Collecting in the 1960s

I enjoyed reading Dave C. Harper's recent reminiscences (NN, July 25) about his early days as a boy collecting coins in the 1960s. As a fellow member of the Class of '63, in my case my high school graduation year, his reflections brought to mind many pleasant memories, and as I read I compared my experiences to his. Perhaps NN readers, particularly those from the "baby boom" generation, would also enjoy reading other recollections.

I started collecting coins when I was thirteen, in 1959. I'm not exactly sure just how it began. I don't remember finding a valuable coin in circulation, or any particular individual encouraging me, or giving me an interesting coin. Perhaps it was something genetic, an irresistible combination of Scottish ancestry on my father's side and bank employees on my mother's. Scots do have a reputation for pinching pennies, perhaps indicating some sort of special liking for them! My mother's father was the Secretary in a bank in Rochester, New York, and her brother, my uncle, after whom I was named, was a bank guard.

In any case, my earliest numismatic activity involved starting a Lincoln cent collection, and organizing a coin club among my friends. I still have my original Whitman Lincoln cent folder, with a carefully printed title I added at the top of the first page indicating the collection was begun in September, 1959. And I remember holding meetings with that little club of maybe five or six boys about my age. I also recall riding my bicycle a couple of miles to the nearest bank, usually with a friend from the club, and buying rolls of pennies which were promptly sorted through in the alley beside the bank and then exchanged for more rolls until it was time to go home. Thank you indulgent Security Trust bank clerks!

Lincoln cents were really the only affordable series for a boy on a twenty-five cent a week allowance. And I put a lot of effort into filling the series with circulation finds. Of course today that would not be possible unless the series was post-wheat era reverse Lincolns. In those days, way back at the end of the Golden Fifties, you could reasonably expect to eventually find all the dates and mintmarks of Lincoln cents except perhaps the 1909svdb; in fact I almost did.

I suppose it is because there were so many of us completing circulation find sets from 1941 to the 1960s that they are still worth very little. Neither is a complete circulated Lincoln Memorial reverse set very valuable today. So there is not quite the economic allure of series collecting via circulation finds that there was 47 years ago. But the thrill of discovery and the sense of satisfaction from completing such a collection can still be worthwhile!

Rather like Dave Harper, by the time I was sixteen I had a paper route which brought in extra cash. I also received extra money from my mother for digging weeds out of the lawn, and from a little business I had going at school selling bubble gum to classmates for double my cost. That Scottish ancestry again?

But this did not really translate into spending much more on coins. Not long after I started collecting Lincolns from circulation, perhaps about the time I bought my first issue of NN (which I also still have), I developed an interest in type coins and proof sets. My first coin shop purchase followed, a Fine 1865 three cent nickel purchased at the Babin-Natal store in downtown Rochester for about $1.25. I used to love visiting that store, which was really two small shops joined by a connecting doorway half a flight down on Court street. Larry Natal ran the coin shop, and Leonard Babin the adjoining antiques shop.

One time early on I visited the two stores with my friend Steve James. He had an interest in Civil War memorabilia even then, and especially cavalry swords. Babin had a barrel full of them inside the front door of his shop, your choice for $5 each!

Meanwhile I was next door drooling over the Bust half dollars and other amazing old coins in Larry Natal's display cases. I still have the receipt dated March 5th 1960 for $2.89 for the 1960 proof set I purchased there. Chances are good that it was a small date set, but I just don't remember!

Unfortunately a short time later Larry Natal died and Leonard Babin relocated to another store northwest of Rochester, where he remained for many years as a major numismatic dealer in the area. My cherished little era of visits to the Babin-Natal Coin Shop was over all too soon.

By the time I was fifteen I was taking a bus to downtown Rochester every Saturday. The bus fare was my weekly ticket to everything that interested me at the time. I even developed a routine. Since the bus dropped me off in front of the library, I usually went in there first, looking for books on coins and later tropical fish, hunting and golf. Then I walked down Monroe Avenue to Pfluke's pet shop to check out the tropical fish, and over to Court street, where a huge used book and magazine store whose name escapes me now was located. There I could hunt for cheap used literature about coins, especially older issues of Numismatic Scrapbook magazine, which up to about the early 1960s was a main showcase for national coin dealers' stocks, and had informative articles. I also bought there at various times early issues of my favorite comic magazine, Mad, of which I had become a fan when my uncle Ted and Aunt Janice "Bunky" Plank gave me the December issue as a Christmas present in 1956.

From the bookstore it was about two blocks to the coup-de-grace of the weekly downtown trip, Bauer's coin shop on East Main Street over the Genesee River. Actually you couldn't see the river from East Main St., but I usually walked across the Genesee on the Court street bridge, then through an alley by the Lawyers' Cooperative building over to East Main just beyond the coin shop. From the Court stree bridge you could see the river going under the shops on East Main. It reminded me of the old London Bridge in England I had seen pictures of which burned down in the Great Fire of 1666. Eventually, in the 1970s, Rochester's romantic (to me anyway) East Main street equivalent was torn down for somebody's idea of an urban renewal project.

So anyway at Bauer's I'd check out the coins and stamps. I'd inherited a good stamp collection from my absentee father, so the huge bin of stamps for a penny each just inside the shop entrance was a source of some interest, though I cannot remember ever actually buying anything out of it. Odd too that I don't remember buying any particular coins there, though the Bauers and later manager Bob Myers had a good selection. I do remember longing for the Indian head gold coins, offered in EF-AU for around $14 each. Even with my extra sources of income I could never afford one!

At first there was also a shop farther up East Main, near or on East avenue, but as I recall it closed sometime around 1962. I think Bob Myers ran that one, and then when one of the Bauers (George or John) died or retired he took over the shop on the bridge.

From the coin shop I'd walk on up East Main to the basement of Woolworth's just across the main intersection of East Main and Clinton avenue from Sibley's, one of three major department stores in Rochester at the time. Woolworth's had a big low-priced selection of tropical fish, and coin supplies. From there I might go to Sibley's sporting goods department on North Clinton to look over their golf clubs (there in 1962 I bought my first set of Spaldings, which I still use), or across the street to Jay's Record Ranch for the newest hit 45rpm record (Del Shannon's first was a "Runaway" hit, as were various Elvis sides, and Black female groups had the Detroit sound perfected), or over to the sporting goods store on South avenue (where I purchased my first shotgun for $85 in 1963, a brand new Stevens 12-gauge double which I still own) before heading back to the bus stop.

One of the greatest boosts to my ongoing interest in coins at that time was my membership in the Rochester Junior Numismatic Association. One of the oldest in the country, the RJNA met once a month in upper rooms of a Rochester museum on East avenue. When I first joined in 1962, the club advisor was none other than John Jay Pittman. His aggressively friendly manner, glasses and ubiquitous toothy grin reminded me of pictures of Teddy Roosevelt. I didn't learn until many years later what a great collection he had built, but to me he was the epitomy of an ambassador of numismatics.

Before the meetings began, local dealer Bill Elston had coins for sale in a corner of the room. I bought my first two ancient Roman coins from him, a Dupondius of Trajan and an As of Domitian, both of which were in Very Fine condition and neither of which cost me more than $1 each. I still have both of them, and wouldn't part for either for a hundred times what I paid!

Besides getting the opportunity to buy interesting coins, the things I remember most about the RJNA meetings were the big heavy long dark wood tables we sat at, the old gooseneck lamps on those tables which we viewed coins under, and the friendly support from other members and advisors, including Ed Quagliana and Art Cohen after John Jay Pittman. Quagliana went on to achieve great business success, and Art, who became an occasional customer during my early years as a dealer in the 1970s selling British coins by mail, is now dealing mostly in world currency.

I remain proud of my participation in the RJNA, which included a paper I read on the "Decline of the "O" Mint Dollars" after the Treasury discovered and then released to banks thousands of formerly rare date Morgans, and a display I put together with my collecting friend Bob Lauterbach of low grade or damaged type coins, under the theme that it doesn't take a lot of money to compose an interesting and historical collection of U.S. types.

Unlike Dave Harper, I never did "move up" very much to collect other series besides Lincoln cents. I did "mover backwards" to Indian Cents, and also had collections of Jefferson nickels and Roosevelt dimes. But any larger denominations would have just tied up too much of my money, which as you may have gathered I often tended to spend on other interests such as tropical fish, golf and hunting supplies.

After winning two writing awards and graduating from Rush-Henrietta high school in 1963, I began studies in English literature at the University of Rochester with the intention of becoming a journalist. Thanks to their exceptional array of offerings in British and American history, however, I quickly became so deeply interested in that subject that I switched my major from English to History. At the end of my sophomore year In 1965 I worked two summer jobs and sold my better date pennies in order to raise the money necessary to visit England and Scotland for the month of August. Thus for a few years in the middle and later 1960s studies and travels caused my numismatic hobby languished.

After graduating from the U of R in 1967 and Albany State University graduate school in 1968, I took a teaching job at a junior college in Western Massachusetts. The main course I taught those first years was introductory Western Civilization. This further nurtured my interest in European and American history, and I started to respond to dealer ads in NN and other coin periodicals. Astounded to find I could buy nice eighteenth century British halfpennies (which I later discovered were the main circulating copper coinage of Colonial America in the decades surrounding the American Revolution) for only a dollar each, and fine quarter-sized, hand hammered fourteenth century English silver fourpences or groats for ten dollars each, I was hooked all over again!



	Collecting on a Budget in the 1960s by Robert G. Duncan The following was sent to the Editor of Numismatic News in early August 2006. I enjoyed reading Dave C. Harper's recent reminiscences (NN, July 25) about his early days as a boy collecting coins in the 1960s. As a fellow member of the Class of '63, in my case my high school graduation year, his reflections brought to mind many pleasant memories, and as I read I compared my experiences to his. Perhaps NN readers, particularly those from the "baby boom" generation, would also enjoy reading other recollections. I started collecting coins when I was thirteen, in 1959. I'm not exactly sure just how it began. I don't remember finding a valuable coin in circulation, or any particular individual encouraging me, or giving me an interesting coin. Perhaps it was something genetic, an irresistible combination of Scottish ancestry on my father's side and bank employees on my mother's. Scots do have a reputation for pinching pennies, perhaps indicating some sort of special liking for them! My mother's father was the Secretary in a bank in Rochester, New York, and her brother, my uncle, after whom I was named, was a bank guard. In any case, my earliest numismatic activity involved starting a Lincoln cent collection, and organizing a coin club among my friends. I still have my original Whitman Lincoln cent folder, with a carefully printed title I added at the top of the first page indicating the collection was begun in September, 1959. And I remember holding meetings with that little club of maybe five or six boys about my age. I also recall riding my bicycle a couple of miles to the nearest bank, usually with a friend from the club, and buying rolls of pennies which were promptly sorted through in the alley beside the bank and then exchanged for more rolls until it was time to go home. Thank you indulgent Security Trust bank clerks! Lincoln cents were really the only affordable series for a boy on a twenty-five cent a week allowance. And I put a lot of effort into filling the series with circulation finds. Of course today that would not be possible unless the series was post-wheat era reverse Lincolns. In those days, way back at the end of the Golden Fifties, you could reasonably expect to eventually find all the dates and mintmarks of Lincoln cents except perhaps the 1909svdb; in fact I almost did. I suppose it is because there were so many of us completing circulation find sets from 1941 to the 1960s that they are still worth very little. Neither is a complete circulated Lincoln Memorial reverse set very valuable today. So there is not quite the economic allure of series collecting via circulation finds that there was 47 years ago. But the thrill of discovery and the sense of satisfaction from completing such a collection can still be worthwhile! Rather like Dave Harper, by the time I was sixteen I had a paper route which brought in extra cash. I also received extra money from my mother for digging weeds out of the lawn, and from a little business I had going at school selling bubble gum to classmates for double my cost. That Scottish ancestry again? But this did not really translate into spending much more on coins. Not long after I started collecting Lincolns from circulation, perhaps about the time I bought my first issue of NN (which I also still have), I developed an interest in type coins and proof sets. My first coin shop purchase followed, a Fine 1865 three cent nickel purchased at the Babin-Natal store in downtown Rochester for about $1.25. I used to love visiting that store, which was really two small shops joined by a connecting doorway half a flight down on Court street. Larry Natal ran the coin shop, and Leonard Babin the adjoining antiques shop. One time early on I visited the two stores with my friend Steve James. He had an interest in Civil War memorabilia even then, and especially cavalry swords. Babin had a barrel full of them inside the front door of his shop, your choice for $5 each! Meanwhile I was next door drooling over the Bust half dollars and other amazing old coins in Larry Natal's display cases. I still have the receipt dated March 5th 1960 for $2.89 for the 1960 proof set I purchased there. Chances are good that it was a small date set, but I just don't remember! Unfortunately a short time later Larry Natal died and Leonard Babin relocated to another store northwest of Rochester, where he remained for many years as a major numismatic dealer in the area. My cherished little era of visits to the Babin-Natal Coin Shop was over all too soon. By the time I was fifteen I was taking a bus to downtown Rochester every Saturday. The bus fare was my weekly ticket to everything that interested me at the time. I even developed a routine. Since the bus dropped me off in front of the library, I usually went in there first, looking for books on coins and later tropical fish, hunting and golf. Then I walked down Monroe Avenue to Pfluke's pet shop to check out the tropical fish, and over to Court street, where a huge used book and magazine store whose name escapes me now was located. There I could hunt for cheap used literature about coins, especially older issues of Numismatic Scrapbook magazine, which up to about the early 1960s was a main showcase for national coin dealers' stocks, and had informative articles. I also bought there at various times early issues of my favorite comic magazine, Mad, of which I had become a fan when my uncle Ted and Aunt Janice "Bunky" Plank gave me the December issue as a Christmas present in 1956. From the bookstore it was about two blocks to the coup-de-grace of the weekly downtown trip, Bauer's coin shop on East Main Street over the Genesee River. Actually you couldn't see the river from East Main St., but I usually walked across the Genesee on the Court street bridge, then through an alley by the Lawyers' Cooperative building over to East Main just beyond the coin shop. From the Court stree bridge you could see the river going under the shops on East Main. It reminded me of the old London Bridge in England I had seen pictures of which burned down in the Great Fire of 1666. Eventually, in the 1970s, Rochester's romantic (to me anyway) East Main street equivalent was torn down for somebody's idea of an urban renewal project. So anyway at Bauer's I'd check out the coins and stamps. I'd inherited a good stamp collection from my absentee father, so the huge bin of stamps for a penny each just inside the shop entrance was a source of some interest, though I cannot remember ever actually buying anything out of it. Odd too that I don't remember buying any particular coins there, though the Bauers and later manager Bob Myers had a good selection. I do remember longing for the Indian head gold coins, offered in EF-AU for around $14 each. Even with my extra sources of income I could never afford one! At first there was also a shop farther up East Main, near or on East avenue, but as I recall it closed sometime around 1962. I think Bob Myers ran that one, and then when one of the Bauers (George or John) died or retired he took over the shop on the bridge. From the coin shop I'd walk on up East Main to the basement of Woolworth's just across the main intersection of East Main and Clinton avenue from Sibley's, one of three major department stores in Rochester at the time. Woolworth's had a big low-priced selection of tropical fish, and coin supplies. From there I might go to Sibley's sporting goods department on North Clinton to look over their golf clubs (there in 1962 I bought my first set of Spaldings, which I still use), or across the street to Jay's Record Ranch for the newest hit 45rpm record (Del Shannon's first was a "Runaway" hit, as were various Elvis sides, and Black female groups had the Detroit sound perfected), or over to the sporting goods store on South avenue (where I purchased my first shotgun for $85 in 1963, a brand new Stevens 12-gauge double which I still own) before heading back to the bus stop. One of the greatest boosts to my ongoing interest in coins at that time was my membership in the Rochester Junior Numismatic Association. One of the oldest in the country, the RJNA met once a month in upper rooms of a Rochester museum on East avenue. When I first joined in 1962, the club advisor was none other than John Jay Pittman. His aggressively friendly manner, glasses and ubiquitous toothy grin reminded me of pictures of Teddy Roosevelt. I didn't learn until many years later what a great collection he had built, but to me he was the epitomy of an ambassador of numismatics. Before the meetings began, local dealer Bill Elston had coins for sale in a corner of the room. I bought my first two ancient Roman coins from him, a Dupondius of Trajan and an As of Domitian, both of which were in Very Fine condition and neither of which cost me more than $1 each. I still have both of them, and wouldn't part for either for a hundred times what I paid! Besides getting the opportunity to buy interesting coins, the things I remember most about the RJNA meetings were the big heavy long dark wood tables we sat at, the old gooseneck lamps on those tables which we viewed coins under, and the friendly support from other members and advisors, including Ed Quagliana and Art Cohen after John Jay Pittman. Quagliana went on to achieve great business success, and Art, who became an occasional customer during my early years as a dealer in the 1970s selling British coins by mail, is now dealing mostly in world currency. I remain proud of my participation in the RJNA, which included a paper I read on the "Decline of the "O" Mint Dollars" after the Treasury discovered and then released to banks thousands of formerly rare date Morgans, and a display I put together with my collecting friend Bob Lauterbach of low grade or damaged type coins, under the theme that it doesn't take a lot of money to compose an interesting and historical collection of U.S. types. Unlike Dave Harper, I never did "move up" very much to collect other series besides Lincoln cents. I did "mover backwards" to Indian Cents, and also had collections of Jefferson nickels and Roosevelt dimes. But any larger denominations would have just tied up too much of my money, which as you may have gathered I often tended to spend on other interests such as tropical fish, golf and hunting supplies. After winning two writing awards and graduating from Rush-Henrietta high school in 1963, I began studies in English literature at the University of Rochester with the intention of becoming a journalist. Thanks to their exceptional array of offerings in British and American history, however, I quickly became so deeply interested in that subject that I switched my major from English to History. At the end of my sophomore year In 1965 I worked two summer jobs and sold my better date pennies in order to raise the money necessary to visit England and Scotland for the month of August. Thus for a few years in the middle and later 1960s studies and travels caused my numismatic hobby languished. Then in the summer of 1966 I started dating Nancy. Last January we celebrated our 37th wedding anniversary. For a long time I spent every spare dime either on our dates or on starting a household! After graduating from the U of R in 1967 and Albany State University graduate school in 1968, I took a teaching job at a junior college in Western Massachusetts. The main course I taught those first years was introductory Western Civilization. This further nurtured my interest in European and American history, and I started to respond to dealer ads in NN and other coin periodicals. Astounded to find I could buy nice eighteenth century British halfpennies (which I later discovered were the main circulating copper coinage of Colonial America in the decades surrounding the American Revolution) for only a dollar each, and fine quarter-sized, hand hammered fourteenth century English silver fourpences or groats for ten dollars each, I was hooked all over again!