My Friend Lloyd

I haven’t known him long, though long enough to recognize a dedicated collector of the old school. The historical significance of a coin impresses him more than its investment aspects.

He collects Spanish Colonial coinage, among other numismatica with which he is equally at home. He seldom has time for coin shows; instead, he is a reader, not of price guides but of scholarly historical treatises that bring his coins to life. And he is generous. When he has studied a book that he deems important, he calls up the publisher to order a copy sent to me as a gift.

He is modest and has his priorities straight. Surrounded daily by important people of means in a high-pressure profession, where bold decision-making turns the wheels of capitalism, he will take the afternoon off to show you his coins—collector to collector, two equals reliving through numismatics the Spanish conquest of the New World.

He appreciates dealers who are at heart collectors, as most indeed are, many of them less knowledgeable than he, but a few his equal yet unfortunately adept at extracting large prices for exotic coins for which there is no other buyer. This is my friend’s only area of vulnerability.

When he purchases a coin he doesn’t haggle, an attitude of strength unrecognized as such by most dealers and collectors. He thinks fast and it’s “yes” or “no” (as frequently “no” as “yes”), which suits me just fine, as I would prefer to do business that way. I don’t waste his time and he doesn’t waste mine.

When my friend communicates with me—let’s give him the fictitious name of Lloyd—his letter is always to the point and hand-written, and with no trite valedictions from the typewriter of a secretary. His latest note said: “Thanks so much for ….Clearly you remain a collector with fraternal instincts even though you’ve become a dealer.” That’s the best compliment that a dealer should wish for.

And then I made a mistake, inadvertently, but one that has demonstrated how we dealers sometimes become crass and insensitive despite whatever better instincts we may possess. As you might guess by now, Lloyd is a sensitive man.

Coin show after coin show—how many hundreds have I attended? One gets accustomed to seeing anything and everything on the bourse tables at coin shows. Why, I once spotted a Nobel Prize medal and remember thinking, “Who would ever sell that?” But at certain times, like the end of a long session when one has become tired or maybe hasn’t prospered that day, the coins and medals on the table can seem like simply pieces of metal, and the currency just pieces of paper. A commodity like any other, and everything has its price.

About a year ago, on just such a day when nothing was happening and I was aimlessly looking over the material on other dealers’ tables, my eyes fell upon nothing less than what I assumed to be an authentic Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest award for military valor that can be bestowed by the United States of America. Already inured to such displays, I was surprised but not at all shocked. I bought the medal, ribbon and all, having no idea what I would do with it, for medals are not my field. Rather, I thought of this medal as a conversation piece, especially in conjunction with a shoulder patch of the First Marine Division, Guadalcanal, that I had picked up as a memento at an earlier coin show. After all, I was in the U.S. Navy during and immediately after World War II and had memories of my own from the Southwest Pacific, even if I arrived too late for Guadalcanal.

I put away my little treasures and mostly forgot about them. Then, recently, at another coin show, I saw another Congressional Medal of Honor, this time among the exhibits. In the interim I had learned three facts: (1) The Congressional Medal of Honor differs according to the branch of the military; mine was Navy-Marines and pre-1945, identifiable by its design. (2) If the recipient of one of these medals (and probably others) loses his, he can obtain a replacement, though without his name engraved on it. Mine bore no name. (3) Some military heroes have conveniently misplaced their medals, or have died during the forty years since the end of World War II, and they or their families have disposed of the originals or their replacements for profit.

What an awful racket! Is there nothing sacred? “I have held my medal long enough and am going to put it on the market like everybody else,” is what I thought. After all, it wasn’t cheap. Time to take a profit.

Last week I mailed out my Late 1985 Price List and included on it the Congressional Medal of Honor, unrelated to the Latin American coins that comprise the rest of the list. Two days later the phone rang and it was Lloyd, astonished to find such an item for sale. I indicated to him what has been summarized in the preceding paragraphs, but he in turn pointed out a possibility that had not occurred to me: “What if the owner sold it because he had come to poverty?” Lloyd did not give me the whole story, modest as he is, but obviously he himself was a military hero in World War II, or at least one of the few survivors in certain operations against the Nazis.

Lloyd insisted on buying the medal, with the instruction that I mail it as a donation in his name to a nonprofit numismatic organization. It was not Lloyd’s intention to embarrass me—he’s too big a man for that—but he wanted the medal off the market. I’m ashamed anyhow and this article is my way of informing him that I am mailing my profit in the transaction, plus a little more, as a gift to the ANA.

Although I never earned either one, I will miss the Guadalcanal shoulder patch, but not the Congressional Medal of Honor, and I hope never to see another one except around the neck of the authentic hero. Thanks for straightening me out, Lloyd, and now let’s go back to what we know—coins.