Arts & Entertainment
A Chicago Coin Collector Planned Treasure Hunts to Share His Collection. Things Changed When Immigration Agents Arrived
Jon Martin started his coin collection about 20 years ago and has amassed somewhere in the ballpark of 600 pieces.
In a bid to connect with his community and perhaps get more people interested in numismatics, the Rogers Park resident recently decided to give away some of his collection to neighbors in a scavenger hunt-style game — hiding coins around the neighborhood and posting clues of their whereabouts to the social media platform Nextdoor.
It became a big hit.
“I kind of expected most of the interest to be from older guys because that’s usually the demographic of people who collect, especially this era of coinage, are elderly people,” Martin said. “There are young people of all ages, college students, moms, dads, the guy who runs the store up here near Howard — it’s been really cool how broad the appeal has been. I was surprised by that.”
Martin collects mostly early American coins that were minted from 1793 to 1835, handmade pieces that came about before the invention of the steampress. They’re poorly made, “almost hilariously so,” said Martin, which is something he enjoys about them — that no two coins from that era are alike. “And some of them are extremely rare. There’s less than a hundred of these in the world,” he said in reference to a draped bust half cent.
Martin has relinquished six coins with the goal of giving away 10 before the year ended. Plans changed once so-called “Operation Midway Blitz” touched down in Chicago and Rogers Park became one of the communities targeted by federal immigration agents.
After seeing the fear and concern in his neighborhood, Martin put the coin hunt on pause.
Rogers Park is one of the most diverse neighborhoods in Chicago with more than 60 different languages spoken in the area; nearly 25% of residents are foreign born.
“Everyone from everywhere lives here,” Martin said. “It’s one of the reasons I like it so much. As much as I enjoyed doing the coin hunt and getting to interact with people in my neighborhood, it’s not worth it to put anybody at risk for it. I had originally intended to just postpone it, and I had put up a post about that, and there were a handful of unpleasant people who responded and I just decided to go ahead and cancel after that.”
While most of the comments were supportive and understanding, some harassing messages taunted Martin, saying things to the effect of “you liberals love crime” and discouraged him from moving forward with the treasure hunt for now.
He still wants to give away the last four coins and is open to restarting the treasure hunt in the future once immigration enforcement dies down. One idea he’s floating is gifting them to Chicagoans who have been illegally apprehended and then released by ICE, but he’s still considering the best way to spend the remaining silver.
“I was thinking if I saw a random neighbor, of just saying ‘here you go,’ but then again, if they hadn’t heard about it, then I’m just a random strange man approaching people on the street,” Martin said. “I don’t know, any ideas?”
