Whitehead & Hoag record archives and dies destroyed by Bastian Brothers
Zoins
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Whitehead & Hoag was a prolific issuer of medals and So-Called Dollars, with over 400 employees during WWII. It was a Newark, NJ firm that was founded in 1892 by Benjamin Stainsby Whitehead (1858-1940) and Chester Robinson Hoag Sr. (1860-1935).
I was just reading history of this company in the link below and noted that the company was eventually purchased by a competitor, Bastian Bros. of Rochester, NY. Instead of keeping the history of the firm, Bastion Bros. destroyed the records and dies.
Anyone know more about the history between Bastion Bros. and Whitehead & Hoag? Was there any "bad blood" between the two?
During the Second World War Whitehead & Hoag employed over 400 workers but it could not successfully grow from a mid-sized family-owned company to a large corporation. In 1953 the last founders' family member with an active interest in the company died and the firm started deteriorating. One or two profitable years would be followed by several years of financial losses. In 1959, a long-time competitor, Bastian Bros. of Rochester, N.Y., bought the business.
It appears that more than a little vengefulness were at work in winding down operations. Rather than merging Whitehead & Hoag into Bastian's business, the new owner ordered the factory to be sold and all dies and records destroyed. Thus the carefully archived records and dies of many beautiful medals were lost.
http://medallicartcollector.com/whitehead-hoag.shtml
Here's a similar story posted by Ted Hake. From the below, it's unclear whether only unusable dies and tools were scrapped or all dies and tools were scrapped as it seems like it could be read either way.
W&H first offered the sale of the company to Bastian Bros. The sale took place and W&H closed its factory in May, 1959. The president of Bastian at the time of the sale came to Newark, ordered the factory to be sold and any unusable machinery, dies or tools to be scrapped. W&H kept records of every item they ever made and these records were ordered destroyed. Bastian continued to use W&H's name, finally phasing it out in 1964-65.
http://www.tedhake.com/viewuserdefinedpage.aspx?pn=whco
Bastion Brothers still exists, having been renamed to Bastion Company.
http://www.bastiancompany.com/about.shtml
I was able to find the full names from Benjamin S. Whitehead and Chester R. Hoag here:
- https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/9299090/benjamin-stainsby-whitehead
- https://www.myheritage.com/names/chester_hoag
Here's some vintage photos posted by Ted Hake:
Comments
Such a shame.... To order the destruction of such history... It literally seems like he wanted to obliterate his competition... and yet kept the name for another five years....Sad. Cheers, RickO
Thank you for posting this information.
The destruction of records might be the reason that I could not find any manufacturing information for the Egyptian Magic Coins.
Egyptian Magic Coin
Gold colored bronze, 32 mm, 8.35 gm
The Mysterious Egyptian Magic Coin
Coins in Movies
Coins on Television
W & H made a vast array of tokens and medals from the most humble to some rather expensive ones. Quality of all was generally quite good in a utilitarian sort of way.
Your token was probably made by several entities over a long period. This specific one is new to me but I've seen several others and have been told that there are quite a few. Many tokens and medals are made in batches of a thousand and then the dies are discarded so even examples made by the same company are identifiable to which batch they came from.
Because of low mintages and intentional destruction quite a few tokens have none surviving or are quite rare. Medals have better survival rates in most instances.
It’s a good thing they put their name on their pieces. Otherwise Bastian Brothers would have been even more successful erasing them.
Sooo...contact the successor company and ask if the W&H records exist. A lot of stories about such things turn out to be guesses not facts.
Definitely worth reaching out, in writing too.
Yep. Letters on paper get noticed now.
Instead of keeping the history of the firm, Bastion Bros. destroyed the records and dies.
--- Stefano Johnson in Milan, Italy was a firm that produced Exonumia, most notably some of the medals for the 1892-3 WCE. their facility was destroyed in a bombing raid during WWII.
--- after moving from NYC, sometime in the late 1970's, MACO destroyed all records prior to 1976!!!
part of me understands why this is done, the records and "paper filing" needed to maintain them must be overwhelming for some manufacturers. fortunately, we have entered an era where unlimited data can be stored in a very, very small physical space and made available to virtually everyone. the records of Whitehead & Hoag as well as Medallic Art Company might seem trivial and inconsequential to the masses, but to collectors like us they are a valuable asset.
hopefully, going forward no major firms will see things like this happen.
Tiffany & Co. has a tightly controlled historical archive. It is used - or a payment basis - to validate claims about designs, issues and other matters. AT&T (well, their successor companies) has a similar facility that charges for research time.
Other businesses are not so in-tune with how to earn revenue and company credence from historical files and materials.
PS: Manfred, Tordella & Brooks (MTB) had a huge archive of transactions - including what might have been the largest data store of post WW-II gold importation, It was all destroyed in flooding from Hurricane Sandy. Nothing left but paper mâché glop.
I worked for a large company that had a mandatory destruction cycle for virtually all documents. There were 1 year, 3 year, 5 year, 10 year classes, and when that time came, it was shred time. There were a couple reasons, 1 was sheer volume of paper, and since old records were stored in massive warehouses, the chances of even finding it again were slim.
The other was more legal. If 50 people had worked on an item, notes, comments, etc, and 49 people had destroyed the stuff per policy, then the one set left was "missing" comments, though processes, etc. If the company was sued, and had to turn over records per court order, and the company demonstrated a non hostile reason for destroying old records, then all was good. That is until Joe mentions that he kept his own records at home, they were not destroyed, etc. and now the company is dealing with 1) legal problems out the wazoo 2) Who knows what % complete are the records Joe kept.
Probably, if I would have bought a company, they had metric tons of old paperwork and "unusable machinery, dies or tools" and I had no plans to reissue a medal of the "1942 Pottawattamie Junior HIgh School Radio Tube Club Derby " I probably would have scrapped the "unusable machinery, dies or tools" instead of moving it, and ditto with the paperwork.
If you had to pay full commercial rates to move and store all your stuff, a lot of stuff would be purged before a move.
Certainly some companies have a regular records management system for records destruction, but the posts on this seem to focus on the fact Bastion Brothers and Whitehead & Hoag were long time competitors. Here's a larger excerpt from Ted Hake:
http://www.tedhake.com/viewuserdefinedpage.aspx?pn=whco
if a customer insisted that the W&H logo not appear on the item, the priced was raised considerably
This answers my question as the Egyptian Magic Coins have no text on them at all.
The Mysterious Egyptian Magic Coin
Coins in Movies
Coins on Television
Both Bastian Bros and Whitehead & Hoag produced some of the greatest Presidential campaign buttons ever.
Experience the World through Numismatics...it's more than you can imagine.
Why do you think this piece was minted by WH&H? Those egyptian medals are much lower quality than is typical for their firm.