals with the interconnectedness of everyone and everything, for better or for worse, and the ugliness of profiting from someone else's loss. 

The boy finds a coin in a weedy field littered with bullets and trade magazines where a car flipped over.  So he benefits from the tragedy of others.  I don't really want to write what I think the girl who finds a bird in the snow means... it makes me melancholy just thinking about it.  So these two supposedly innocent children have either benefited or been harmed by the actions of others though they didn't really ask for, or deserve, either event.  It just happened "when God left the ground to circle the earth".  In the final stanza, the boy throws away his coin into the sea, perhaps angrily (the coin was "crammed in his jeans"), and makes a wish before returning to the place "that all of us burn".  I think his wish is that he never found the coin after realizing the circumstances surrounding his finding it.

I'd love to get together with a group of people who have pondered this song and discuss it.  Which reminds me - why are there book clubs, but no music clubs?  I want a club where we meet weekly to discuss music and lyrics.  Can't you see it?  Everyone leaning back in leather couches with a beverage or food stuff of their choosing, lights on low, the music blowing?  I want that club... I need that club.  Afterall, I am the Boy with a Coin (though I have a clear conscience about my nickel).

Parting Comments

The buffalo nickel is actually just a nickname for the "Indian Head Nickel", which was created by the sculptor James Earle Fraser.  The nickel was circulated from 1913 to 1938.  Since nickel is such a soft metal, it is rare to find one with the date completely intact and legible.  So my coin from Bonaire is really quite exceptional.  The mint is always indicated just below the "FIVE CENTS" on the reverse, and since my coin doesn't show S (San Francisco) or D (Denver), that means it was minted in my old stomping grounds of Philadelphia (no P).  According to Wikipedia again, the Indian Head on the obverse is a composite of three different chiefs of the early 1900's - Sioux, Cheyenne and Kiowa.  The buffalo is believed to be modeled after a bison called Black Diamond who resided at the Central Park Zoo.  I looked up the value of my buffalo nickel and it's listed at $0.35US.  I scoff in the gener-al di-rection of anyone daring to offer me $0.35US for my nickel!  I wouldn't take 100 times that (but would strongly consider 1000 times that...)

Until tomorrow... thank you for looking, listening and reading.  CCE