CHARLES MEREDITH BRAINARD (1939-1996)

I want to share with readers a newspaper clipping from the July 15, 1963, issue of The Daily Breeze of Torrence, California. It shows Charles Brainard as the owner-manager of the Eagle Coin Gallery. I knew the guy and wondered what more I could learn using my normal biographical sources.

Charles M. Brainard was born in Detroit on May 14, 1939. His father was Albert Reginald Brainard (1899-1878) and mother was Ida Mae Ware Brainard (1902-1993). He had an older sister, Betty Jane Brainard (1923-2015) and older brother, Edward Albert Brainard (1928-2014).

Albert and Ida Mae were married in Los Angeles on May 21, 1921. At that time, Albert was working as a railroad clerk and Ida Mae was a stenographer.

At the time of the 1930 Census, the couple was living with their two children in Detroit. For the 1940 Census, the family was still living in Detroit. Albert was a freight agent for a railroad.

Listed in the 1950 Census, Charles was living with his parents and older brother at 2840 Indiana Avenue in South Gate, California. Charles would live there for the rest of his life. At that time Albert was an assistant manager at an automobile factory. Albert seldom got his name in the papers. His wife was active with the Woman’s Society of Christian Service.

Charles graduated from South Gate High School in the class of 1957. When his class put on their senior class play, Charles M. Brainard was responsible for set design and decoration. He also worked on the stage crew. Perhaps these interests led to later work in the entertainment industry. I found no indication that he attended college. What was he doing between 1957 and 1963?

There are mysteries about Mr. Brainard. It has been reported that he bought part of a hoard of uncirculated large cents from the estate of B. Max Mehl in 1960 when he was only twenty-one years old. By 1963 he owned the Eagle Coin Galleries, described as an up-scale shop, that was reported to have “one of the most complete stocks in Southern California.” How did someone so young, and coming from a family of limited means, jump into the industry at a professional level?

His employee, Ray Arthur Borland (1903-1971) was an old man of sixty in 1963. He had joined the ANA in 1960 and died in 1971. Jon Hanson was only twenty in 1963. He went on to a distinguished career in numismatics. Brainard also operated as an itinerant dealer out of Coin-A- Rama City in Hawthorne, California, just a couple miles north of the shop in Lawndale.

Charles M. Brainard joined the American Numismatic Association as member 40783 in April, 1961. His address was listed as 2840 Indiana Avenue, South Gate, California. This was a modest house, currently described as 981 square feet. Brainard recruited one new ANA member but was otherwise not mentioned in The Numismatist.

He was a member of the Numismatic Association of Southern California (N,A.S.C.). In 1963, Charles Brainard served as a board member for Downey Numismatics. Downey is about five miles east of South Gate.

In 1966 he left for an extended trip to Europe. He came back a changed man and with a new name. He changed his name to Jack Collins, a name that should be familiar to readers of The E-Sylum. Even his best friends in numismatics knew little about his previous life.

It has been thirty years since his death and sixty years since his name change. Is anyone left who can add insight into his early life?

This is an opportunity for me to show off another of my favorite personal tokens. Without the story, this would just be another wooden nickel. I was excited to find the first one. When I found a second one, I gave it to George F. Kolbe. Later he contributed it to the 2019 NBS Benefit Auction, as lot 7.

 

 
Jack Collins and Walter Breen Promoting NBS in 1983

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
COIN-A-RAMA CITY (https://www.coinbooks.org/v26/esylum_v26n47a18.html)

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web