Q. David Bowers
More than anything else, he was a believer in hard assets. A silver dollar was infinitely preferable to a paper dollar, and other coins in quantity-from Lincoln cents to half dollars-were acquired as well. Redfield became interested in numismatics, but only casually. He preferred quantity to quality. Silver dollars remained a specialty, and from friends at banks inReno he obtained for face value many 1,000-coin bags. Some were simply mixed, worn coins. Others contained specific varieties, particularly San Francisco Mint issues, in Uncirculated condition.
Apart from banks, his main supplier of dollars was B.A. Brown, of Fallon, Nevada, who in the 1950s and early 1960s was a familiar figure at coin conventions. I remember a conversation I had with him at the American Numismatic Association Convention in Omaha in 1955. He said he was a "butter and egg man," who made his living with dairy and poultry products, but his first love was coins. He used to have piles of shiny double eagles, when these coins sold for about $35 to $36 each. I don't recall seeing him with quantities of silver dollars, but in 1955 there would have been no purpose in hauling a 59- pound bag of silver dollars to a coin convention. Most dates had no premium.
Brown supplied Redfield with a number of better dates, including San Francisco coins from storage in the Mint, and Carson City pieces. Although Redfield did not pay attention to quality, it is fair to say that few others did, either, in the 1950s and very early 1960s. Bags were as you found them. I never heard of anyone cherrypicking a bag for quality. That didn't happen until after the early 1960s, when collectors and dealers started emphasizing differences within the Uncirculated category.
Redfield occasionally sold or traded dollars, and was on good terms with coin dealers in the Reno area, who recalled him as being a friendly, quiet man, who said little about himself.
In 1952, a burglary in his home is said to have netted the thieves an incredible $1.5 million in cash plus jewels and negotiable financial instruments. It turned out that the heist was masterminded by one or two of Redfield's lady friends. In 1963, the Redfield house was hit again, and this burglary, to this day unsolved, is said to have yielded 100,000 silver dollars.
In the meantime, LaVere Redfield continued buying bags of silver dollars, dumping them down a coal chute to storage in his basement. He also bought damaged and unlabeled food cans at a discount, to save money. A number of cans of peaches stored near his silver dollar cache exploded from fermentation one summer, and doused the dollar bags with juice-causing many of the coins to become spotted and stained (per numismatic legend).
In 1972, LaVere Redfield wrote a will, leavinghalf of his assets to his wife; Nell, and the other half to a niece, Dorothy Redfield Deschamps, of Idaho Falls, Idaho. Thelma R. Thomas, a niece who lived in Reno, received nothing. On May 20, 1974, Redfield was incapacitated by a stroke. He died on September 6th of the same year. His widow Nell lived until April 1981.
The disposition of the Redfield estate was complicated by another will, this one dated 1974, which was later adjudged to be phony. Once this was cleared up, disposition of the assets began.
Benjamin Stack, .. who by that time was back with his family firm, Stack's, in New York City, came to Reno to inventory the coins.' While he was in Nevada doing the appraisal, Hugh Sconyers, a California coin dealer who. was vice-president of A-Mark
Coin Company in Los Angeles, was attending a convention in Las Vegas. At the show, he had a conversation with a good friend, Ron Howard, of Paramount International Coin Corporation, Howard mentioned in passing that he had just been in Reno on vacation, and while there he had encountered Ben Stack. Sconyers, a perceptive listener, won-dered to himself if a big deal was going on in Reno. Knowing BenStack, Hugh Sconyers felt that if he was in the state of Nevada on vacation, he would have been in his former residence, Las Vegas, and not in Reno.
Playing a hunch that Stack was working on a coin transaction in Reno, Sconyers madesome inquiries when he returned to his Los Angeles office the following Monday. First, he called several Reno lodging places, and finally found that Ben Stack was staying at the Mapes Hotel. Upon being asked, the Mapes operator informed Sconyers that Stack had been there for 13 days.
This led Sconyers to call the Probate Court in Reno the same day, to find out if there was a large numismatic estate available in the area. A spokesperson for the Court stated that she was surprised to learn that Sconyers knew about the Redfield coins, for they were supposed to be a secret. Believing that Sconyers was already conversant with the estate, she gave further details, including the name of the attorney to contact. He soon learned that the estate consisted of several hundred thousand silver dollars! The next morning, Sconyers was in Reno. to meet with the attorney, and started negotiations which lasted about 10 months, After sighing a non-disclosure agreement, A-Mark representatives were allowed to examine the Redfield coins, After that point, a contract was entered into to sell all the coins to. A-Mark for $4.7 million.
In the meantime, Joel Rettew and his business associate, David Hall (later the founder of PCGS), and a numismatically knowledgeable attorney, Joseph Battaglia, approached Bowers and Ruddy Galleries, Inc. (then a division of General Mills, Inc.) with the idea of forming a partnership to. buy the coins. An executrix of the Redfield estate, Luanna Miles, had informed Rettew that his bid would be welcome. After many negotiations, the estate coins were put up for auction by the Probate Court on January 27, 1976. Bidding commenced at $5.7 million.
The Bowers and Ruddy Galleries group, equipped with certain information furnished by the appraisers, Stack's, but not having actually seen the coins, bid the silver dollars up to $7.2 million, after which A-Mark bid $7.3 million and won. Several other dealers attended the auction with the intention of bidding, but in the absence of being able to examine the coins or secure an inventory, they did not compete. Among these other dealers were Leon Hendrickson, John Love, Jules Karp, and Carl White. Karp and Hendrickson subsequently participated in financing the A-Mark transaction.