Date of Number One Dime

creator of Duckburg and Scrooge McDuck

Postby pangea797 » Sun Jan 28, 2007 10:17 pm

I know that Don Rosa Uses 1875 as the date for Scrooge's number one dime but I haven't been able to find any place where he cites a Barks story for establishment of that as the date. Is there anything, drawing or words, in a Barks story implying or stating that it's 1875, or did Rosa come up with that date based on other events and timelines?
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Postby Ridder ter Geit » Sun Jan 28, 2007 10:48 pm

I'm not sure, but didn't the date came up in the first story featuring Magica The Spell?
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Postby Robb_K » Mon Jan 29, 2007 12:24 am

After looking at the Barks Magica stories, and the older (pre-Magica) US stories in which "Old number 1" was mentioned and shown, I believe barks never mentioned its mint year, or showed the coin up close enough to reveal the date.
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Postby pangea797 » Mon Jan 29, 2007 4:06 am

I thought maybe Barks had a close up picture of it in one of his stories. Rosa must have decided on the date based on his own timeline of Scrooge's life. It had to be 1877 or earlier based on when he said Scrooge got it. Rosa has noted all the Barks references he used for the Life and Times series so I'm thinking that he must have mentioned somewhere how he came up with that date. I've been thinking about getting one even though it's just from a comic book story, it wouldn't be my first dime, I didn't earn it, Scrooge wouldn't pay more than a dime for a dime, etc.
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Postby Egg » Mon Jan 29, 2007 10:30 am

pangea797 wrote:I know that Don Rosa Uses 1875 as the date for Scrooge's number one dime but I haven't been able to find any place where he cites a Barks story for establishment of that as the date.

Rosa uses and ignores Barks ingredients at his own will. This arbitrariness makes it very hard, if not impossible, to use Rosa's work for historical investigation of Barks. They are too different. Worlds apart.

Rosa is a "theologian" of his own self duck vision. This vision has a background in "underground" fandom where fans write "dirty" parody tributes about established heroes. There are more artists who like to play around with children's icons, preferably clean "innocent" ones like Disney's Mickey Mouse, turning them into "adult" stuff.
For example, there's been an artist who used Barbie dolls for his own creations, turning them into sexual oriented "adult" toys.

pangea797 wrote:Is there anything, drawing or words, in a Barks story implying or stating that it's 1875, or did Rosa come up with that date based on other events and timelines?

In the dining room scene of Barks 'Billions in the Hole' (US 33) a date is shown of Scrooge's "the first dime I ever owned". (12.5) But, at least in the CBL, this date is difficult to read. It looks like "1899".
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Postby Robb_K » Mon Jan 29, 2007 9:44 pm

I'll have to look closely at that through a magnifying glass. My normal reading (magnifying) glasses are TRIPLE strength (3x normal), and also looking through a magnifying glass (5x) will help make the image large enough (I hope). But, I fear, that if the mint date is 1899, Barks will have perjured himself, as he was already an adult in 1903, when he bought his broadloom coat (when it was apparantly new). However, then we will need to assume that he bought the coat second hand). If he had still been a teen or a child in 1899 how could he have participated in the Klondike Gold Rush in 1897? The coin should properly be dated in the 1880s or 1870s.
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Postby Robb_K » Wed Jan 31, 2007 9:21 am

You are correct, Egg. Barks had, indeed, told and shown us that the first dime Scrooge ever owned had a mint year of 1899. Therefore, he couldn't have gotten a US dime in Scotland for shining shoes (as shown by Rosa). Scrooge couldn't have earned his first dime until reaching The Yukon, when he was prospecting for gold in 1897-99. Barks didn't show a young Scrooge earning his first dime in Scotland OR USA. But, they didn't have dimes in Scotland. They had schillings. So, Scrooge must have earned his first dime as a young man in his early 20s in The Klondike area of The Yukon (Canada), because he had to earn it in 1899 or after. In the early 1900s, he was already in different places. But this problem now makes one wonder why he was so attached to that first US dime, when he probably earned many British coins earlier in his life, and also must have earned many US coins before that (albeit, NOT A DIME, for some freak reason). So Barks was not very consistent with his overall history of Scrooge and the Ducks. And Rosa was not able to resolve those problems, and created new problems based on differences from what Barks told us.
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Postby pangea797 » Mon Feb 05, 2007 6:53 am

I don't think Barks expected that people would be disecting his stories fifty years later and be concerned with chronological inconsistencies. I think he just gave us a general idea of Scrooge's history. Barks showed the dime to be 1899 so that's what it is. If another author wants to use a different date that's fine too. I don't think we should assume that Scrooge earned other kinds of coins in Scotland prior to getting the dime. The dime is not meant to be the first dime that he earned, rather it is the first money he earned. It just happened to be a dime. At least that's how I've always looked at it. As long as we're pointing out inconsistencies, the 1899 dime in the story appears to have an eagle on the side with the date. However, in 1899 the side with the date actually had Liberty's head on it.

Since we're on the subject of Scrooge's money, I recently saw that Scrooge is on Forbes' Fictional 15 list. (http://www.forbes.com/2006/11/14/forbes ... _sort.html) They have him listed as the third richest fictional character for 2006. The guy in first has $36 billion. It's been suggested that they based Scrooge's wealth on a calculation of three cubic acres of money. I'm not sure how accrately that can be calculated. Barks says that Scrooge has five multiplujillion, nine impossibidillion, seven fantasticatrillion dollars and sixteen cents. The best idea of his worth I've seen is in "Tricky Experiment" US39 where Scrooge has converted all his money to million dollars bills. On the first page is a picture of a stack of boxes. Each box appears to have ten stacks of money, and if we assume Scrooge and Donald to be three feet tall, each box is one foot high. A stack of one hundred bills is .43 inches high (http://www.ehd.org/science_technology_largenumbers.php). Therefore a stack one foot high would have 2791 bills and each box would have 27910 bills. The stack of boxes has at least eighteen boxes making the total amount of cash $502 billion. That easily puts him at the top of the list, and that's just his cash on hand, not counting his factories, mines, etc. His total wealth is probably around $1 trillion. Perhaps we should inform Forbes about that so they can correct their 2007 list.
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Postby Robb_K » Mon Feb 05, 2007 10:11 am

Good point about Sccrooge's wealth. He would clearly have more total worth than the other fictional characters.

Carl told me he NEVER tried to ensure one perfect, clear version of the setting of Duckburg and the history of The Ducks. He just used characters, geography and past events as needed to make each individual story. he did try to avoid obvious inconsistancies in stories within a reasonable time of each other's release dates (within a year or two). But he sometimes overlooked details even in such stories. He told me that he didn't even have proof he had ANY readers, as he had NEVER seen a kid buy a comic book with his story in it (only superhero comics)!!! You are correct. Barks didn't think anyone would be disecting his stories.

If that 1899 US dime was the FIRST money Scrooge ever earned, he reached adulthood and traveled across the Atlantic Ocean and had several adventures BEFORE he earned any money!!!! OR (as, apparantly MUST be the case, that 1899 coin was MIS-STRUCK (a mistake in the mint). Apparantly, it should have read: 1879. Barks' own words were :"The first DIME I ever earned". I assume that if he had meant "The first coin I ever earned" or "The first money i ever earned", he would have phrased it THAT way. If that isn't true, then the time line of events in The Ducks' parallel World is not the same as in our World, or Scrooge earned only bartered returns until he was a youthful adult in the Klondike Gold Rush.
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Postby Egg » Wed Feb 07, 2007 1:10 am

pangea797 wrote:I don't think Barks expected that people would be disecting his stories fifty years later and be concerned with chronological inconsistencies. I think he just gave us a general idea of Scrooge's history. Barks showed the dime to be 1899 so that's what it is. If another author wants to use a different date that's fine too.

If another author decides to change one of the few "facts" Barks has given, then the result not compatible with Barks anymore. If Barks says the first dime is from 1899, then why should it be changed to 1875?
http://www.duckmania.de/images/60poster02.jpg

pangea797 wrote:I don't think we should assume that Scrooge earned other kinds of coins in Scotland prior to getting the dime. The dime is not meant to be the first dime that he earned, rather it is the first money he earned. It just happened to be a dime. At least that's how I've always looked at it. As long as we're pointing out inconsistencies, the 1899 dime in the story appears to have an eagle on the side with the date. However, in 1899 the side with the date actually had Liberty's head on it.

The dime could be a rare dime having an eagle on the side with the date 1899. This would make the dime even more special for Scrooge. He's fond of money. There are some Barks stories about the value of misprinted coins and stamps. In that light, the dime isn't just only valuable in being Scrooge's first earned dime, but also very valuable in plain cash. :)

Robb_K wrote:If that 1899 US dime was the FIRST money Scrooge ever earned, he reached adulthood and traveled across the Atlantic Ocean and had several adventures BEFORE he earned any money!!!! OR (as, apparantly MUST be the case, that 1899 coin was MIS-STRUCK (a mistake in the mint). Apparantly, it should have read: 1879. Barks' own words were :"The first DIME I ever earned". I assume that if he had meant "The first coin I ever earned" or "The first money i ever earned", he would have phrased it THAT way. If that isn't true, then the time line of events in The Ducks' parallel World is not the same as in our World, or Scrooge earned only bartered returns until he was a youthful adult in the Klondike Gold Rush.

The dime could be the first money he earned in the sense of making his first profit. In 'North of the Yukon' (US 59), Soapy Slick. in Goldboom, Alaska, says: "Here it is - the I.O.U he gave me in 1898!" (4.3) According to this story Scrooge had a debt in 1898. He "loaned money [...] for a grubstake" (2.8).
http://coa.inducks.org/coa/c1/story.php/0/W+US+++59-01

So, apparently, despite any earlier travels, Scrooge had to borrow money as late as 1898. In that respect, the year 1899 for Scrooge's "the first DIME I ever owned" in 'Billions in the Hole' (US 33) could mean that the dime is the first dime Scrooge owned for himself, after getting out of debts.
http://coa.inducks.org/s.php/x/W+US+++33-02

'The Invisible Intruder' (US 44) is, according to an Inducks, a story written by Vic Lockman. It shows a "duckling" Scrooge with glasses, shining shoes ("Shine 5c", 1.2). After Scrooge's begins using suspenders, the story the price goes down with a cent ("Shine 4c", 1.4). This art-only story tells how "Uncle Scrooge's first production line was born" (1.4), by "mass mechanization" (1.3), and "how he grew bigger" (2.1), using "suspenders" (2.2).
The price of 5 dollarcents says nothing about a dime that Barks himself has already mentioned in his own self-created stories before.
http://coa.inducks.org/coa/c1/story.php/0/W+US+++44-04

According to an unidentified interview, of apparently 1994, Barks has said about art-only stories:
- - - - - - - -
10. Did I write and draw all of those stories alone?
Not all of the stories. There are perhaps twenty stories, more or less, that I developed from suggestions that I bought from friends or which were sent to me by the editors. I do not consider stories that I drew from scripts sent to me by the editors as my work, although I often revised the scripts extensively. The office gave me great freedom to create story subjects and to invent characters, and they never complained when I rehashed one of their other writer's scripts.
- - - - - - - -
http://bb.mcdrake.nl/engdisney/viewtopic.php?p=2050#p2050

If Barks says don't he don't consider art-only stories as his work, "although I often revised the scripts extensively", then the 'The Invisible Intruder' is non-existant fantasy-fantasy, or at least still much less of any importance in comparison to a Barks-story like 'Billions in the Hole'.

Why would an author make two exceptions in a Scrooge life-story, changing a date (from 1899 to 1875) and using a story written by Lockman? Or even three exceptions, when rejecting the looks of "duckling" Scrooge. Why leave out the glasses and the HDL-like cap, if the looks of a Barks-drawn duckling Scrooge could be the only significance of this art-only story?
How believable does that make the change of the date 1899 for Scrooge's eagle dime, if there's no line in what it counted and what is changed at will?

Egg would like to figure out a Scrooge life-story by using clear rules in how to count "facts" given by Barks. One rule could be that one needs to have to very good explanation when trying to reject or change Barks "facts". If Barks mentions 1899 for a eagle dime as being the first dime Scrooge owned, then why not? What could be a counter-proof?
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Postby Robb_K » Wed Feb 07, 2007 4:53 am

Apparantly, Rosa decides that SOME details Barks used are "true" in The Ducks' history, and some are "false" (or just jokes, or "not serious" facts), even though there is no conclusive evidence to refute those facts he refuses to use. He is entitled to write any story details he wants, as long as they don't go against the Disney Comics rules, or the general well-known characteristics of the characters and general setting. But why stick so closely to SOME Barks details, and not others?
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Postby pangea797 » Fri Feb 09, 2007 7:45 am

The plan was to find out what the date of the dime was so I could get one but it looks like there are enough inconsistencies that it wouldn't have the significance that I originally thougt it would. On the other hand if I can buy the premise of three foot tall talking ducks that wear shirts but no pants, I could probably feel ok about an 1899 dime with an eagle on the front, that may or may not have been Scrooge's first earned money.
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Postby Robb_K » Fri Feb 09, 2007 9:22 am

If life were PERFECT, it would be boring!
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Postby Egg » Mon Feb 26, 2007 6:52 pm

It even gets more hazy, as Rosa did not follow Barks's art-only story of Scrooge's youth (US 44), but a story drawn by Tony Strobl (US 50). A story which Barks has nothing to do with at all.

In an introduction to the first episode of The Life and Times of $crooge McDuck Don Rosa reportedly writes: "I regard any $crooge tale not written by Barks to be apocryphal. However in UNCLE $CROOGE #50 there was a story drawn by Tony Strobl which showed a young $crooge earning his first dime by cleaning a ditchdigger's boots."

This Strobl-story (art-only) has been identified as 'Chairman of the Bored' (S 63099), a.k.a. 'Getting That Healthy Wealthy Feeling'.
http://coa.inducks.org/s.php/x/S+63099
According to Inducks, the plot and script were created by Carl Fallberg.

In his Gladstone-article 'Raiders of the Lost Barks', Geoffrey Blum writes:

"That Healthy, Wealthy Feeling," drawn by Tony Strobl. On the third page Scrooge reminisces: "There's Old Number One --- the first dime I ever earned... Just to touch it has always brought me good luck! I'll never forget when I got it... As a shine boy, my first customer was a ditch-digger! It took me a half hour to chip the mud off his boots! But when he pressed that dime into my sweaty little palm, I was the happiest young duck in the world!"

(Source: Gladstone album 'Uncle Scrooge Adventures' No. 42 - Isle of Golden Geese)

In a later published March 31, 1991 letter to Rosa, Barks writes about the dime's origin:

Now about the story of how Uncle Scrooge earned his first dime, you may get some complaints. I think I mentioned once in an early story that he earned that coin by shining some man's particularly muddy shoes. Wish I could remember the issue number, etc. Was his client a miner? A nobleman? A banker? Can't recall.
What you say about the coin being an American dime does bring up the possibility his client was a visiting tourist. And that could cause young Scrooge to be suspicious of the strange coin's value. This would be a good time to start building the dime's mysterious power.
Scrooge's every attempt to trade the coin for negotiable ha'pennies, or whatever, could lead him into a luck-blessed situation that enriches him to some degree. By the time the dime has helped him amass enough moola to buy a ticket to America, young Scrooge has become aware of the coin's beneficial influence on his fortunes. But does he buy a ticket to America? Hell no! He works for his passage across the seas -- perhaps by shining all the sailors' shoes with his old shoe shining outfit.
I don't know how the above fantasizing jibes with your planning of the plot business. I only included it to demonstrate the fecundity of the plot you've invented. Gimmicks and gags seem to grow in it like compound interest.
Anyway, I don't know which tale you refer to when you say I drew a story once in which someone else wrote of the dime's origin. I've forgotten it completely. Glad I'm no longer writing for a living.

(Source: Gladstone album 'Uncle Scrooge Adventures' No. 42 - Isle of Golden Geese)
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Postby Egg » Mon Feb 26, 2007 7:00 pm

Egg wrote:"That Healthy, Wealthy Feeling," drawn by Tony Strobl. On the third page Scrooge reminisces: "There's Old Number One --- the first dime I ever earned... Just to touch it has always brought me good luck! I'll never forget when I got it... As a shine boy, my first customer was a ditch-digger! It took me a half hour to chip the mud off his boots! But when he pressed that dime into my sweaty little palm, I was the happiest young duck in the world!"

(Source: Gladstone album 'Uncle Scrooge Adventures' No. 42 - Isle of Golden Geese)

Correction. The given quoted text of Scrooge in Strobl's 'That Healthy, Wealthy Feeling' (US 50) should contain bold lettering:
"There's Old Number One --- the first dime I ever earned... Just to touch it has always brought me good luck! I'll never forget when I got it... As a shine boy, my first customer was a ditch-digger! It took me a half hour to chip the mud off his boots! But when he pressed that dime into my sweaty little palm, I was the happiest young duck in the world!"

In plain text:
"There's Old Number One --- the first dime I ever earned... Just to TOUCH it has always brought me GOOD LUCK! I'll NEVER forget when I got it... As a shine boy, my first customer was a ditch-digger! It took me a half hour to chip the mud off his boots! But when he pressed that dime into my sweaty little palm, I was the happiest young duck in the world!"
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