MORE COIN SHOP TALES

Always enjoy The E-Sylum and can’t imagine how you keep doing this week after week, year after year, for as long as you have done it. I wanted to comment about one of the notes from your readers, Dick Johnson in particular, from the last issue.

Dick mentions shopping at a coin shop in Kansas City owned by Wilbur Bishoff. I, too, shopped at his shop in the late 50’s and purchased the first coin I ever bought from him. It was a Roman bronze coin from the reign of Constantine I, minted in approximately 330 AD. I still own the coin today and it’s one of my prized possessions. How true, especially in the internet age, of how small our world has become.

When I began collecting years ago (1960s) there were a number of coin shops in downtown Chicago. I recall Ryan's, where I bought my first two collector coins: a well-worn 1907 Indian 1c and a well-worn 1906 Liberty 5c. When I collected world coins, I liked to visit Ace, where they had a good selection. I found coins of Cyprus from the 1920s, a replica Continental $1, the 1966 Ireland crown with beautiful toning.

Rarcoa on Clark St. was always good to visit, especially to look in the windows. Harlan J.Berk is there now. There were coin departments at Carson's and Marshall Field's too. I remember in 1966 or so, Field's had a 1796 no stars quarter eagle for $6000. I also found a 1951 English crown, proof, in original box.

I have very fond memories of Beverly Hills Coin Shop at Evergreen Plaza. Larry Whitlow let me look thru the "junk boxes" for as long as I wanted. He knew I was serious and encouraged me a great deal. One Xmas, he gave me a Brown & Dunn grading guide. Another Xmas, he gave me a 1904-O silver dollar.

I remember going to George Marlier's office in 1948 or 1949. I think it was in the Union Trust Bldg. He shared an office with a lawyer. All he had was a safe, a table and two chairs. I bought a Trade dollar and a 1545 Netherland Brabant and a Constantine coin from him. He was very old but with it and very nice to me.

The name of Gordon Dodrill's building was the Pullman-Swindell Building.

Banner Coin is on 4th Avenue and is now being run by Eddie Lowy.

Cheech's shop (The Coin Exchange) is on the ground floor of the Roosevelt Building. This used to be the lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel but the lobby was converted into storefronts when the hotel was converted into apartments. Cheech's first coin shop in Pittsburgh was on the lower level of the Grant Building on Grant Street in Pittsburgh. It was taken over by Eddie Maughn when Cheech moved to the Roosevelt site.

Kaufmann's had a coin department that was supplied with coins by a New York company.

The shop in Gimbels was run by John Meredith, Sr. who also owned shops in 12 other cities all the way to Chicago. When John, Sr. died his son John Meredith, Jr. inherited the business along with his sister and they have trimmed it down and expanded in the Pittsburgh area with the new Treasure Hunt locations. I believe there are 10 or 11 sites around Pittsburgh now.

As long as we are reminiscing there was also a shop on the other end of town called Bill & Walt's Hobby Shop. I don't know who owned the coin part of it but I was told that Cal Kane had something to do with it.

There was a coin shop next to Kaufmann's but I don't recall the name. They never seemed to have had anything. There were two shops in Squirrel Hill, one owned by Chuck Furjanic and another owned by Saul and Harold Weitz.

Ted Shiff's first coin shop was in South Hills Village but has now moved to Dormont, PA just outside of Pittsburgh where it is being run by his two sons Brad and Blaine.

Ted Young is a dealer in Rochester, PA owns and still runs a coin shop with his son Ricky in a bank building that they own.

The store sits at the corner of Second Avenue and Grape Street in Gallipolis and was founded in 1976 between three partners who began collecting coins while in college. Tom Tope said this was between 1964 to 1986. The original three partners were Tope, Marc Sarrett and James Magnussen.

Eventually, the three colleagues would buy a large collection of coins around $10,000 and felt they needed to open a shop because, as collectors, they couldn’t “digest” all of those items. The three started in a building which used to be a broom factory located near what is now the Gallia Academy Middle School on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.

Tope and his colleagues could write books with the wealth of knowledge they hold in the history of coins. Tope shared a story about Maybelle McIntyre, the wife of New York newspaper columnist Oscar Odd McIntyre.

“Morgan dollars are the number one collectible coin,” Tope said. “They were made between 1878 to 1921. It’s a nice big, fat silver coin.”

Tope said that oftentimes the coins were given out as gifts and birthday presents.

“(Maybelle McIntyre) called me one afternoon and said, ‘Tom, what are you paying for silver dollars?’” Tope said. “I said $4 a piece. She said, ‘Well, I’ve been putting them in a handbag and taking them to New York City and getting $2 a piece.’”

“She brought 900 coins stacked,” Tope said. “I said, ‘Mrs. McIntyre. I just thought you had 20 or 30 of them.’ She said she would come back tomorrow. She kept bringing them down. I told her, ‘Mrs. McIntyre, that coin is worth $700. This one is a $5 one and this is a $50 one.’ When we were done, she had 1,800 (coins). She had bought five bags back in the (Great Depression) and said she had been giving them out to a kid that had (mowed) their yard or to an (employee) at Christmas time.”

Overall, Tope said Maybelle had handed out maybe 3,200 of the coins. Mrs. McIntyre at the time did not know the true worth of the coins as their value had increased with time. Mrs. McIntyre died in 1985. She lived to be 101.

To read the complete article, see:
Making head or tails of coin history (http://mydailytribune.com/news/10150/making-head-or-tails-of-coin-history)