The E-Sylum:  Volume 8, Number 20, May 15, 2005, Article 22

KEN SMALTZ FEATURED IN NEWSDAY

In The E-Sylum: April 10, 2005 (v8n15) we discussed some
publicity for Ken Smaltz, owner of K. Smaltz, Inc. which he
claimed to be the first African American-owned coin dealership
in the United States.

On May 13, 2005, Newsday featured an article on Smaltz.
"New customers often do double takes when they meet Kenneth
Smaltz Jr., a rare-coin dealer in Garden City. That's because
Smaltz himself is a rarity in the industry: He's an African-American
who owns a rare-coin business.

"It's always in the back of your mind that when you meet someone
of another ethnicity, that they might have second thoughts about
me being African-American," said Smaltz, who owns the
8-year-old K. Smaltz Inc."

"What the Jamaica, Queens, native does is buy and sell rare coins
in a $3-billion to $5-billion industry, whose players run the gamut
from individual dealers to long-established businesses such as
Stack's, a Manhattan company that is the country's oldest rare-coin
dealer. The businesses are overwhelmingly white, as are the
majority of the customers, who include captains of industry and
celebrities.

Although the rare-coin industry has many black salesmen,
encountering a black business owner is uncommon, experts said.

At national shows, which dealers rely on significantly for buying
and selling, you don't see many African- Americans or many
women, except for spouses, said Beth Deisher, editor of
CoinWorld, a weekly trade newspaper in Sidney, Ohio.

But, she added, "That is changing."

To read the full story, see Full Story

  Wayne Homren, Editor

	coinbooks.org Web

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