Amon Carter, Jr.- Prisoner of War, True Collector
cmerlo1
Posts: 7,963 ✭✭✭✭✭
A good friend of mine gave me the cover below at the Grapevine, TX show yesterday, knowing I collect ephemera from famous numismatists:
It was in a plastic postal cover holder with a couple of folded pieces of documentation that tell a fascinating story.
Amon Carter, Jr. fought in WWII, and was captured by the Germans in North Africa in 1943. He was held at Oflag 64 in Poland. While there, he began collecting German Stamps, propaganda postcards, and covers. He befriended a local Polish woman who worked at the camp, and she assisted him with his collecting, by affixing stamps to covers and postcards and mailing them to him via POW mail (Kriegsgefangenenpost).
Based on the documentation, Carter had apparently amassed 843 covers altogether, packed in two boxes. In 1945, as news of the approaching Russian army reached the camp, the prisoners were forced to endure a winter forced march to Berlin that cost many lives. By the time they reached Berlin, they had been abandoned by their guards. Carter survived the march, with his two boxes of covers, including this one.
I've heard of being bitten by the collector bug, but continuing to collect while a prisoner in a nazi POW camp takes it to a whole new level for me.
Comments
Stories like this make collecting fun. Thanks for posting!
Here's a warning parable for coin collectors...
Great story.
For any who might not be familiar with his numismatic connections, here are links to the Amon Carter coin auction by Stack's in January 1984.
The Carter collection contained the 1794 $ that is now PCGS Specimen-66 as part of a complete US silver dollar set. It sold for what seemed a strong $264,000 back then. The collection had much Proof gold along with many other rarities including world coins. The prices realized isn't online, but I recall it showed a total of over $8 million which was huge at the time. A catalog worth flipping through.
.
.
Link to his brief bio page in the catalog posted by the Newman Numismatic Project:
https://archive.org/details/amongcarterjrfam1984stac/page/n35/mode/2up
.
.
Link starting at the color plate pages:
https://archive.org/details/amongcarterjrfam1984stac/page/n5/mode/2up
"To Be Esteemed Be Useful" - 1792 Birch Cent --- "I personally think we developed language because of our deep need to complain." - Lily Tomlin
Very interesting thread, thank you all.
That's a good story, thanks for posting it.
Very interesting read, thanks!
Latin American Collection
Now here's some good history
Mr. Carter was a very kind and generous man, and most of those who met him have an Amon Carter, Jr., story to cherish.
Back in either 1973 or early 1974 I placed an ad selling world paper money. My very first (and very nearly only) customer was Amon Carter Jr. who purchased a 1930's era note from Ethiopia.
I mentioned part of his background in the recent Team Owners - Coin Collectors thread - I did not know him well but was lucky enough to be in a couple happy hour / dinner groups with him at Memphis Paper Money shows. Memorable.
Great post. Very interesting.
Excellent post.... Amazing history and an amazing man. Incredible strength and dedication to survive and to bring his collection with him. Cheers, RickO
After reading the stories about Carter Sr. and Jr. by Harvey Stack at these links below, it makes sense that he was collecting those while a prisoner of war.
Amon Carter, Sr. had started coin collecting in the 1920's, so Amon Carter, Jr. was used to collecting long before World War II and continued long after. Interesting info by Harvey Stack.
https://stacksbowers.com/News/Pages/Blogs.aspx?ArticleID=carter-family-collection-1
https://stacksbowers.com/News/Pages/Blogs.aspx?ArticleID=carter-family-collection-2
https://stacksbowers.com/News/Pages/Blogs.aspx?ArticleID=carter-family-collection-3
.
.
.
Edited to add that a link by @tokenpro to the above Part 3 in the "Sports owners and coin collecting" thread is what got me reading more about Amon Carter.
https://forums.collectors.com/discussion/1043995/sports-owners-and-coin-collecting
"To Be Esteemed Be Useful" - 1792 Birch Cent --- "I personally think we developed language because of our deep need to complain." - Lily Tomlin
Thanks for posting these- a great read!
I remember Amon very well. He was at the Paper Money shows in Memphis and at the ANA shows.
At a show one time he had a bourse case full of $50 slugs. A young collector sat down and was amazed at the sight of so many slugs. He said to Amon " Do you mind if I ask what you do for a living? " Amon replied " I sell newspapers.........250,000 a day." He owned the Fort Worth Star Telegram.
As a college football fan, I know that the stadium at TCU is named after him.
I suspect there are an awful lot of great Amon Carter stories......He must have really been something.
Thank you for posting, can someone point me In the direction of auction catalogs for the 1984 sale.. I would really enjoy looking through his collection.
Try Kolbe and Fanning to see if they still have a copy of Harvey Stack's magnificent work compiling that auction catalog.