BOSCO ON THE SCHULMAN MEDALLIC HISTORY OF MONEY AND BANKING

Paul J. Bosco submitted these thoughts on the earlier question about the Schulman Coin & Mint's "History of Money and Banking" set. Sorry for the delay in publishing this - we had an email snafu. Thanks! This is great background information. -Editor

Schulman Coin & Mint's "History of Money and Banking" set. These were struck by the Franklin Mint They used to sell pieces to their collectors, but as this was a purely commercial venture, it is almost certain that Schulman was the only source for the pieces. I am virtually certain they were only regularly issued in silver.

SC&M was a publicly traded firm. Hans Schulman hooked up with a stockbroker, Jed L. Hamburger, who had a corporate shell, Astrodyne, a planned hamburger/fast-food joint franchise operation on Long Island. Well, plans are not the same as a company, so Schulman and Hamburg "married", the one getting an actual company and the other getting working capital.

The main part of the business was rare coin auctions. Not long after a 1913 nickel was auctioned for a world record $45,000, Schulman announced he had realized $46,000 for a Russian Constantine Ruble, in a mail bid(!!!) auction. As it happens, Bernth Ahlstrom told me he bought the coin, taking it away from the legendary California collector Irving Goodman, but in the mid-1960s many assumed Hans had set an "arranged world record".

The History of Money and Banking set of twelve medals was as interesting as it sounds. Franklin Mint was then making big bucks selling sets of medals with equally dull themes like Presidents, states, flags, cars...Somehow, they were successful marketers.

By way of contrast, SC&M put almost all their marketing budget on one number on the roulette wheel. They paid to have an insert in the monthly bill of American Express, eschewing the chance to first do a test run utilizing only a small part of the AmEx mailing list. I think they reached about 2,000,000 AmEx customers. They got 123 orders --about six 10,000ths of a per cent-- beginning a slow but inexorable descent into bankruptcy. Even the mid-1975 hiring of Paul Bosco as mail clerk/staff numismatist was not enough to save the company, the final bell tolling in January '77.

Offerings of the medals appeared toward the back of several SC&M auction catalogs, the last dating to early 1975. They were not in inventory when I worked there. Years later I bought a set from a walk-up at a coin show. I sold it to my boss at SC&M, the late Gerry Baumann.

Gerry is probably best known from his years at MTB (Manfra, Tordella & Brookes, Inc - Editor). He once bought a P-mint Paquet $20 for $660,000 and sold it a couple months later for $1.1 million. The $20 is the rarer item, but the Hist-Money-Banking set is the only one I've encountered, and I absolutely MUST be the dealer most likely to encounter this set.

Although nearly unobtainable, the set is probably worth melt value today, very roughly $300.

If I am encouraged by enough E-Sylum readers, I will write more about the history of the Schulman firm and its colorful numismatists, probably on my own blog.

To read the earlier E-Sylum articles, see: QUERY: SCHULMAN MEDALLIC HISTORY OF MONEY AND BANKING (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v15n14a15.html)
MORE ON THE SCHULMAN MEDALLIC HISTORY OF MONEY AND BANKING (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v15n15a12.html)

Wayne Homren, Editor

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