The E-Sylum:  Volume 7, Number 51, December 19, 2004, Article 6

NEW YORK SUBWAY MOTORMAN AMASSED $1 MILLION IN RARE NOTES

  The New York Times published an article December 12
  about Malcolm A. Trask, a New York subway motorman who
  built a remarkable collection of U.S. paper money in the
  1940s and 50s.  His collection languished unnoticed in a
  family closet for years after his death until it was
  discovered by his youngest son, now 75 years old.  The
  collection will be auctioned at the upcoming Florida 
  United Numismatists show.

  "One of the most intriguing among the 4,288 lots to be 
  sold at the convention, the year's biggest coin and 
  currency show, will be the remarkable collection that 
  put together during the 1940's and 50's at his small 
  apartment in south Yonkers.

  But the real story is not the collection. It's the 
  collector. Mr. Trask was a subway motorman with an 
  eighth-grade education who died in 1989 at the age of 
  88. While raising four children on a working man's 
  salary, he somehow amassed one of his era's greatest 
  currency collections, only to stash it in a closet 
  where it languished, forgotten, until his children 
  found it two years ago after his wife died."

  "Mr. Trask was born in Yonkers in 1901, dropped out 
  of school after the eighth grade, enlisted in the 
  Navy in 1917, and then went to work for 46 years as 
  a motorman on the old IRT line. 

  The subway was his job. The collection was his passion. 
  He began with coins, but by the late 1940's he had 
  sold them all to concentrate on paper money, at the 
  time an arcane satellite universe. Apparently using 
  $20, $40 or $80 he was able to squirrel away, he 
  bought at auctions, from dealers or at coin and 
  currency shows.

  Every night, his children recall, he would pore over
  ledgers, write in journals, type up notations, compile
  censuses of numismatic arcana. He was one of the 
  earliest serious researchers of national bank notes, 
  paper money that was issued by more than 11,000 banks 
  between 1865 and 1933 and was about 20 percent larger
  in size than current bills. 

  "The truly incredible thing about this collection is
  that a guy with no formal education, utterly limited 
  resources and almost no research material available 
  could pick so well and build a collection that would 
  be significant a half-century later," said Allen 
  Mincho, a director of Heritage-Currency Auctions of 
  America and a currency expert who researched and 
  catalogued the collection. "He clearly had the eye. 
  But how he knew just what to pick, I really don't 
  know. I've sold plenty of million-dollar collections, 
  but none where the initial investment was so low, 
  the returns so high, and the overall quality so 
  amazing."

  To read the full article, see: Full Story

  [A search of the Internet and the Numismatic Index 
  of Periodicals (NIP) turned up no references to Mr.
  Trask.  Did he leave any traces of his research in 
  the world of numismatics?  Had anyone heard of him 
  before his collection came to light?

  For those who may not be familiar with it, the NIP 
  index is online at this address: NIP Index
  -Editor]

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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