ARNO SAFRAN INTERVIEW, PART FOUR

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V27 2024 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 27, Number 40, October 6, 2024, Article 15

Greg Bennick's latest interview for the Newman Numismatic Portal is with collector and author Arno Safran. Here's the fourth and final part, where Arno talks about his collection of error coins as well as his father's musical exploits. -Garrett

GREG BENNICK: I love it. I love the connection to coin clubs. I actually spoke at a coin club. I'm from Seattle and I spoke at a coin club recently, about error coins and you know, in my mind, error coins are what I think about all day long. But in the minds of the people at the coin club, many of them, very experienced collectors, had never considered error coins. So, to be able to talk to them about the topic was wonderful. Because people were just so interested and it was brand new information and I can only imagine that the presentations you give have enlightened so many people about different things that maybe they haven't heard of before.

ARNO SAFRAN: One of the members of the Aiken club collects error coins and he's got a wonderful collection of that. And another one recently did, but he moved back down to Florida. A lot of these people have problems with life and things and they can't always stay. This guy had an incredible collection of modern coins, but he got them for nothing. He's young, he just got the coins which cost him what the coins worth. He gave wonderful programs on that. Unfortunately, he moved back to Florida, so we don't have him anymore. His name is Jack something or other. You know, another couple of guys collected error coins as well.

GREG BENNICK: Well, it's good to know. After we're done speaking, I'll definitely give you my contact information and if anyone ever wants to chat about error coins, I'm always happy to chat, without a doubt. I love them very much. So, this is exactly what I'm talking about. By doing presentations and being involved in a coin club, you learn to make connections and you make connections with other people. Then all of a sudden everybody's experience of the hobby just grows when the more we know of each other and what each of us collects.

ARNO SAFRAN: It's true. I'll tell you, my father collected stamps at one point in time and he was a very serious musician. But he also worked in a business where they sold very nice clothes in downtown Manhattan, for rich people. And he would be like the fellow who didn't sell the clothes, but would talk to them, and sell them. So, he was a salesman. He also collected these stamps. But he was very serious in music and all he wanted me to do was be a musician, another Beethoven - which never was going to happen.

But that was all. I did have a good musical life, I can't complain about that. He was too serious and when he retired, he had nothing to do with no one to talk to, because we were too far away. He lived in Florida and we were up in New Jersey at that time. So, we'd see him once or twice or three times a year. Either we'd go down there and we'd chat about music a lot. But the thing is, he didn't have a hobby. I was determined that when I retired from teaching college, I was going to have a hobby. So, I could do something with my life and not feel, you know, bitter or angry or you know that kind of thing. And then numismatics did it.

GREG BENNICK: That's great, that's just great. I'm so happy to hear that. Well, this has been a great conversation. I'm trying to think if there's anything else other than…I thought of something actually just now. You mentioned your father being involved in music. What did your father play? Was he a composer?

ARNO SAFRAN: Played the violin. My mother and he met back… he came from Poland in 1920. He arrived, he was the middle son, the middle child of seven. The only one who was musical. He loved music. Used to love opera. He came here in 1920. Long before I was born, and he had an older brother that got him settled. He had a job, and he met my mother in a little symphony orchestra in downtown Manhattan on Second…I don't know how well you know Manhattan.

ARNO SAFRAN: Second Avenue…a little section there…he met my mother and she played the violin and that's how they got started. That's how I got into music.

ARNO SAFRAN: I play the piano. I play the guitar also. I used to teach kids. So, I learned to play the guitar, like Pete Seeger. No, I wasn't as good a guitar player as he was (laughter) and he played the banjo as well. But, you know, I used to play the folk songs. I always felt that, there's a wide range of musical quality, just like there is in numismatics. It's such a wild area. I mean there's so many so many different aspects of numismatics, and the same with music. You have folk music, you have classical music, you have popular music, you have jazz, you know, you have all this kind of thing.

And, so I took a chance and started learning how to play the guitar. I mean, it was a wonderful experience, you know. In the early years I played, I came in to move a piano around the classroom and some of these women who were very, very conservative when they were teaching, they didn't want to know from nothing about music when I came into the class. I couldn't move the piano in there, so I started playing the guitar! And we'd play the wonderful folk songs that everybody loved and I got to learn them and the kids loved that too. You have to be flexible in this world, if you want to be successful.

GREG BENNICK: Absolutely, that's probably true in coins as well, with in terms of collecting things you can afford or finding things that you like and all that sort of thing.

ARNO SAFRAN: Well, I will start the newsletter on the left side column. I make it a two column page each one. On the left hand is a small little coin or something, maybe a half dime or it might be a silver little trime, you know a three cent piece or something like that. It gets them started to talk about what was going on and why that coin was made. And then on the right side of it, I start the main article. I go either two and a half pages to three pages, sometimes to four pages, depending on how many coins are involved.

But I settled on such a way that there's variety - not just of one type of coin, but a whole variety and that helps as well. Then we have what they call as the minute. That comes in later. Then if there's still space, we have the advertisements on the cover page of various dealers in the area and then another article, a small article if there's an extra space for it. That's how the newsletters work.

GREG BENNICK: That's great. This is great and you know one thing that I noticed when I was looking at your presentations is that you've always had a really strong sense of education in what you do. And it sounded like that just from your description of the newsletters. But also, you know, for example, you gave a two-part presentation on Hard Times Tokens, and that was an example like many of your presentations, where you go deep into the history, not just of the coins. It's almost like you're approaching the education of these things on multiple levels, the coins and the history around them.

ARNO SAFRAN: Well, I did the same thing with music. For example, when we talked about certain composers like, Gustav Mahler, I talk about Austria. You know, I would tell what was going on in Austria at the time or Beethoven or Mozart, what was it like living at that time. I did the same thing. I just took say my philosophy and added it to numismatics when I retired.

GREG BENNICK: That's great. So many people have probably learned so much from you, it's just wonderful. I'm so glad that I was introduced to you at least even over the phone and via email. Because I know that I'm going to get a lot from the PowerPoint presentations, even without seeing you present them, there's so much information in there.

ARNO SAFRAN: Well, you couldn't have called it a better time. I don't usually eat at six o'clock. I usually have dinner around seven. Because I have a cocktail. My wife and I used to have this wonderful cocktail, around 4:30 or so. So, I'm not hungry and so you could not have called at a better time.

GREG BENNICK: Thanks for listening everybody, I really appreciate it. Now if you'd like to see the PowerPoint presentations, that Arno refers to throughout the interview, be sure to go to the page on which this interview resides at the Newman Numismatic Portal. Perhaps you're just hearing the audio and you didn't realize that there's a whole page full of interviews.

If you happen to go to the Newman Numismatic Portal, that's nnp.wustl.edu, you can search for my name, Greg Bennick, G-R-E-G B-E-N-N-I-C-K, and that's where you can find a whole bunch of interviews, that I've been able to conduct with some really fascinating people in numismatics.

So, head there, find the Arno page, and that's where you're going to find a link to the PowerPoint presentations that Arno has given. And if you have suggestions for other interviewees, feel free to be in touch anytime. Mint errors, that's mint errors plural, minterrors@gmail.com.

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.