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All I Want for Christmas
At five years old, we are all pure Freudian Id anyway. We lived on the pleasure and pain principle. That whole philosophy of utter selfishness makes a lot of sense to you when you are five. Dylan Thomas, the great Welsh playwright and wordsmith, states that this is the age of wisdom. “To believe in fairies and not yet quite be toilet trained.” When I was five, I wanted coins! Yes, it is a fact! I lusted coins! My dad had a lot of coins, and Tom Nicolla, our insurance man had a whole huge leather bag filled with coins with which he made change for his customers who still paid their insurance premiums with cash in those far away days. Tom allowed me to paw through his treasure at will as he sat at the kitchen or dining room table having a cup of coffee. I made sets of Buffalo nickels by date, as well as, Lincoln cents, mercury dimes, Liberty nickels, and worn Indian cents, and Barber coinage. All of these older coins could be found in change back in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. Often my mother or dad would give Tom the money to cover the face value of the coins I selected if the sum was not too large. Around Christmas time, my parents would be disposed to being more giving in the area of my “old coin” interest. Christmas time is always good for inspiring the “giving mood” in others. My aunt May always gave me silver dollars back in those far away times. Christmas was that special time a year which always brought on a flow of silver cartwheels. Back in the late 1950’s, when I was fourteen years of age, one of the locals had a bag of European coins that he had picked up in Germany during World War II. It was a hoard of old German states coins, a Russian five rubles coin of Nicholas II of 1898, and various other old pieces. My folks asked me what they should pay for the bag full of coins. I calculated that they were not about to start collecting, that they honestly had no idea what a fair price to pay would be, and most likely intended to give me the prize as a Christmas gift. I pondered as I piled, separated, and calculated value. Now back in 1958, few world coins were highly esteemed by United States collectors. The price guides, such as they were, were not helpful. In many dealer’s shops, you could still buy many fairly high grade world coins under the intrinsic value of the silver or even gold of which they were made. This was also true of United States coins being sold in the Europeans markets in the 1930’s through the early 1960’s. Herman “Pat” Herst writes in his memoirs that he liked to go through the stalls of the coin dealers in Paris and buy undervalued U.S. coins below face value. Herst was a great stamp dealer and writer, but he knew a good deal, coin wise, when he saw it. With all of these facts in mind, I judged the lot of several hundred coins of various sizes and compositions to be an O.K. buy at thirty-five dollars. Based on my informed opinion my folks paid the war vet thirty-five dollars for the lot and waited until Christmas to “surprise me” with the treasure. Of course they told me that the deal fell through, and that the guy was mad, because he thought that the coins were worth hundreds or even thousands of dollars. That sounded pretty convincing. I guess that I was fooled. I also think that the vet had also shopped the coins around to collectors and dealers in the area, and I bet that he found my parents offer of thirty-five dollars was the best one that he was going to get. When Christmas “1958” arrived, I discovered the coins among my gifts. It was a pretty good Christmas for getting some good stuff. In those days, my 1898 five ruble coin could have been bought from a coin dealer for an amount of five to seven dollars depending on the condition. One has to remember that gold’s value was set at thirty-five dollars an ounce and thus the five ruble piece of Nicholas II of Russia had only a little over four dollars worth of gold in it. Not only that, but nobody really collected these coins. They were really bullion coins, and for the most part still are. But to me it is a great treasure, because the story of the unhappy last Czar of Russia is so compelling. The fact that he and his entire family, about whom so many books have been written, were slaughtered in such a horrible way by the Ural Soviet in 1918 in the The House of Special Purpose. George V of Great Britain refused to allow the Russian Imperial Family refuge in England. George V feared that allowing Nicky, Alexandra, Alexis (the son and heir of Nicky who suffered from hemophilia), and the four grand dutchess would make him unpopular with the English people, because Nicky was an absolute autocrat. The horrible reality of the fate of the Russian Imperial Family must have haunted George V until the day he died. I knew the story well just as I knew the story of Anastasia, the lovely daughter of Nicholas and Alexandra who was rumored to have escaped the fury and slaughter of the Ural Soviet to emerge as Anna Anderson in the 1920’s. For the rest of her life, she pursued recognition as the only surviving child of Nicholas II. I still have that Christmas gold piece and have considered having it buried with me when I die along with a copy of this story to be read thousands of years from now – maybe. Coins are the great recorders of history and the great makers of memories. Come see me in Boston on December first, second, or third at Ed Aleo’s Bay State Coin Show at the Radisson Hotel at 200 Stuart St., Park Square on December 1, 2 and 3. If you bring this article with you, you will receive a United States proof set from Ed. What a guy! Just show this article at the door. While you are at Ed’s Show look around for a gift from somebody for Christmas. If you don’t know anybody to buy a coin for, get a few for me. Just drop then off at my booth. I will be glad to thank you and help you feel all warm and fuzzy. On December 10, 2006, I’ll be at Ernie Botte’s Auburn Coin Show in Auburn, Mass. at the Auburn Elk’s Hall. By the way, did I tell you that this show was in Auburn? To get to the show take the Massachusetts Turnpike to Exit 10. Then drive south on Rt. 12 to the Elk’s Hall which is just next door to the Hampton Inn Hotel. I look forward to meeting all of you Journal readers there, and check out the dozen coins in this article. They were all Christmas gifts to me over the years. Remember you still have a chance to help build my special Christmas Coin Collection. A happy and blissful Yule Season to all of you. |
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