12 Collecting, Motorcycle 1

Collecting, Motorcycle 1

I began collecting postage stamps in my scouting years with a Minkus world-wide album and gummed “hinges”; this earned me the scouting merit badge. I realized that though it was comprehensive, the album was necessarily very incomplete, and that collecting stamps of the whole world was impractical for me. Of course I would collect US stamps (again specializing with too much detail); I chose Scott’s Specialty “Central Europe” series, and obtained the two albums it entailed. At that time I was trading duplicates with two other Boy Scouts in their home (we also learned “wig-wag” signaling with flags).

Ted and I briefly collected bottle caps, mostly found beneath the bleachers of Engel Stadium. These included caps from bottles of every brand of soda pop and beer. They were often covered with dirt, so we soon gave up that pursuit.

About the age of eleven I began collecting US coins (of every date and mint) in current circulation (pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, halves), putting them in Whitman folders, buying a current Whitman’s “red book” which catalogues date, mint and grade, and pricing (the ideal is Mint State; condition is an important factor in a coin’s value). I soon added older US coins and those of other nations sometimes found). When I was about fourteen years old, I began getting coins from the Brainerd branch of the bank where my mother’s friend was a teller; she was very kind to me, and she and the other tellers sometimes gave me silver dollars they found, always at face value. I would ride my bike, and in the bank’s parking lot I picked through the coins of each roll, placing the best example of each coin in my folder, returning to the teller the re-rolled coins with my initials. I was given my mother’s paycheck for this purpose, so each time I had around $400 to work with. After I began driving and had the use of my mother’s car, I could handle larger, heavier bags of coins, like pennies in $50 bags or nickels in $200 bags, which I would sort using a towel to keep the bed linens clean (it’s amazing how much dirt is on coins). It was at this time that I acquired some rare coins, including a 1909-S VDB Lincoln cent (rarest of them all) and 1937-D 3-legged Buffalo nickel error, both in very fine condition; I no longer have either and never saw the same again. The cent I sold for $150 to my scout coin dealer, to buy by mail order an engine for my 650cc Triumph motorcycle, and the nickel my grandmother unwittingly used for bus fare. I found that cent, and some others, in a paper wrapper from a tobacco company; I suppose they were from some collector’s treasures.

With the proceeds from selling my rare cent I bought by mail a 650cc engine for my Triumph Thunderbird, bought locally. Upon the engine’s arrival I installed it in our dirt-floor garage, cranked it, and somehow got it running. As my first official act, I rode it on busy Brainerd Road, intending to visit my cousin. When turning up the ridge, I drove it as one would a bicycle, not realizing that motorcycles are turned by leaning them; I ran off the road and hurt my crotch in the bike’s gas tank – I learned fast!

One of my more conservative SHH buddies called me Marlon after “The Wild One” in that notorious movie.

This bike was old, with a rigid (rear fork) frame, and didn’t have the modern “swing arm” introduced in 1955, so I bought and installed a “sprung hub” to make the ride softer.

After my marriage to Ginny, I resumed both stamp and coin collecting. I decided that I preferred used stamps to mint (as long as the design was not obscured by cancellation), since they had done the job they were made for, besides being cheaper; and for Israel, the “tab” at the selvage added beauty and had more information than the stamp itself. So I went to a stamp and coin show at Warwick Mall, and browsed the dealers’ goods, buying several used Israel tab stamps. I took Ginny back to that show, and she was given a pendant necklace with a shiny “Indian Head” cent that the dealer had “whizzed” with a special metal brush – a cheap gift, but she liked it and was hooked; this same dealer had a shop in Pawtucket where he also sold antiques, and I often went there in the evenings as a sort of coin protégé, and once bought her a boxed set of “roly-poly” punch bowl and glasses (from Fostoria in WV), and a set of green-stemmed set crystal goblets and matching pitcher – never since seen to augment the set. I later bought a Hungary stamp collection (which largely duplicated what I already had) and a pertinent catalog. I subscribed to the weekly newspaper Linn’s “Stamp News”, and used to look through stamps of the Central Europe countries on old album pages that other collectors had assembled, selecting those I wanted, and returning the pages with my remittance (usually 1/3 Scott’s catalog value). In 2008 I resumed collecting used tab stamps of Israel through 1973, and bought a larger Minkus album; my collection is almost complete now, lacking only the rare, expensive, often faked #7+8. I intend to give this collection to our daughter Irene, who is now living in Israel with her family.

I also subscribed to Linn’s weekly “Coin News” and began to buy coins advertised by dealers there. In the process I put my Lincoln cents in a Dansco album, which had clear plastic inserts to protect the coins and display both sides. I also got a Whitman coin album (with clear plastic windows, much higher cost than the simpler folders). I briefly went to meetings of the RI coin club, which met in Warwick, with my Pawtucket dealer friend, and assembled a US Type Set, with each coin in as near Mint State as I could afford; the only coin I didn’t get was a 1794-5 half-dime with “flowing hair” (very expensive but more now), though I have a silver dollar of this series.