STEVE TANENBAUM TRIBUTE WEB SITE

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V14 2011 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 14, Number 14, April 3, 2011, Article 7

Dave Perkins and Dave Bowers forwarded this link to a tribute web site for the late Steve Tanenbaum. It includes links and articles about Steve from The E-Sylum, newspapers, and around the web. What a great idea. It's very nicely done - check it out. We miss you, Steve. -Editor

Steve's major hobby as a child was, unsurprisingly, numismatics and from an early age he had an entrepreneurial bent. His brother Andy remembers, "One time when he was about 10, he asked our father to loan him $100, which he did. He then went to a local bank and asked for 2000 nickels, which the bank gave him. He tediously went through all 2000 nickels looking for rare or interesting ones. He might have found 4 or 5, perhaps a dozen at most. He then replaced these with ordinary, boring nickels, went back to the bank, and asked for 1000 dimes.

Similarly, he went through the dimes one at a time and replaced a few worthwhile specimens with more garden-variety dimes. When he brought these back to the bank, he asked for and got 400 quarters, which he also processed one at a time. When he was all done, he got his $100 back. Well, let's just say there are a lot of banks in White Plains." Steve's love of numismatics was evident even at the age of ten.

In 1978, he formed a partnership with Richard Rossa, known in the trade as RAT (Rossa And Tanenbaum), with an elegant rat playing a piano as their company logo. Steve eventually moved to Brooklyn, NY, where he lived for the rest of his life.

Steve was especially interested in exonumia, the branch of numismatics that deals with items other than coins and paper money. His real love was Civil War tokens which were produced by stores during the civil war when there were few coins in circulation, the metal having been melted down for military purposes. Each token (similar to a coin though technically different) thus belongs to a particular store and was issued and used during a fairly short time span. RAT was a dealer in these and other antique collectibles.

Steve was extremely modest and never spoke of his many accomplishment in the field of numismatics. He was elected eight times to the Board of Governors of the Civil War Token Society and was recognized by his peers as one of the most knowledgeable people in the country in the area of Civil War tokens. Working with collectors, he helped build many of the great modern collections.