WILLIAM CHARLES HIBBERT, SR. (1909-1968)

PREV ARTICLE NEXT ARTICLE FULL ISSUE PREV FULL ISSUE

V27 2024 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 27, Number 44, November 3, 2024, Article 18

E-Sylum Feature Writer and American Numismatic Biographies author Pete Smith submitted this article on William Hibbert and the Amateur Coin Collectors Club. Thank you! -Editor

William Charles Hibbert, Sr. (1909-1968)

Amateur Coin Collectors Club (1961-1972)

My article this week is about a man you probably never heard of and his international coin club that has nearly been forgotten. The club newsletter that might reveal club history is missing from the Newman Numismatic Portal leaving many questions unanswered.

William Hibbert was born on April 4, 1909, in Trenton, New Jersey, the son of Joseph William Hibbert (1881-1943) and Sarah Jane Hawthorn (1888-1942). Joseph owned a print shop. At the time of the 1930 Census, William worked as a printer.

William married Elsa A. Bartz (1913-2007) on November 18, 1940. They had two sons. His later career was with the Philco Corporation in Philadelphia.

The October 1961 issue of The Numismatist announced that he was new member 42976. He was never mentioned in The Numismatist again.

Hibbert of Croydon, Pennsylvania, is credited as the founder of the Amateur Coin Collectors Club in 1961, based on an idea by Bill Hulett. Membership was open to "any reputable person." That may have limited their potential membership. The club encouraged members to swap by mail. The newsletter offered buy and sell ads for members. They also conducted "members only" mail bid sales. Hibbert served as advisor and secretary-treasurer.

The club is first mentioned in Coin World in 1962, reporting that Hibbert made the colorful suggestion that beginning collectors should buy a copy of the Red Book and the Brown and Dunn grading book. The second mention in 1963 reported club membership at 461. I don't know how Hibbert originally promoted the club to get it started.

There was also a Long Island Amateur Coin Collectors Club that predated the ACCC.

The Amateur Coin Collectors Club had their ACCC Bulletin originally issued monthly with Hibbert as editor-in-chief. All that for dues of just $3 a year. Frequency was later reduced to quarterly. The name was changed to ACCC Tion Line around 1972. As the publication is not available in the Newman Numismatic Portal, the final date of publication is not apparent.

The Bulletin had a core group of writers including Barbara Ann Lyon, Donald H. Anthony, Mark E. Mennes and A. Robert Smith. Other members provided articles occasionally.

Barbara Ann Lyon took over as editor of the Bulletin following the death of Hibbert. She also had a coin column in at least eight general circulation newspapers where she promoted the ACCC. Her column was discontinued April 26, 1970, and the ACCC was not mentioned again.

An Annual Meeting of the ACCC was held on May 16, 1964, at the Farbend Building in New York City. Add that as a location I never heard of. In May of 1965, an area meeting of the ACCC was held in San Francisco at the home of Jim Rasmussen.

An annual meeting of the ACCC was held in 1967 at the home of Bill Hibbert in Croydon, PA. with twenty members from five states attending. During the gathering, the ACCC conducted a unique event, they had a mail bid sale with floor bidding.

William died of a heart attack at home in Croydon, Pennsylvania, on May 23, 1968, and is buried in Bristol Cemetery. He published the first 46 issues of the ACCC Bulletin. Issue 47 was a tribute to Hibbert.

David Pestell of Buffalo, New York was president of the club in 1965. On January 1, 1969, William B. Haverly became president and Herbert Galloway succeeded Hibbert as secretary. James Rasmussen was elected president in 1970. He was succeeded by Paul Waichulaits in 1971 and he was reelected in 1972. Coin World did not announce election results after 1972.

The end of reporting does not mean the end of the club. The missing newsletter would probably indicate how long the club remained active. Can any E-Sylum reader recall membership in the ACCC some fifty years ago? Can anyone provide copies of the newsletter for the Newman Numismatic Portal?

Club newsletters of this era can be rare. The Missouri Numismatic Society put out a monthly newsletter in the 1950s and even Eric Newman didn't save them. Bound journals survived in much higher proportion. Something about adding a card cover and a couple staples seems to do the trick, in terms of preservation. Coins do better, and there's a reason why so many have survived since antiquity – you might bury them, but you won't discard them in a landfill. Mass mailers have taken to adding a penny into their circulars, the idea that no one could bring themselves to throw out a coin. I've become adept at extracting the coin without paying much attention to the content of the advertising. If any enterprising coin club can figure out how to embed a coin or token into their newsletter (that is not easily removed), the survival rate of those publications will be high!

Quite true. Even people who aren't bibliophiles have a hard time throwing a book away. Magazines less so, but these are still more likely to be saved than a paper newsletter with no cover at all. The less substantial, the more ephemeral. I was a member of the Pittsburgh Numismatic Society and NNP has nothing from that club, either. Their newsletter was a simple affair, like most local clubs. -Editor