BARGAIN PRICED CONDER TOKENS

Q. David Bowers was president of Paramount International Coin Corporation before I went with the company in 1967. Before he left, he made a trip to Great Britain and must have hired a separate boat to bring back all his plunder. It was a great variety of material. I do not recall what all there was but there were many, many rolls of 1950 and 1951 British pennies, a large quantity of silver crowns and a goodly number of copper Conder tokens.

I was with Paramount five years and year after year those British coins appeared on the inventory sheets. They were going nowhere. I am a sucker for beauty. The Conder tokens were truly magnificent.

When I was making plans to leave Paramount, I knew they wanted desperately to move some of this material from Great Britain. I had a chance to "buy low." (See my story on investing.) Whether I could "sell high" I did not know, but with the Conder tokens, I did not care. I wanted them around just to look at. They were that appealing. I bought all of the Conder tokens, several of the 1950 and 1951 pennies and several crowns.

I sold all the crowns to an investor who was a doctor in Troy, Ohio, for little more than the bullion value and dribbled out the other material over time.

Finally I decided to take the Conder tokens to a show. I left Barbara at the table while I went out to work the floor to make show expenses the easy way. My instructions to Barbara were, "I want $40 each for the tokens, $35 if someone takes them all." I came back to the table in a short time and Barbara greeted me happily with the news that she had sold all the Conder tokens.

"What did you get?"

"$35." She had sold the whole group which I had prized so highly for a total of $35 instead of $35 each.

To read the complete article, see: Conder Tokens Teach Pricing Lesson (www.numismaster.com/ta/numis/Article.jsp?ad=article&ArticleId=22913)

Wayne Homren, Editor

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