EITAN COHEN AND THE COHEN MINT

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V24 2021 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 24, Number 2, January 10, 2021, Article 17

Gabriel Kahan is the eldest son of Eitan Cohen of the Cohen Mint. He found our earlier E-Sylum articles on the web. -Editor

"Over the past few years, I have scoured the web for people still showing interest in my dad's work and it warms my heart that people are still curious about him. While I have not continued his mint, seeing his mark in the rare metals industry continue to be discussed after nearly a decade since he passed is incredible."

Gabriel kindly pulled together the following submission about his father and his mint. Thank you! It's great to make a connection like this and clarify information. -Editor

My father, Eitan Cohen, was born in Israel, in July of 1980, to parents of unknown descent (though we believe they were from Estonia and moved to Israel, where they had him). Only a few years after he was born, they moved to Brooklyn, New York, where he would grow up.

Eitan was extremely fond of rare coins as a child - having his own collection - and would regularly shop at antique stores hoping to find more. It is very likely from this childhood love of currency that he decided to mint his own. Strangely enough, we are not entirely sure where he acquired the knowledge on how to mint in the first place; He never attended a post-secondary or trade school. If I had to guess, he may have simply read books on the process or seen online manuals/guides, and taken it from there. He was very crafty, having built his own guitar and amp from bare materials, so I would not exclude this from the realm of possibility.

As for the business itself, Eitan worked completely alone. I noticed on several websites that claimed to have pictures of the business, it shows some sort of concrete bunker. That is amusingly not the case, and the idea of such a massive bunker in the middle of Brooklyn is quite silly. Rather, he worked entirely out of our apartment, in his workroom and sent orders by hand through our local post office, receiving mail from a nearby PO box. I can assure you it was no bunker. The specifics of his work are lost to me, but he seemed to be using a small gas furnace to melt down metals to use in various molds, and hand-cranking a press to get a design. Again, all done by himself in our apartment.

I am unsure of when it exactly began, but my father suffered from pancreatic cancer for many years. It was likely after 2009 that his work began to slow, and by 2010-11 he was too sick to fulfill most of his orders. Though some still were completed, many customers were left with the impression that the business was a scam. They were unfortunately left in the dark about his health issues.

My father ultimately passed in August of 2012, though from sepsis that was caused by surgery, and not the cancer itself.

The design commonly seen on his work (the man riding the horse) has no major significance, and was likely just a design he wanted to stick with. He sketched quite a lot, although any notebooks containing these sketches are lost.

Nearly all business-related items (his machines, notebooks, etc.) are gone. Due to financial troubles a while after he passed, we had to move out of the apartment very quickly, which meant having no time to properly move his equipment or personal items. All that really remains are pictures of him and personal belongings.