THE COIN THAT CHANGED JIM MCGUIGAN'S LIFE

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V24 2021 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 24, Number 23, June 6, 2021, Article 14

With permission we're publishing this excerpt from a nice article by dealer Jim McGuigan. Reproduced from the June 2021 issue of The Numismatist, official publication of the American Numismatic Association (money.org). Thanks! -Editor

Sometimes an event or encounter with another person can have a significant impact on one's career path. This is the story of how a coin purchase altered the direction of my life.

As a young boy growing up in Pittsburgh, I was bitten by the collecting bug early in life. In addition to coins, I collected stamps, comic books, baseball cards and toy soldiers. I began acquiring coins when I was about 10 years old. Like many beginning collectors in this era, I started filling holes in Whitman folders with Lincoln cents my parents received in change. Later, my father brought home a few rolls of cents from the bank each week so I could look for dates I was missing. I also expanded my collection to include other denominations— nickels, dimes, quarters, half dollars and silver dollars.

I found it difficult to locate certain dates (and mintmarks) in change, so I started visiting local coin shops. After buying a copy of A Guide Book of United States Coins (the Red Book) and learning how scarce and valuable many of the key dates were in each denomination, I started saving my allowance to purchase some of these coins. My interest in early U.S. coins was sparked in 1957 when I purchased several half cents, including the 1797 1 Above 1 and 1804 Spiked Chin varieties from Addison Smith—a Pittsburgh dealer.

As a collector younger than Jim also growing up in Pittsburgh, I too found my way to the shop of Addison Smith. It was a sparse and colorless office on an upper floor of the Jenkins Arcade, an old-style shopping arcade (now demolished and the site of an office building). Smith wore a rumpled suit with suspenders and looked to be older than dirt. But he was quite nice to me and I bought a decent Large Cent for $20 and kept it for decades. -Editor

The Acquisition

Since local dealers did not have many early coppers in stock, I started acquiring more pieces from auctions. One that caught my attention was the June 1970 Stack's James C. Rawls sale, which had a number of mid-grade half cents and large cents that I needed for my collection. I was a successful mail bidder on six lots, including an 1808/7 Gilbert-1 half cent (Lot 1123) for $100, graded Fine to Very Fine. I did not know the significance of this coin until I met Roger Cohen at the ANA's 1973 Boston Convention and purchased a copy of his reference American Half Cents (1971).

I learned from the book that my 1808/7 half cent was the finest-known of the extremely rare Cohen-1 die variety—a Rarity-8 with only 1-3 examples known at the time. Since this die variety was not discovered by Cohen until 1962, it was not listed in Ebenezer Gilbert's The United States Half Cents (1916), which had been the standard reference on the series until Cohen's work was published.

See the complete article in The Numismatist - it's a great story. Jim decides to trade the coin for other pieces he would sell to raise money for his collection. He ended up making so much money he decided to become a fulltime coin dealer. That chance purchase had led to a whole new career for Jim. And many decades later he managed to reacquire that same coin. Congratulations! -Editor