M. H. BOLENDER'S COIN CHATTER

I am in the process of looking through a large number of Milferd H. Bolender sale catalogs that I acquired from David Sklow's most recent Numismatic Literature sale.

At the end on pages 44-5 in Bolender's 108th Auction Sale of Rare Coins, Medals and Paper Money, Wednesday, April 14, 1937 Bolender has two pages of what he termed, "Coin Chatter."

Bolender starts with, "Twenty Years Ago. Yes, I am the dealer, who, exactly 20 years ago this month, in a full page advertisement on the outside cover of the Philatelic West magazine, now Hobbies, offered Panama Pacific half-dollars at exactly 90 cents each! Of the several hundred in stock at the time, I sold exactly fourteen, through the ad. Collectors were slow in buying them in view of a price reduction. People buy when the prices go up! Upon my return from the army I had no difficulty in selling them at $3 each. Those were the good old days when dealers could get all the commemorative coins they needed for their trade from the commissions, and collectors weren't held up for a big profit by the dealer either. Usually they were issued at $1 and we sold them at $1.25. The old established dealers did not bring about the present state of affairs relative to commemoratives. It was unscrupulous speculators, who were not numismatists."

The third item under "Coin Chatter" was, "Cents and Sense. Where are all the small cents going to? In price, I mean? There are as many of them as every, for collectors, but the demand has so increased that few collectors are content until they are the proud owner of a bushel of them. I well remember the days when I could buy them by the hundred or oven [sic – even] thousand at 4 or 5 cents each, all uncirculated and proof condition. Included would be the scarce early dates and 1864 "L" on ribbon, now a $5 coin. All were Indian heads, of course, for that was the days before the Lincoln heads. Sometimes they sold at auction at 3 cents each." Oh for the good old days?

Wayne Homren, Editor

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