AUDIO: Q&A WITH LEROY VAN ALLEN

CM: So, you said earlier in our conversation that for a time that people could walk up to their bank and get Morgan dollars at face value. Collectors that came around the hobby long after that probably really relate to that story. It boggles the mind. But going back to the early 1960s, about how many Morgan dollars or dollar coins do you think your typical local bank would have in the cash drawer and what condition would they typically be in?

LV: Well, George Mallis lived in Massachusetts, but he was an architect and he had some jobs down in the Washington, D.C. area. So he would go to the Treasury Department and he would get a bag of a 1,000 and lug it home. This was in the early 1960s, ’61, ’62, and ’63. And then study them. Meanwhile, I lived in Baltimore, Maryland.

I would go to a reserve bank in Baltimore and also to the Treasury Department in Washington, D.C., since I worked down in Washington, D.C. And I’d get a bag of a thousand and take it home and look at it. I’d always be disappointed when it was just one date, like a ’98-O, or ’04-Os... I liked the mixed date bags. Sometimes they were quite circulated. Other times, they were a mixture of circulated and uncirculated.

And then I would go to local banks in Baltimore and also in D.C., and there you could get bags from them for a while. Then they started rationing. You could only get a couple rolls, or something like that. Then it was just a roll. And finally, it was just a single coin as they ran out of them. So it was quite an experience and you’d get all of these coins just for a dollar, big coins that were minted way back in the 1880s and 1870s, whereas all the minor coins, you couldn’t go to the bank and get coins that old. So for me, that was the thrill of it.

CM: And you could probably get some well-worn Seated dollars once in a while in circulation?

LV: Yeah, once in a while, in those bags... and circulated mainly, there would show up some Seated Liberty dollars. I got a number of those also. But they were pretty few and far between. They weren’t like the Morgan dollars, where you could get a lot of uncirculated ones. You could get all dates, except for the 1889-CC, just going through bags and getting them for a dollar each. And so did my co-author George Mallis.

But it was really crazy when they started to run out and the dealers would flock down to Washington, D.C. and stand in line to get those bags. I did some of that also.

To read the complete article or access the podcast, see:
CoinWeek Podcast #50: Talking Morgan Dollars with Leroy Van Allen (www.coinweek.com/coinweek-podcast/coinweek-podcast-50-talking-morgan-dollars-leroy-van-allen/)

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
VAN ALLEN'S 1964 MORGAN DOLLAR ANALYSIS (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v19n50a14.html)

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web