My memories of my early pursuits of coin and stamp collecting came back to me when I read Robert McFadden's NYT obituary on Eric Newman, apparently one of this country's greatest coin collectors, who just passed away at 106. Mr. Newman rated 6 columns in today's paper. He was obviously truly a legend, and someone I never heard of.
My own stamp collecting started when I guess my father gave me a small canvas sack that held what was being marketed in the 1950s as something containing 100 stamps from all over the world. The sack was a $1.00, and I think its top was secured with a tiny padlock, as if treasure was inside. The treasure was the stamps. The cancelled stamps were cut off from envelopes, worth at the time I'm sure next to nothing, but were exotic because of all the countries they came from. Helvetia was Switzerland. An atlas in a sack.
(I remember people in our mail room in the late 1960s who always cut off the stamps from incoming foreign mail. People collected stamps.)
I always loved maps and atlases, and the stamps sent me scouring the family atlas for the location of the countries. My father was a cartographer during WW II in Guam, and there were always maps in the house. I still love maps.
This sack of international stamps set me on a course of collecting stamps, basically United States stamps. I tried to fill in the blanks in my Scott Stamp and Coin album by visits to their location at
1 West 47th Street, and to Dumont Stamp and Coin close by. I expanded my collection of collecting single stamps to acquiring plate blocks, sheets, and first day covers. Lots of first day covers. Trips to Gimbel's expanded that collection. They always had first days on great, almost engraved envelopes, that depicted the history of the commemorative event the stamp was being issued for. These envelopes were much nicer than the plain Woolworth ones I had sent to myself at the flower shop, 206 Third Avenue, New York 3, New York. No zip codes then.
There was a fellow at he Cooper Union Post Office my father knew whose window I could always go to get plate blocks of the latest commemorative stamp. He never charged me. Eventually he lost his job though. I guess they found him short once too often.
Stamp collecting was big then. There was an annual stamp show held over a few days at the 71st Regiment Armory on 34th Street. The armory is long gone, being demolished for an office building and high school at 3 Park Avenue. The company I worked for once had office space in the building.
There were also a few places to buy stamps as collectibles. One place I never went into, but constantly passed, was located in the passageway between the 34th Street PATH trains and Penn Station, The passageway was a dank, nearly dark, subterranean underground alley that passed by the basement section of Gimbels's (no entrance ) and a few stores. One of the stores was a dusty looking office space with a door of glass reinforced with chicken wire, like the that found in schools, and gold leaf lettering that may have said something like Penn Stamp and Coin.
When my father and I used to use the passageway for a late evening connection from the subway to a LIRR train to Murray Hill/Flushing, we always passed the storefront. The place was never open at the time, and I never thought to go back at an earlier time to see what I might find. The passageway has long since been closed, but effective use of did enable you to use it, Penn Station and the Path train station that would allow you continuous underground passage from 31st Street and 8th Avenue, to something like 36th Street and 6th Avenue. It was almost like going through a mine. You had to know about it. And we wern't the only people who did.
I still have the stamp collection, although I think I stopped adding to it even before I graduated high school, and that was over 50 years ago. Its value would be negligible, I think. The first day covers might be worth something. Someone once told me it's for the grandchildren. Well, I have those now.
I do not still have my coin collection. That was purloined by my father who pulled it out of its hiding place in the back of my closet and sold it, I assume, or stupidly just pulled the coins out for their face value. I never really knew. It was quite a while before I realized the collection was missing, and when I asked my father about it he claimed my older cousin had gotten into the house and must have made off with it. I never believed him.
I once had the collection in a safe deposit box in a bank near the flower shop, but because I was a minor I needed an adult to accompany me to retrieve it. By great-uncle at the flower shop did this with for me.
But, at the urging of my father, who claimed it was an imposition on my uncle to leave the shop and walk two blocks with me, he suggested I just pull the collection out of the safe deposit box. I don't remember how soon after that the collection went missing.
In that era of coin collecting you would get these blue Whitman binders with round holes for the various denominations that you would press the coin into with the matching year and mint mark.
I was extremely proud that I managed to fill the Whitman book of George Washington quarters, starting in 1932, just by scouring the coins from the flower shop, and from my trips to banks to exchange $10 bills for rolls for quarters. None of my coins were in particularly great shape, and certainly not proof, or uncirculated condition, but I did fill up the folders. I did have some proof sets.
I kept the duplicates in plastic tubes. In the 50s and 60s you could still see Standing Liberty quarters--always greatly worn--and Mercury, Lady Liberty dimes and Indian Head nickels in general circulation. Indian Head pennies were never seen in circulation. I had to buy a roll of them from some other kid. Franklin half dollars were in circulation, and sometimes you could get a Walking Liberty half, but only rarely. Silver dollars were never seen, but I always heard of the stories of the people who would make a special trip to Vegas just to see if they could get a rare one from a slot machine. (As if the people in the money room were going to let a rare one pass.)
I rarely bought coins. I always tried to get the ones I needed to fill the blanks in the folders form general circulation. I still remember a coin store on 23rd Street, down a few steps, between 5th and 6th Avenues, south side, that my friends and I went into to inquire about hard to get Lincoln pennies, generally the D and S mint marks for certain years. The 1909-S VDB were always out of our price range.
I remember the guy trying to con us by overstating the condition of the offerings, but we knew more than he thought we knew. We were never "taken."
In all those years of my coin collecting I never realized that they started issuing Lincoln pennies in 1909 to mark the 100th year of his birth. And thinking of Lincoln, I always remember Pete's Tavern on 18th Street having a newspaper copy pasted in the window whose headline screamed LINCOLN ASSASSINATED. That was removed long ago.
Somewhat like Mr. Newman, the subject of today's obituary, I did get interested in paper currency. My first paper currency purchase, and perhaps my only one, was at Gimbel's when for 90 cents I was able to buy a $1 train ticket that looked like an engraved stock certificate from some long ago defunct railroad that was in pristine condition in a plastic folder. I never forgot the salesman telling me of the great bargain I was getting in that I was able to buy something that once went for a dollar, for now under a dollar. I agreed with him.
The online version of Mr. Newman's obituary offers you more photos, and color photos of some of the coins in his collection. I also did start to buy the really older coins, the ones from the 1800s. Half pennies, three cent pieces, like the one pictured above. Just a sampling from what were then common years and not really expensive then, Never in pristine condition.
My father never owned up to taking the coin collection, and we eventually became somewhat estranged, even though we saw each other often enough. I used to think I would make him make a death bed confession that he took the coins. When that time came in 1987, I never thought about making any effort to force "closure." What's done is done.
But I never shed a tear at his passing, and I still haven't.
http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com
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