Cataloging a collector's efforts
Barberian
Posts: 3,920 ✭✭✭✭✭
My gf's father lived his last years in a tiny cinder block house with a slowly collapsing roof, and rotten ceilings and walls. The house was musty from pet urine, mold and dust. It was an extreme picture of poverty, absolutely the worst housing conditions I've ever seen in my life. When I saw how bad it had become, we moved him into our house. However, my gf said he had large collections of Miami Dolphins souvenirs, sports cards, knives, a few guns (a Colt 1851 Navy .38 black powder replica pistol made by EIG in Italy), phonograph records (33s and 45s), figurines, and a collection of coins he bought at flea markets, most of which was kept in a locked room that I had not seen before, though he invited me to examine them a few years ago. Health issues, poor hearing, and dementia prevented us from viewing his coin collection together. I wish we had. I liked him, and after viewing his coins, it would have been a special moment for us. Amidst a lot of foreign junk, and modern dollars of all kinds were these gems.
Many had the original prices from his flea market purchases.
These surprised me. Some nice 10-oz bars and American gold eagles. He could have fixed the roof with these.
He also had about 20 morgan and 7 Peace dollars, most of which were cleaned or polished, but he blew me away with this DMPL 1886 in around MS62 or MS63 that he paid $30 for. I'm not familiar with DMPLs and how to differentiate them from low-grade proofs. I assume it is DMPL and not PR. This coin has deeply reflective fields where one can read print out to >12 inches. It's well struck but I don't see the rim I'd expect for a proof. It cartwheels well on the frosted devices but not at all in the fields. The color is more amber grading to russet and blue along the rim. A trademark cat hair is in the photo as well.
These anodized tiles or medals in Cyrillic are a mystery so far. Anyone know what these are?
I'm going to really need help when I get to the sports card and record collections. There are tens of thousands of cards and many thousands of records (I haven't seen the extent of the record collection, but it fills four 4-drawer metal filing cabinets).
Comments
I'm sorry for the loss of your girlfriend's father. It appears you had a good relationship with him, but I also have personal experience for what dementia can do to people and how it can affect relationships and access.
The medals posted at the end are depictions of the towers of the Kremlin and were sold as commemorative pieces (not monetized) for the 1980 Olympics. I believe they are aluminum.
In honor of the memory of Cpl. Michael E. Thompson
Thanks, TomB. That was my hunch as well (Russian Olympics), though I thought it might have been part of the Sochi Olympics. I had no idea they were the Towers of the Kremlin, though. Thanks. I suspect they are anodized aluminum.
I cannot count the number of times I've wandered onto the stage of similar stories. My condolences first and foremost. Second, you ought to strongly consider getting almost all of those items conserved properly right away.
On the web: http://www.earlyus.com
The cards and records are pretty well preserved. Some moisture got on some of the outer boxes, but the cards are in tight plastic sleeves and look fine. I see wrapped sets of cards from 20-30 years ago when he collected avidly with his son-in-law. The SIL died of cancer at age 28, and there was a slowing down in the father's collecting afterwards. I estimate the cards alone weight over 400 lbs! I know nothing about card collecting. I'd think the best move would be to consign the collection to a reputable dealer for them to dispense of the collection properly.
The SIL's widow (my gf) says her husband told her that her father has a lot of cards but relatively little value per card. However, that was told to her over 25 years ago.
The records I haven't seen yet. The collection fills several filing cabinets. I know he has a lot of Bob Dylan.
Lots and lots of Dolphins memorabilia of all kinds - rings and other jewelry, coins, cards, posters, bullion. An alarm clock with $2.80 face value of nice (MS63-64) uncirculated silver coins.
He has a few guns as well, including an Italian (GIE) replica of a Colt 1851 Navy .38 revolver. I may have that checked out by a good gunsmith.
I'm going through and organizing the coin collection for easier resale. Most of the value is in bullion. The best coins numismatically are the 1886 MS63 PL or DMPL, other MS63 or lower silver dollars, an 1831 small letters quarter in VF with light cleaning, an 1865 3-cent nickel in Fine.
Looking at his coins, he seemed like someone who seriously enjoyed coins but collected without a strategy or concern for value. It's nice to see that fresh naive approach to collecting, where he appreciates coins mainly for their looks. He made an effort to select the best examples out of his inexpensive 'foreign coins by the pound' for putting into 2x2s. For example, he has about 100 British large cents but they're almost all cleaned or culls. The best are in 2x2s. I give him major credit though for investing in silver and gold bullion coins, medals and bars. He likely purchased them when gold was under $300 per ounce and silver was below $8 an ounce. He also scored on that possible DMPL and other Morgans and Peace dollars. I still haven't seen a Redbook or other collecting guide, but I've only seen a fraction of what's in that room. It's a 100-sqft room that's a maze of filing cabinets, shelving, safes, and it's packed with collectibles. One cannot walk around in there it's so crammed with stuff.
This is certainly a bittersweet story.
How fine a line there is between thoughtful, intentional collecting and full-blown hoarding. I think the line is crossed when the rest of one’s surroundings crumble while the collection grows and grows. Yet, if this is what gave him joy, who can gainsay it. But if it simply satisfied a compulsion, then I have to feel a bit sad, overall.
I am glad you are sharing it to give his efforts a wider appreciation, and honor your gf’s father for what he felt he wanted He put so much effort and personal treasure into accomplishing this, at the expense of so much of life that many would consider essential.
Personally, I saw my own parents make some questionable purchases of collectibles. With more distance now, I can see this may not have been prudent in terms of quality or finance, but they felt it was good and did not have misgivings. And they did not impoverish themselves to do it. So, who am I to say they were wrong?
Interesting story. Glad you are involved and helping out. The collection of various items needs to be moved on to the next round of ownership with sales proceeds going to the proper person(s).
As far as the records go, there may be some value there. I was involved in a legal case that started just under 20 years ago. My client purchased an older property at a foreclosure sale. The first floor was commercial space. The second floor was two residential units. The former owner/borrower lived in one of the residential units and operated a record store/recording studio out of the first floor. He was a mover and shaker in the Bay Area music scene from the early 1950's to the late 1980's. He refinanced the property in the 1980s. He died in 2003 or 2004 in his mid 80's. His 40 something daughter remained in possession of the property and lived in one of the residential units. She did not make mortgage payments and the loan on the property went into foreclosure. My client bought it at a trustee's sale. After the sale my client had to file an eviction lawsuit against the daughter to obtain possession of its property. The Sheriff conducted a lockout and delivered possession of the property to my client.
After the Sheriff's lockout my client called me and asked me to stop by the property to inspect same and give advice. I did. The first floor of the property was crammed to the rafters with personal property, much of which was related to the music industry, including recording contracts, recording studio equipment, master discs from which records would be pressed, musical instruments, musical memorabilia and over 80,000 original records located in their original packaging and shipping containers. The records were of music created and performed from the 1940's through the 1980s by individuals and groups both famous and unknown.
The daughter failed to claim the personal property. My client was forced to move same into storage. These items were eventually sold at a storage unit auction. My client won the items with a credit bid of its moving and storages costs. After my client became the owner of the personal property it eventually resold same to movers and shakers in the music business for $270,000.00. The purchaser eventually resold the records into the global market for multiples of his $270,000.00 purchase price.
I never knew old records could be so valuable.
The potential value of the record collection, much like the cards, is a mystery. I believe it was his favorite collection, or that's what I've been led to believe from his daughter's stories of how well he took care of his records and the size and age of the collection.
His currency collection consists of a 30-40 silver certificates, a stack of $2 bills, some red seal notes, a few worn out bills from the 1930's, an off-center bill, and a run of consecutive serial numbers. There's likely not much there beyond face value that would interest a dealer.
I wanted to know him more, and it's sad to learn about him this way. It's taunting me. "Look at all the things I was interested in that I could never share with you because of my hearing disability." He never saw my collection aside from coins I gave to him as gifts. He had a run of ASE's from 1986 to 2006 showing he was collecting them by year. I could have bought a Dansco album and helped him finish it. A Dansco with 39 ASEs would be impressive and a wonderful gift to his grandson someday.
Having him in hospice at our house was trying in ways I didn't expect, one of them is the absolute sense of loss after caring and assisting him physically in our house for 6 months. We're still getting used to both the sudden freedom and the profound loss.