Q. David Bowers
"It was his turn, and he said, 'How many would you buy for that price? Would you buy 100?' I said, 'Well, if I am going to pay two dollars apiece I want to buy all you've got. How many do you have?' He said, very hesitantly, 'One thousand." And then I said, 'Who are you?' At this point he was only a voice on the other end of the telephone line.
"He said, 'I'm the cash teller at the Williamsburg Savings Bank in Brooklyn. We were checking out the cash, and I found these bags that say Long Island Tercentenary Commission, and they have these half dollars in them.' So, I said, 'Well, how many are in a bag?' And he said, 'Five hundred dollars' worth.' I said, 'That's 1,000 pieces. I will give you 2,000 bucks in cash for the bag.' The guy-in those days bank tellers were making $50 or $60 a week nearly flipped. So he said, 'Where are you located?' I said, 'Fifth Avenue at West 47th Street, One West 47th.' Then he said, 'I'll take a cab and I'll be over there in an hour.'
"I went to cash a $2,000 check at the Chase Bank around the comer and was waiting for this guy. He was about 25 years old, and he was huffing and puffing carrying this 30 pound bag, or whatever it weighed, in the elevator and into the office. It had a metal seal on it which had been opened, apparently by him, to see what these things looked like. He was still huffing and puffing-I guess he was so excited the adrenalin was flowing. In my haste I just took a scissors and cut the top off the bag and looked in-and they were all brilliant white Uncirculated Long Islands. I gave him the $2,000 cash. I carried them into our back office, and Charles Wormser and I put them in envelopes and sold them for four bucks apiece to anybody that wanted them.
"I remember Werner Amelingmeier bought about 200 or 300. About 15 years later I bought them back from Amelingmeier for $18 each and sold them to Stanley Apfelbaum, who was just launch-ing his company, First Coinvestors. Apfelbaum marked them up to about $40 and sold them to investors.
"Anyway, several weeks after my deal with the bank teller we still had about half of the bag of Long Island coins left, and my partner, Charles, was getting nervous, like he often did, and was wondering what we were going to do with the rest of them. Just about this time, the bank teller called again and said he found another bag. Charles said to me, "Don't pay him as much. Pay him a dollar and a half.' I told Charles that I couldn't pay him less, so I paid him two bucks per coin. New Netherlands Coin Co. had Long Island half dollars in quantity for years after that. We bought at least two bags from the guy, possibly three."
Ford went on to tell of his involvement with quantities of other commemorative issues: "By the time of our next big commemorative score, we still had Long Island coins around. The next big deal was in 1958 and involved Howard Mcintosh, who had the Tatham Stamp & Coin Company in Springfield, Massachusetts. McIntosh had become involved in some sort of a real estate deal, had become despondent, and had committed suicide. New Netherlands made a deal to handle his coin inventory on consignment. He had huge quantities of coins including thousands of rolls of coins of scarce dates, tremendous numbers of minor Proof coins from the Proskey estate by way of Fred Boyd, and immense quantities of commemorative half dollars, which he had bought from the issuing commissions. How he did it, I don't know, but he had the coins. I do know that he was very thick with Horace Grant in Providence, Rhode Island, and that Mcintosh had a hell of a lot of Rhode Island halves.
"Among the hoard of commemoratives I remember the 1935 Boone sets with 'small 1934,' which they only made 2,000 sets of, and Mcintosh had 180 to 200 sets. Some types of commemoratives were very hard to find with nice surfaces. I remember distinctly that when we were handling the McIntosh material I could study all of the commemoratives in detail, and there were certain issues that just couldn't be found in super Uncirculated grade. Many varieties looked pretty crummy when they were tarnished, like Alabama, Missouri, and PanPacific half dollars. These always looked a little icky to me. I always disliked the Missouris and thought they looked like somebody stepped on them. The reason for this was that the dies were cut a little too deep at the portrait, and, unless they were in full mint bloom, they didn't look so hot. Some others, like the 1918 Illinois and the Pilgrim halves of '20 and '21, were always brilliant and nice.
"Charles Wormser was worried about our having such large quantities and didn't think we could sell them, so I came up with the idea of running ads all over the place induding in The Numismatist, the Numismatic Scrapbook, and on the inside back cover of our auction catalogues. Charles then asked, 'How are you going to price them?' I said that we could take some other dealer's listing and discount from that. I picked on Sol Kaplan because he used to run lots of ads and fancied himself as a promoter of commemoratives. All I did was take his prices and cut them. If he wanted $8, I priced ours for $7, and so forth.
"Sol Kaplan became outraged and accused us of not having the coins, of trying to ruin him, and of being phonies. I said, 'Okay, wise guy'-and, of course, I was very aggressive at the time (since then I have mellowed)-'what commemoratives do you want?' To test us, he picked something we were offering at a big discount and asked for 20 sets. So I sent the 20 sets. Then he didn't want to pay for them. He said it was outrageous. How could I sell these coins so cheap? I said, 'If they are so cheap, pay for them.' So we got into a real shouting match, a really heated exchange. My basic philosophy was that he could go to hell. And we just continued to sell these things. And then he cut his prices, and we cut ours. We had a price war. The only difference was that we had the coins and they didn't cost us anything, as we were handling the coins on a 10% commission and did not have to put them in inventory. He was in a different position, as he had money invested in his inventory and had owned many of them for a long time. Finally, we sold out of what we had."!
Collecting Long Island Half Dollars
Today, Long Island half dollars are among the most plentiful survivors from issues of the 1930s. As is the case with most other issues of the year, pieces were minted and handled carelessly, and at the time of distribution most showed nicks, bagmarks, and other evidences of contact, particularly on the ship's sails on the reverse. Numerous existing pieces show friction and are undoubtedly from the tens of thousands of coins originally distributed to the general public. Such coins usually grade from AU- 50 to MS-60. Most Long Island half dollars seen in collections today are in lower Mint State levels. MS-60 to MS-63 examples are typical, although MS-64 and MS-65 specimens can be obtained without undue difficulty.
GRADING SUMMARY: Check for friction and/or evidences of handling on the cheek and hair of the Dutch settler on the obverse and, in particular, on the largest sail on the ship on the reverse. Most coins have a satiny or slightly "greasy" lustre and are not deeply frosty; this is the way they were struck.