The Wandering Numismatist
Police arrest a man from Fidalgo City carrying a century-old coin collection and a concealed weapon.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Alexander F. Hurd, who says he lives in Fidalgo City, is locked up at police headquarters for carrying concealed weapons. However, police are investigating his right to possess a valuable collection of old coins he has tried to dispose of at a very low figure. Hurd claims he collected them during his world travels. The collection includes German, Prussian, and English coins, and an American half-dollar dated 1812. Capt. Hogle remarked that he has seen much inferior collections sell for over $100.
“Hurd claims that the coins are his and that he has collected them from all parts of the earth during his wanderings.”
Fidalgo City was a short-lived 'paper town' real estate boom project in Skagit County that failed to materialize into the metropolis speculators once imagined. Hurd represents the transient, often desperate characters who populated the PNW frontier, holding onto remnants of the past while trying to survive the hard winter of 1893.
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