As you read these words I am completing a manuscript for the Civil War Token Society, Engravers, Minters, and Distributors of Civil War Tokens. I first discovered the appeal of these tokens around 1953 when as a teenager I was building my mail-order rare coin business. Not long afterward I met George J. Fuld, author and leading light in the Civil War token series. George lived with his family in Wakefield, Massachusetts and taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1958 a visit with him moved CWT into the fast lane in my mind. George had on hand thousands of CWT that he had studied and wanted to sell. Included was his reference collection of Wisconsin store cards, many Raymond album pages filled with William K. Lanphear shop tokens, and other issues. I departed with a large inventory!
Our Empire Topics magazine, launched in 1958, had offerings of CWT for sale. In the December 1958 issue I stated that our stock of Civil War tokens was second to none (see illustration here). I spent hours typing letters offering tokens of special states or designs to a very active clientele of several dozen buyers. In the meantime, George Fuld kept selling me collections and other holdings that had been offered to him. Nearly all were Mint State and very attractive. Likely Collection #4 at $85 would be worth over $200 or more per coin today, or $8,500 to $17,000 for the group!
My finances were such that most of my assets were in Empire Coin Company inventory, and while I enjoyed dealing in colonial coins, Hard Times tokens, Civil War tokens, patterns, medals, pre-1858 Proof coins and other items, I could not afford to collect them in depth. I sold the Wisconsin store card collection to Doug Watson, who was on the staff of Numismatic News in Iola, Wisconsin. This was a definitive holding and formed the basis of a study Doug did on them. These later passed to Robert Kraft, whose memorable collection of Wisconsin tokens was later sold at auction by Richard Hartzog.
By the way, if CWT interest your or have the potential of doing so, check the Civil War Token Society website. Believe it or not, a year’s membership costs only $18! You get four issues of the Civil War Token Journal plus the opportunity to visit with other enthusiasts.
While the above scenario from 1958 is interesting in its own right, it prompted me to do some thinking. Coins, tokens, medals, and paper money have been wonderful investments for those who have carefully formed collections and held them for a period of years. Take a copy of the Guide Book of United States Coins 1958 and compare prices with the new 2019 edition and many values can be multiplied dozens of times over! Amazing! That is, amazing if you are not familiar with numismatic history.
Obsolete paper money of state-chartered banks of the 1782 to 1866 era in grades of VF and EF that sold for under $5 each in 1958 now in many instances bring hundreds of dollars. Amazing! This is the rule, not the exception.
Changing the drift, in 1958 I was at Penn State in the College of Business Administration. As a case study I was assigned a paper on the two leading retailers of the time: Sears, Roebuck & Co. and Montgomery Ward. I picked Sears as the better-run of the two. Elsewhere in commerce, F.W. Woolworth & Co. was omnipresent with red and gold-letter signs, A&P supermarkets had no serious competition in grocery stores, Reader’s Digest was the world’s most popular magazine, TWA was in the front row of airlines.
I haven’t checked, but I will guess that if someone spent $10,000 on a basket of these stocks, they would have little to show for it today. If someone used Guide Book prices to build a type set of United States coins in Mint State—or, never mind Mint State, say Extremely Fine, the investment would probably challenge the million-dollar mark today!
It was in early 1958 that I appeared on the NBC Today Show and was interviewed as to why I had just paid $4,750 for an 1894-S dime. No, I don’t have it now. I sold it to Ambassador R. Henry Norweb who bought it as a gift for his wife, Emery May. Today that same coin would be worth over a million dollars!
How lucky those of us are who have been in numismatics for several decades or more!
