By Charles Morgan and Hubert Walker for CoinWeek Notes …..
Banker, philanthropist, and coin collector. Born September 14, 1867, in Baltimore, Maryland. Died June 29, 1934, in Honolulu, Hawaii.
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Born in Baltimore in 1867, Waldo Newcomer was an early 20th-century coin collector who put together an exhaustive collection of American colonial, territorial, and federal coinage – including die varieties. Firmly upper-middle class, his grandfather founded the Newcomer & Stonebreaker company, which dealt in flour and grain sales. His father Benjamin Franklin “Frank” Newcomer was a railroad man and the president of the Safe Deposit & Trust Company. Waldo graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 1889 and married Margaret Vanderpoel in 1897. The couple would eventually have three children.
As a banker, Newcomer was president of National Exchange Bank from 1906 to 1924 when the company formed a new entity after a merger. He then became chairman of the Atlantic Exchange Bank and Trust Company. Newcomer was a strong advocate of the branch banking we all take for granted today and lobbied on behalf of the idea at the American Bankers Association Annual Convention in 1922. Opposed by bankers from small-town America, the Association voted against the idea.
He ran for a spot on the American Numismatic Association’s (ANA) Board of Governors in 1926 but received only 73 votes.
Waldo Newcomer died of suicide on June 29, 1934, in Hawaii.
An Inside Job: The Theft and Recovery of the Waldo Newcomer Collection
The Newcomer Collection was stolen in 1913 by electrician Frederick Holtz (also referred to in contemporaneous media reports as Otto H. House and Otto H. Houst), who was caught paying for a safe deposit box with a $50 California gold piece. Holtz worked for the Holmes Burglar Alarm Telephone Company, which Newcomer hired to install a security system at his home. The owner of the safe deposit box company, Stanley R. Walker, brought the unusual coin to coin dealer Samuel Chapman, who recognized it as a coin he had sold Newcomer 20 years earlier. One thousand two hundred and fifty pieces were reported stolen and 151 were found in Holtz’s box.
Holtz dumped $2,442 in face value silver coins in the Hudson River. Most of the coins were recovered after Holtz was arrested in Kingston, New York, on November 14, 1913. Police dragged the river to recover Newcomer’s silver coins two days later.
About the Newcomer Collection
The collection, which incorporated the Heaton and Granberg collections, included many Great Rarities such as the 1804 Dollar; the Hayes 30 1794 Dollar; a 1884 Trade Dollar; a 1796 half dollar Proof; the second-known 1870-S $3 gold coin; an 1802 half dime and one of two known 1894-S dimes; scores of early gold pieces collected by die variety; a Washington Born Virginia medal (PCGS MS66+); and two Brasher Doubloons. He also discovered the 1849-C Open Wreath Gold Dollar sometime before 1933.
It is difficult to flesh out the totality of the Newcomer Collection and its holdings because it was never catalogued for auction. Colonel E.H.R. Green purchased much of the collection, but not before coin dealers J.C. Morgenthau and B. Max Mehl sold off Newcomer’s duplicates.
On July 14, 1914, Mehl sold off some of Newcomers duplicates along with the collection of New Orleans collector Major Richard Lambert. Among the duplicates were an assortment of Dahlonega Mint gold dollars and $3 gold coins.
Shortly before his death, Newcomer sold all of his holdings to B. Max Mehl, who ran a four-page ad in the March 1932 issue of The Numismatist stating that a catalog was in preparation. Mehl never finished the job, but he did produce a series of photographic plates. Between 1940 and 1941, Mehl told Burdette Johnson that he had sold the bulk of the collection to Col. Green but not before selling several of Newcomer’s rarest pieces to the Garrett family of Baltimore. A short rundown of what Mehl claimed he sold to the Garretts included a 1787 Brasher Doubloon, a 1694 Carolina Elephant token, and a trio of Washington medals. Mehl also noted that Newcomer had a unique Continental Dollar struck in silver with the “third reverse”.
Numismatic researcher George Fuld published a lengthy exploration of Newcomer’s holdings between 2006 and 2008. He reported that Newcomer’s section of U.S. coins was nearly complete, lacking only a single double eagle and the 1822 half eagle, of which only three are known. Fuld stated that Newcomer had a complete series of U.S. copper and silver coins. Helping Newcomer assemble the collection was numismatist George Williams, who spent more than 20 years in the effort.
In 2004, PCGS, brought attention to Newcomer’s collection, when it compiled a list of the 10 Most Famous U.S. Ultra Rarities for its Set Registry. In the PCGS list were many of the great story coins of American numismatics: the 1913 Liberty Head nickel; the 1894-S dime; the 1876-CC Twenty-Cent Piece; the 1838-O half dollar; the 1804 dollar; the 1870-S dollar; the 1885 Trade Dollar; the $4 Stella; the 1907 Ultra High Relief Saint-Gaudens $20; and the 1927-D Saint.
Calling the Newcomer Collection the “greatest collection never to appear at auction,” it touted the fact that Newcomer’s collection contained six of the 10. Missing were the $4 Stella and the two $20 Saints.
On the topic of the Stella, Newcomer did own one of four aluminum examples that are known.
Select Newcomer Coins
The Newcomer 1884 Trade Dollar survives conditionally intact. It is a beautiful toned near-Gem example that grades PCGS PR64+CAM. Based on the most recent grading opinions by PCGS and NGC, this coin ranks fourth in the Condition Census, behind only the Dunham, Eliasberg, and Menjou specimens.
After Newcomer, this example was offered for sale by B. Max Mehl but did not sell until it was consigned in Morgenthau’s May 1935 auction where it was purchased by Colonel Green. Burdette Johnson acquired the coin in the early 1940s, and over the next few years, Mehl would get two more chances to sell it. Its most famous owners since Waldo Newcomer were Texas mega-collectors Amon G. Carter, Senior and Junior.
Stack’s Bowers offered the coin for sale in March 2020 as part of the E. Horatio Morgan Collection, where it brought $552,000.
Waldo Newcomer likely acquired this 1795 Liberty Cap Cent from New York dealer Harlan P. Smith’s sale of the Dr. Edward Maris Collection.
This coin was included in the collection sold to B. Max Mehl in 1932 and sold through dealer James G. MacAllister in 1935. From there, the coin passed through several collections – including those of Dr. William H. Sheldon and R.E. “Ted” Naftzger, Jr. More recently, it was held in the ESM Collection, which Stack’s Bowers offered in their August 2020 auction, where the coin brought $408,000.
This is the finest known 1737 COPPER Higley Copper CONNECTICVT variety and one of the finest known of all 15 Higley varieties.
It was described on Colonel E.H.R. Green’s envelope as an uncirculated specimen that cost Newcomer $1,600. Heritage Auctions traced the coin’s pedigree back to the collection of 19th-century collector Sylvester Sage Crosby. When Waldo Newcomer bought it is unclear, but Green’s possession of the Newcomer coins would have been short-lived as the super-collector died in 1936.
Eric P. Newman and Burdette Johnson bought the Green Collection from his estate over several years, starting in 1939. In the handwritten script at the bottom of the envelope are the words “bought for, the date, with (illegible), and an arrow pointing to the figure $850, typed in red ink. Newman and Johnson got the deal of the century when they acquired the Green Collection and it appears that Green’s estate took a significant haircut on some of the coins.
At Heritage Auctions’ May 2014 Newman Sale, this coin realized $470,000 with Buyer’s Premium.
Newcomer’s 1804 dollar, a Class III exhibiting artificial wear (PCGS AU58), was produced by the Midnight Mint sometime between 1857 and the 1870s. The coin’s provenance can be surmised from there. John Haseltine, a Philadelphia coin dealer with insider status at the Mint, displayed the coin in 1876 and then sold it to New Hampshire collector Phineas Adams. Around 1880, Adams sold the coin to coin dealer Henry Ahlborn, who sold it to collector John Lyman. After Lyman’s passing, Samuel Hudson Chapman sold the coin to Waldo Newcomer, who displayed the piece at a 1914 American Numismatic Society (ANS) meeting. From there, the coin entered the collections of Colonel Green, F.C.C. Boyd, and Amon Carter, Jr.
Heritage Auctions sold the coin for $2.3 million in 2009.
Waldo Newcomer owned a lightly circulated (pictured above) Brasher Doubloon (EB on Wing) discovered in a Philadelphia cellar in 1897. Newcomer reported that he paid $3,900 ($67,225 in today’s dollars) for it as the winning bidder at the Allison W. Jackman Collection sale in 1918. The “Philadelphia Sewer” specimen, as it erroneously is known, was sold to Colonel Green after Newcomer’s passing, then to media baron William Randolph Hearst, B.G. Johnson, F.C.C. Boyd, and Mrs. R. Henry Norweb before being placed in the permanent collection of the ANS in 1969.
Newcomer’s 1795 Capped Bust Right Half Eagle with the anachronistic Heraldic Eagle reverse was previously owned by William Woodin. It would later be part of King Farouk’s Palace Collection.
Newcomer acquired the unique 1873-CC Liberty Seated, No Arrows dime in 1915, after the coin was offered at Wayte Raymond’s “Collection of a Prominent American” sale, where the coin sold for $170. Today, this rare dime is worth more than $4 million.
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