Antique Coin Boards with David W. Lange – www.coincollectingboards.com ….
For Collectors of Antique Coin Boards
Number 47 — Summer 2018
MARKET ACTIVITY
There have been more than the usual number of Antique Coin Boards for sale this past quarter. Most of these sets are incomplete, lacking the keys, but the sheer number of coins adds considerably to the cost of acquiring the boards. Some of these have failed to sell for the obvious reason that they’re overpriced, but a few have traded hands. Fortunately, few of the boards involved were rare or otherwise desirable as stand-alone items. The two that stood out were a fairly nice Colonial brand board for Standing Liberty Quarters that remains available as of this writing and an early printing of the Oberwise board for Shield and Liberty Head Nickels with the appealing marbled face paper. It sold for $20.50, with myself as the underbidder. Comparable in quality to the one in my own collection, I was attempting to buy it for resale, and the winner got quite a bargain.
BOOK UPDATES
The new entries this quarter pertain entirely to Lincoln Printing Company of Los Angeles. Though it printed coin boards for just four years, it managed to create numerous varieties that are still being studied. One new entry is Indian Cent board L1¢Aa.1. What sets it apart from the previously published L1¢Aa is that just a single additional board title is mentioned on its back, whereas all other Lincoln boards, including the newly renumbered L1¢Aa.2, have a total of four titles listed. Obviously, L1¢Aa.1 was the first one printed.
Far more exciting is the discovery of a second, earlier variety of the extremely rare Lincoln Printing Company board custom printed for Los Angeles funeral director Dave J. Malloy. Its title reads “From 1909 to 1938”, and it has printed openings only through 1938, whereas the previously known variety concludes with 1939 in both title and openings (L1¢Bx). Board collector Donald Kocken wrote me about this discovery and loaned me his board to make scans. Since fellow collector Chris Buck has been working on a general revision of the Lincoln Printing catalog for some time, I shared both of the new varieties with him. It turns out that he already owned an example of the earlier Malloy variety but was keeping it under wraps until his work was finished. With the cat already out of the bag, however, he sent me images of his example for this newsletter. Since Don’s board was severely cropped by a previous owner, the overall images are of Chris’ board, while the detail scans are of Don’s. The new variety is labeled L1¢Bw.
NEW DISCOVERY LEADS TO TO FURTHER RESEARCH ON MALLOY
The discovery of a new variety for the Lincoln Printing Company coin board custom printed on behalf of funeral director Dave J. Malloy prompted board collector Chris Buck to do some more digging on this interesting character, and the fruit of his endeavor is seen in a series of images reproduced with this issue. It was already known that Malloy had been a witness to the apprehension of “Trunk murderer” Winnie Ruth Judd in 1931, one of that decade’s most sensational trials. In a previous issue of CBN some years ago I published a photo that Chris supplied showing Judd with Malloy and others. Aclose-up of Dave J. Malloy is included here, when he was just 22 and an employee of the Alvarez & Moore Funeral Chapel in Los Angeles.
HAD YA GOING THERE FOR AWHILE
Shortly after CBN #46 was published I sent out an email blast announcing the amazing discovery of a First Edition Colonial Coin & Stamp Company board printed in white on dark blue paper with a lighter blue backing. I received quite a few excited responses and congratulations before it began to dawn on readers that this improbable revelation was made on April 1. Yes, it was a hoax.
BLAST FROM THE PAST
I’ve been dabbling with coin boards and albums for a very long time, and while poking around the wealth of periodicals on view at the Newman Numismatic Portal I came across an ad of mine from 1986 offering duplicate Whitman Bookshelf and Library of Coins albums.
As long as we’re reaching back to the past, one of my favorite websites to surf is the Wayback Machine (archive.org/web). This site evidently was named as a tribute to Mr. Peabody’s invention in the animated cartoon Peabody’s Improbable History, itself a recurring segment in the show The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle. This site captures countless websites over a period of many years, allowing users to see them as they were at any particular time. My own board website may be viewed in all its vintage glory at the following address: https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://coincollectingboards.com/. Just click on the highlighted dates back to 2007.
SUMMER SAVINGS
One of the realities of the book publishing business is that new titles sell quite well during their first year, and then sales taper off rapidly. This was never more true than in this digital era. We’ve all seen the sale tables at the few remaining brick-and-mortar bookstores, and so it is in that spirit I’ve reduced the prices of my three PennyBoard Press titles.
NOT WANTED HERE
For as long as there have been coin dealers there have been items that no dealer wants to buy.
When I was a kid collecting coins, prominent among these blighted pieces were the dreaded UK Churchill crowns, which were produced in huge numbers and remained a drag on the market for many years. More recently, proof and mint sets from 1968 to date have been tough sells at anything over face value. Well, in the 1930s there were a number of old but common United States coins, and dealer premium books sometimes specified these coins as not wanted. Illustrated in this issue is an early publication by Stack’s citing those pieces that the public was likely to have in their cigar boxes but which the company simply would not buy. Time has since made them desirable.
ON THE ROAD AGAIN
The only coin show definitely on my summer calendar is the American Numismatic Association’s “World’s Fair of Money” in Philadelphia, August 14-18. I also anticipate being at the Long Beach Expo, September 6-8, but that hasn’t been confirmed. I hope to see some of you for a little coin board talk.
Please visit my eBay store: Cagemast Coin Boards and Albums
Best Regards,
—David W. Lange, coincollectingboards.com
The author’s desktop, featuring Gramercy coin boards as his computer wallpaper. Photo courtesy David W. Lange
