Q. David Bowers
Unsorted Bags
He said, "I don't even know where all these checks are coming from." So then, as you know, we tracked it back to one person. At the time there was a tremendous interest in silver dollars. We were very honest with our customers, and our bags were truly unsorted. We did buy some bags for our own business, and these we opened and sorted out by date and mintmark.
We ran large advertisements and sold tremendous quantities of dollars. Collectors and investors realized that not for the preceding 40 or 50 years had there been such a great chance to get so many different varieties of Morgan dollars in Uncirculated condition.
I also remember opening bags of worn coins and sorting through them. It was unforgettable to find such dates as 1889-CC and 1893-CC.
As you know and also probably remember from the late 1950s and early 1960s, Harry and I made a specialty of selling unsorted bags. We were probably one of the very few firms around that really did give people unsearched-through bags. So several years after the fact I said to myself, "Well, there are a lot of people out there who may not have ever gone through their bags."Knowing what we found in the bags we bought for our own stock, I said to myself, "There must be lots of really valuable dollars sitting out there now."
I went through all of our files. I composed a beautiful letter that said something like: "You are a customer who bought one of these silver dollar bags. If you have never gone through the bag we suggest that you do so at this time; your coins have really increased greatly in value. We are paying the following prices." I then gave a list of dates we wanted to buy and the prices we would pay, which were very strong, as we had a good clientele for the coins. Dave, I can tell you that not a single person answered my letter!
It is amazing how large quantities of coins can disappear into the woodwork. I have seen that many times. Think of it; not one response. In later years I would get a few letters, such as, "Dear Mrs. Bauer. Thank you so much for the beautiful 1894-O dollars you sold me. I recently sold them for $1,000." You think someone might have sent me a commission along with their letter!
John J. Ford,Jr. Remembers
John J. Ford, Jr. partner in New Netherlands Coin Company in the 1960s, told of his experiences with the silver dollar releases of the era: (Interview with the author, May 12, 1992.)
With [my wife] Joan I went up to the Concord resort in the Catskill Mountains in February 1963-it was the week before Washington's birthday. We went up on a Saturday and came home on a Sunday a week later, but the whole time I was there I spent most of my time either skiing, eating, or talking to Harry J. Forman (of Philadelphia) on the phone about silver dollars.
Harry of course was a source for the mint bags of Morgan dollars, and we had done a tremendous amount of business with him in late November, all of December and part of January 1962-1963.
How did my silver dollar deals with Harry start? Well, you know, I at that time was a great advocate of being against rolls and speculation in numismatics and other such things. But, this was too big a deal to ignore. Harry called me up early in November of 1962, I guess it was the 17th or the 18th, and he wanted to know if I could sell him any 1903-O, '04-O, '98-O silver dollars Uncirculated, which at that time were considered rare coins, particularly the '03-O. I guess he was buying them from various places, and wanted to know if I had any.
I asked him what was going on, and he said he had a large quantity of these rare dates. The next three weeks were hectic. Harry was selling these coins of the bag to individuals, some of whom would then either go to Europe or throughout the rural areas of the United States and sell them to people who had Guide Books and thought they were very valuable. There was a lot of gouging. In particular, I understand the first guys who arrived in Europe made a fortune burying Spink's and Seaby's [leading London dealers]. By the time the situation stabilized-I guess the first week of December-I came tip with the brilliant idea of sending out postcards to our entire mailing list telling them that we had bags available and so forth.
To avoid using the New Netherlands name, we sent them in the name of Werner Amelingmeier, who was running Ford Numismatic Publications. We sent out 7,000 or 8,000 post-cards and return reply cards, and soon we were selling bags at the rate of maybe 15 to 20 bags a day. These were Federal Reserve bank-sealed bags of silver dollars, all of which were Uncirculated, and all of which had a little hole in the bag burned with a cigarette. [A supplier with access to the Federal Reserve bank vault would get permission to take a cigarette in there, and he'd burn a whole in the bag and then he put his eye up to the hole and put a flashlight on the other side of the bag to illuminate through the canvas the other side of the bag, enough so he could see the front of one coin and the back of another to find out the date and the mint and to see if they were all BU (brilliant Uncirculated)].
Then based on what the date and mint was, he'd pay the guys $50 or $100 and they'd go to the cash roomand he'd pay up and he'd take all the bags out of there .... The dollars went into Harry's hands. As fast as we would get orders, we would call Harry, and he would drive up in his Cadillac, which looked like a rocket ship because the rear end of it was about touching the ground and the front wheels were barely touching the ground. With all the weight he had in the trunk and the back seat of the car, even a Cadillac would tip.
He'd bring these bags up and then have to schlep 'em up in the elevator from where he parked I don't know. He carried them up; we [New Netherlands Coin Company] were on the fourth floor [at 1 West 47th Street, New York City]. He carried two bags at a time. The same building was the old home of Scott Stamp & Coin Company, which was on the third floor for many years. Anyhow, Harry would carry up two at a time, and when he arrived, I'd run down and help him. Each bag weighed about 60 pounds, so we must have been in fairly good shape then. We would pile these up on the floor, and then we would have to ascertain what went to whom, and the next morning or the next afternoon we'd schlep 'em back down to Railway Express and park the truck downstairs opposite the entrance to the building. And we'd carry them, Charles Wormser and I-well, Wormser had a dolly; he couldn't carry these bags. And we'd carry the bags down, we'd send 'em out Railway Express. The buyers had to pay the Railway Express charges.