Placemats

The concept of placemats, or countermats was conceived by New York RCO Karl Reile (deceased).  He brought several different ones he had created to Liberty Dollar University 4 in Evansville, Indiana in September of 2004.  Here is a photo of them.

These placemats all contained actual silver pieces and certificates.  They were rather expensive because of that and quite thick.

Indiana RCO Al Matlock was impressed with the idea and created some of his own, pictured below.  He used a wood backer to hold the silver pieces in, which made them even thicker than Karl's mats.  The certificates in Al's displays were replaced by color photocopies, making them cheaper.  They were suitable for hanging on the wall or laying atop the counter (where they were kind of in the way), but what was really needed was a countermat thin enough to be placed underneath the glass on countertops so they would be easily seen by customers but not in the way.

The top one had all sizes of silver in production at the time, including the 5 ounce which should never have been taken out of it's original air-tite.  It was more for collectors than as a countermat.  The one below was used by merchants.

Then Bernard got involved and designed mats that were more practical.  The first one contained aluminum replicas of the silver pieces, which were a bit thinner than the actual silver pieces but still too thick.  The final design used aluminum foil impressions of the silver pieces, which made them look real but were very thin.  That made the mat thin enough to place under the glass of merchant counters as it needed to be.