ERIC SCHENA INTERVIEW, PART SIX

ERIC SCHENA: Exactly. And there's a lot of scholars out there, putting shoe leather to ground, to go out there and doing all that legwork, trying to find all this stuff. I'll tell you another story. It's about my local town of Winchester. Many years ago, I was searching on eBay for random stuff around here. There was a ledger that showed up on eBay. And it was for a pre-Civil War bank that was based here. It was the Farmers Bank of Virginia at Winchester. And it was the board of directors meeting minutes from 1845 to 1849. It was on eBay. I bid on it. I won it. And I went to the dealer was local. So, I actually said, "Hey, why don't I just come by and pick it up?"

And so, I drove to his place. And he pulled it out and started talking about it. Showed me the book. And it was in tatters. It had condition issues. I started flipping through it, and it was all kinds of great material in it. It had vault inventories. They met every two weeks, every Thursday, if I remember correctly. Twice a month on a Thursday. And they would talk about all the bank's business. They would talk about loaning money to the fire damaged Taylor Hotel, which is now in the walking mall in Winchester. They would talk about returning spoiled banknotes back to the mother bank in Richmond for destruction. Things like that. All sorts of little pieces of information. It was all throughout it.

It would say that X number of $30 bills were in circulation. And, yes, that was a bank that used $30 bills. They were still in use. At that particular point in time. It would talk about them coming over the counter and stuff like that. And I started saying, this is a great resource. He looked at me and he said, you know, I'm glad that you bought this, because you see that signature? That's James Murray Mason. James Murray Mason, for those who don't know, was Virginia senator from 1847 to 1861. He co-authored the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. He's a grandson of George Mason. And he was president of the Winchester branch of the Farmers Bank of Virginia for a number of years.

He also happened to have been on, he's one of the 11 senators who were kicked out of the Senate for being secessionist. And so, because he was an ardent secessionist, and he joined the Confederate government as a plenipotentiary to Great Britain. And he was in British waters on the Trent when a U.S. warship intercepted it and arrested him and a gentleman by the name of James Slidell and arrested them in British waters. Parliament was incensed about that. Almost enough to join the cause on the Confederate side.

And one of the things that Lincoln said to his war secretary was, please, one war at a time. Find some way of settling this. This book was signed by Mason. Not only was it signed by Mason, the presiding president of the director of the board of directors, meaning would have to sign each entry at the end of it to acknowledge that that is true and correct. He signed the book about 33 times. And this gentleman was telling me that what would have happened to that book had it not sold on eBay, is he would have sold it to an, to an autograph collector or a dealer who would have cut out the autograph and tossed the rest of the book. Because they would take the autograph, frame it with like some nice picture of some Civil War scene, and sell that for $200, $300, $400, $500 a pop. They would do that. Throw the rest out.

GREG BENNICK: It's like, we're not just stewards of history, I think that at times without inflating our own importance, I think it goes without saying that we, we need to continue doing the work, the study, the research, the collecting we do because you might be saving history. I mean, incredible.

ERIC SCHENA: Yeah, not only did I have that book digitized, it's available on the Portal as matter of fact. I shipped it out so it could get scanned. I do want scholars to be able to access it. One of the neat things is when Mason was elected senator, he had to resign his position as bank president, and his resignation was read into the minutes. And so, there's a copy of that in the minutes, his resignation letter. And I can't think of what a piece of history that is. And that is something that would have been tossed, because someone would have just wanted that signature.

GREG BENNICK: I'm so inspired by our conversation. I'm inspired to go back to my collection and just like study and read and think and go through my whole library and do all the same. This has been amazing.

ERIC SCHENA: Yeah, it's amazing stuff, and I want to encourage a lot of other collectors to get out there and look into their local histories. Go to their local archives. Drive around, drive around. Just look at old stores. Some people are friendly. When you want to talk to them about the history of their old store buildings. It doesn't have to be Virginia. It doesn't have to be a ghost town in the West. It could be anywhere. Dayton, Ohio has a huge history in numismatics through the Ingle system and other die strikers and sinkers.

Go to Dayton, Ohio, anywhere, any place, Texas, any state of the union. There are going to be thousands upon thousands of tokens. And they're going to be issued by regular people doing their jobs. They just wanted to get paid. A lot of this stuff is stuff that, 150 years ago they didn't think anything of it. It just disappears unless we as collectors and stewards of that history go out and find it and record it. And so that's what I have tried to do with my numismatic career.

GREG BENNICK: I am so glad that we talked today. This has been absolutely wonderful. Is there anything that you'd like to add before we sign off? Because I think that that's a perfect ending point for us today.

ERIC SCHENA: Well, all I would have to say is, I would like to thank my very understanding wife and also some really great numismatists for helping me along the way. Dave Schenkman, Wayne Homren, and my coin dealer and mentor, Gene Brandenburg. Find someone like those people. And I would encourage anyone watching this video to go out and find someone like Dave or Gene or Wayne and learn from them. They have a wealth of history, a wealth of knowledge and expertise that you can draw upon. Learn from them. Listen to them. And go out there and collect and preserve that history.

GREG BENNICK: Fantastic. Eric, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today. Really appreciate it. On behalf of the Newman Numismatic Portal, I'm Greg Bennick. Eric Schena, thank you so much for taking the time.

ERIC SCHENA: And thank you.

About the Interviewer
Greg Bennick (www.gregbennick.com) is a keynote speaker and long time coin collector with a focus on major mint error coins. Have ideas for other interviewees? Contact him anytime on the web or via instagram @minterrors.

To watch the complete video, see:
Eric Schena Interviewed for the NNP by Greg Bennick (https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/book/639081)

To read the complete transcript, see:
Eric Schena Interviewed for the NNP by Greg Bennick (Transcript) (https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/book/639095)

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
ERIC SCHENA INTERVIEW, PART ONE (https://www.coinbooks.org/v27/esylum_v27n28a18.html)
ERIC SCHENA INTERVIEW, PART TWO (https://www.coinbooks.org/v27/esylum_v27n29a19.html)
ERIC SCHENA INTERVIEW, PART THREE (https://www.coinbooks.org/v27/esylum_v27n30a20.html)
ERIC SCHENA INTERVIEW, PART FOUR (https://www.coinbooks.org/v27/esylum_v27n31a14.html)
ERIC SCHENA INTERVIEW, PART FIVE (https://www.coinbooks.org/v27/esylum_v27n32a10.html)

For more information, or to order, see:
Reclaim the Moment: Seven Strategies to Build a Better Now 1st Edition (https://www.amazon.com/Reclaim-Moment-Seven-Strategies-Better/dp/1394247680)

To visit Greg's website, see:
https://www.gregbennick.com/

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