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Five Facts

Gerald Tebben goes behind the scenes and explores many offbeat trails in bringing to the forefront the long-lost information that makes coins so special in "Coin Lore."

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Less is more

When Dilbert’s boss says, “We have to learn to do more with less,” nothing good happens to Dilbert in this Feb. 11, 2013, comic strip. With coins, though, less can be more. Copyright 2013 Scott Adams Inc / Dist by Universal Uclick

Less is more.

You’ve heard the phrase, maybe even bought into it.

Architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe used the phrase in the 1960s to describe his minimalist style. Living simply advocates adopted the phrase in recent years to describe how a fuller life can be lived with fewer possessions.

In the workplace, though, duck your head when your boss babbles the chant, often in conjunction with some blather about right sizing. Less is more, means less money for you, more for him. If you’re lucky enough to be on the right size of a corporate right-sizing, less is more means more work for you with fewer co-workers to share it. In the corporate world less is never really more. Only more is more.

However, in numismatics, sometimes less is more.

Some coins and pieces of paper money are worth more because of what’s missing, not what’s there. For the next few weeks, Five Facts will be exploring five numismatic items that are worth more than their full-bodied counterparts.

Next: The case of the missing signature