THE EMPIRE COIN COMPANY WINDOW

The August 4th issue of The E-Sylum had an interesting article originating with Doug Nyholm, editor of the Utah Numismatic Society's The Mint Master, regarding the early publications of Q. David Bowers while he and James Ruddy were operating the Empire Coin Company. It featured a photo of the upper half of the front page of the July-August-September 1958 issue of Empire Topics, the house organ.

While the sixty-six-year-old article was about the teams' purchase of a rare 1894-S Barber dime, my attention was captured by something more mundane. The publication's heading included the firm's address, 252 Main Street in Johnson City, New York. What, I wondered, was currently located at that long ago address of this important figure in modern numismatics.

So, I pulled up Google Maps. You may not know this, but Google does a pretty good job of photographing street views around the world, sending cars and trucks with cameras on top to capture the current scene. Most populated locations get a new pic every few years, creating a record of changes in a particular area. Curious, I dropped the Johnson City address in.

 

The oldest Google photo of 252 Main Street dated from April 2012. A hair stylist occupied the first floor, while the rest of the building was covered with a hideous 1960s blue façade laid out in a grid pattern. There was a pizza shop on one side of the building and a Chinese restaurant on the other side, but no sign of anything numismatic.

 

That next photo of the address was taken in May 2017. The hair stylist was gone, as well as the pizza shop. More importantly, though, the funky façade was gone. And there, painted in gold in the middle of the now revealed second-floor window, was "EMPIRE COIN COMPANY, INC. RARE COINS." Not quite King Tut's tomb, but still a neat bit of numismatic archeology. Bowers and Ruddy had moved the business to nearby Binghamton, New York by late 1960. I suspect that the ugly blue façade went up shortly thereafter, creating an architectural monstrosity but at the same time preserving this Eisenhower era relic.

 

But it didn't last. After showing up in several pics after 2017, the window was suddenly blank in May 2023, the gold lettering scraped off. I hope that means Johnson City is undergoing a revival and there's the possibility of a new, vibrant enterprise occupying that space. Maybe a coin store?

 

To read the earlier E-Sylum articles, see:
THE EMPIRE COIN COMPANY OFFICE (https://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v17n18a13.html)
MINT MASTER COVERS EARLY BOWERS PUBLICATIONS (https://www.coinbooks.org/v27/esylum_v27n31a05.html)

 

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