COIN BOARDS AND RELATED EPHEMERA

COIN BOARD EPHEMERA
I continue to discover new references to coin boards among some of the more obscure numismatic publications. One of my favorite hunting grounds is The Coin Dealer, a trade paper for coin dealers issued in the 1960s by Krause Publications. In the October 2, 1963 issue I found an ad for the American Standard Coin Book, a descendent of the little guide illustrated on Oberwise coin boards during the late 1930s and early ‘40s. It was published by Joe’s Los Angeles neighbor, R(inaldo) A(lexander) Wilson, Sr.

This is illustrated below, along with a preprinted envelope for J. Oberwise & Company that was mailed 11 years before Joe put out his first coin boards. The address of his bungalow residence/office is immediately recognizable, but he was still in the building trade at the time. I suspect that addressee Ida S. Metcalf may be his longtime girlfriend whom he married on his death bed, but only the first name is a match.

COIN BOARD REVIVALS
Though the classic era of coin board publishing ended around 1948, this format has been revived from time to time. A nice item from 1972 is shown below. This one-a-year board for Lincoln Cents was published by NELCO in Orlando, Florida. In all likelihood, NELCO stands for someone’s abbreviated name or initials followed by “Company,” but I don’t know that person’s identity. The artist signed his name, Bob MacCourt, which could provide some clue.

Another “modern” coin board is one that dates from 1965. It was intended to display a collection of Lincoln Cent mint error types arranged sequentially. While an interesting concept, it doesn’t really allow for the fact that error coins are often misshapen or of the wrong size for the openings!

This board was published by MARGOOD, which is an abbreviation of the creators’ names: Arnold MARgolis and Mort GOODman. Both were very well known in the error coin field at the time, though Goodman later got in trouble for creating fake doubled-die cents dated 1969(P). Because of this action, the Secret Service impulsively seized several of the genuine 1969-S doubled-die-obverse cents and destroyed them, despite pleas from numismatic experts who’d authenticated them.

Also shown is an ad from the September, 1967 issue of COINage Magazine, which reveals that MARGOOD boards were priced at $2.95. They’re quite rare today, and I’ve seen only three examples.

For more information, see Dave's web site:
http://www.coincollectingboards.com/

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web