COIN BOARD NEWS SPRING 2018 ISSUE PUBLISHED

MARKET ACTIVITY Most of the coin boards appearing on eBay since the first of the year have been the usual run of Whitman Second or Fourth Edition titles grading anywhere from Poor to Very Fine and attracting little interest, even when priced at or below catalog values. There were, however, some standout exceptions. Easily the most exciting listing was for a pair of rare Gramercy Stamp Company boards. Partially completed sets of Eagle/Indian and Lincoln Cents, the first board retained several of the cardboard plugs that came with it as sold by the publisher. These are seldom found, and the pair of boards in decent condition brought a strong $305 with seven bids. The backs of the boards were not shown, but the buyer reports that they are both 'a' varieties, lacking the Trenton Savings Fund overprint. In an entirely separate deal, I purchased a similar pair of Gramercy boards that were not on eBay, the Lincoln Cent board being of the 'b' variety with TSF overprint. These were quickly placed with want list customers, yet I still have one more to offer with the enclosed price list. The early bird gets it!

Another nice lot of four Colonial Coin & Stamp Company boards featured the common titles for Early Nickels and Buffalo Nickels, as well as the less often seen boards for Washington Quarters and 2- and 3-cent pieces. All were in collectable condition, and this group went for $103.50 after six bids. An average quality example of Whitman's Volume I publisher-bound set of Second Edition coin boards brought $280, which is about my retail price for similar items. These bound sets are the only way to obtain W2E boards looking as they did when new, as the hard covers protected the boards. I seldom have them in stock, though I do have one presently. Contact me if interested.

A very surprising eBay sale was that of a Joseph Oberwise board for Liberty Head Quarters 1892-1904. While a fairly scarce title grading VF or so, it brought the remarkably high price of $155, which is double catalog. There were a total of 12 bids, but with only two of them topping $100. Normally, this would call for an increase in catalog values, but I believe it to be an exceptional event and not indicative of the overall market.

COIN BOARDS ON VIEW AT FUN The Florida United Numismatists convention and coin show in Tampa featured an exhibit on collecting Liberty Seated coins put together by Carl Feldman, who manned the Liberty Seated Collectors Club booth. Carl is a collector's collector, and a few years ago I sold him a pair of Whitman Third Edition boards for LS Dimes that were second only to my own in quality. These were displayed prominently at the show, along with National Coin Album pages and a Library of Coins album, both for Liberty Seated Dollars. This was almost a subliminal ad for my three books on these subjects, and the vintage items drew quite a lot of favorable attention. I'm including with this issue a couple photos taken by another LSCC member.

INFORMATION SURFACES ABOUT BOARD PUBLISHER Among the more enigmatic publishers of coin boards is the Colonial Coin and Stamp Company. It's owner, Leiser Wolf Schnelling, seemed to have left very little biographical information at the time I wrote my book, but we now have more details courtesy of two researchers. Board collector and CBN reader Chris Buck found a reference to Schnelling in an old auction catalog of former numismatic bookseller Remy Bourne and attempted without success to locate the April 1933 issue of Hobbies magazine cited in the catalog.

He then reached out to researcher John Lupia, who publishes biographical sketches of numismatic figures on his website: numismaticmall.com. John did indeed have that issue, and he posted the story of Leiser Wolf Schnelling, including a photo from the magazine that I've reproduced below. Rather than paraphrasing what Chris and John wrote, I'll simply include the direct link to the article on John's website: https://sites.google.com/a/numismaticmall.com/www/numismaticmall-com/schnelling-leiser-wolf .

Dave Lange writes:

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

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