Paul Bosco submitted these recollections on the "First Slabs" -- coins
embedded in Lucite toilet seats. -Editor
At the outset, let me acknowledge that I can't hold a candle to Numismatist editor
Barbara Gregory, when the subject is Toilets in Numismatics.
In 1975-76 I worked at Schulman Coin & Mint, under the late Gerry Bauman, who went on to
better things at Manfra, Tordella and Brooks -- like the first sale of a coin for $1,000,000 (a
Paquet $20).
Schulman had a store with a tall window at #40 on West 57th Street, one of the world's great
shopping streets. In his wisdom, he bought a Lucite toilet seat with one or more silver dollars and
a selection of fairly current coins and $1 bills. Gerry mounted this in the front window, with a
price of $300 or so. As I am known for my everpresent dignity, this was much to my chagrin. It
attracted considerable attention for perhaps a full year. I think Gerry may have eventually bought
it at cost and given it as a gift, demonstrating the downside of friendship..
The closest we came to selling it was when a couple from Chile was very interested. This was
shortly after Allende was overthrown, or, as I would have it, murdered. They were fine with the
death of the "communist".
I learned a lot about myself that day. I found the couple politically reprehensible, but the
toilet seat was aesthetically reprehensible. They deserved to be verbally savaged as
murderous pigs, but they were also my best hope for getting rid of the damned thing in the window.
I decided they were not as obscene as the crapper cover, and only then became aware of the shallow
self-interest of my "situational ethics".
They had one reservation: Would it be of a size compatible with Chilean toilets? I suggested we
take it out of the window so they could sit on it and measure it with their cheeks. Even then, I
did not give up easily on a potential sale. And even cheekier, I told them Chile was a backwards
country.
They were stunned, but then I explained that when you flush a toilet in the Southern Hemisphere,
the water swirls in the opposite direction of the North American flush. I hastened to add that this
did not affect the functionality of the unique and artistic status symbol under consideration for
purchase. Alas, despite my best (but probably not my most absurd) efforts, they did not add
to the miseries of their country by importing into it this ludicrosity in Lucite.
To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
COIN-FILLED LUCITE TOILET SEAT
(www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v17n39a33.html)
Wayne Homren, Editor
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