Sigmund Freud 50th Birthday 1906, 60mm Bronze by C.M. Schwerdtner, Jr.

1974 3-inch Silver medal: Tribute to Medicine

BOSCO: The Early Years

IF YOU THINK THIS IS TOO LONG, TELL ME

Paul J. Bosco

149 Madison Ave @E32nd Street

New York

NY 10016-6713

212/PJ8-COIN (=212/758-2646)

Fax 646/415-8377

pauljbosco@covad.net (0ffice)

Please copy to:

pauljbosco@aol.com (Home)

FLASH!! November 2008. I have moved to a street-level store in the shadow of the Empire State Building. For the first couple months, appointments are highly advisable, but for best service it is always wise to eMail (preferred) or telephone in advance.

 1972. I’ve been a coin dealer for 31 years (28 years full-time). My first job interview out of college was with Stanley Apfelbaum of First Coinvestors, who told me I had “a lot of nerve, coming in a T-shirt and no tie, looking like a wildman out of North Borneo–like Allen Ginzberg.” I responded that I didn’t like ties but otherwise I was wearing my best clothes, that I got thru Stony Brook on a scholarship and my single mother (of 6) had 3 in college, so $$ was scarce. He was taken aback and allowed that maybe I looked more like Walter Breen. My real shortcoming was that I graded his coins honestly. He was subsequently kicked out of the ANA for overgrading. Shortly after, I was hired as a youth center director by an exceptionally sharp group of 18-year-olds, and fired after they started college and were replaced by an exceptionally average group of 17-year-olds. North Borneo!! 1973. I got my start in numismatics from Messrs. Nixon and Ford, under whose “Stagflation” my career in Community Action grew unpromising. In 1973 I put out my first price list and sold $250; my 1974 list did $450, an 80% gain. I lost 20 pounds. In 1975 Schulman Coin & Mint, Inc, relocated from W45th St to a retail store on W57th. After a couple months Hans Schulman, the founder, had a heart attack right in the store. It’s been suggested he recovered as the taxi turned the corner. Anyway, he beat it out of the country before the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. I was hired as a mailclerk-numismatist for $25 a day and got paid in old foreign coins for each day worked past Monday. They threw in a few sandwiches. I watched the boss (Gerry Baumann) sell medals–there were a lot, with some not bad–and learned enough to start dealing in them. In 1977 I began working for NASCA, the auction house, where I learned a lot from Herb Melnick (business), Dr. Douglas Ball (history & Anger Management), Carl Carlson (numismatics and cataloging) and John Ford (history of numismatics & general raconteurship). Back then NASCA did the best numismatic cataloging in the world. As other auction houses, and consignors, watched Carlson and Q. David Bowers duke it out–Garrett catalogs vs the landmark Kessler-Spangenberger medals auction–the death of one-line cataloging became inevitable. I myself was cataloging most of the foreign coins and half the medals. We had Wayte Raymond’s foreign stock to sell off and so I had plenty on which to cut my teeth. 1978. I became a regular on the coin show circuit and published the Bosco Numismatic Quarterly for 5 years. I became the biggest dealer in foreign tokens; not counting Conder Tokens sold by Americans, I still am, and those old BNQs are great source material for tokens. I sell some tokens thru want lists, a few on eBay and many to those who know to come to the store.

You could be starting War and Peace...

1980... In the ‘80s my stock of medals grew rapidly, from being in New York, from using the American Numismatic Society resources and from ocean-hopping buying trips. (I was the only person from outside Europe at the Jacques Schulman 100th Anniversary auction, 1980.) I now have 35-40,000 medals in my store, most of them of some merit. Commercially, I know medals better than anyone. Think that’s bragging? If I had a brain, I’d be just an average dealer in US gold coins. 1992. I finally opened a coin store, in the Manhattan Art & Antiques Center. The dealers in the building all complain, but it is nonetheless the largest and finest antique center in the US, and it may prove to be the only one that survives eBay and the internet. With the store I do much more in US coins and ancients, I sell some antiques/collectibles/jewelry and I move a ton of medals (since they can be seen and handled). The buyers who come thru NYC are generally terrific. Their diverse interests and open wallets enable NYC coin stores–like mine, Stack’s, Royal Athena, the old Schulman and Harmer-Rooke and the brand-new R.M. Smythe–to be far more INTERESTING than the scattered coin stores in the rest of the country. This year the antique center picked up a good new dealer who does ancient coins and antiquities. 1997. I auctioned the Hal Walls Collection of World Trade Coins in NYC, a day after the ANA convention. I sold a Greenland Dollar for $35,500, and achieved never-equaled prices for Dutch Colonial, US Colonial and West Indies coins, medals and tokens. More importantly, the material, the presentation and the pure numismatist research/writing were up to my highest personal standards. I know that connoisseurs of things like Maria Theresia Talers, Gulf State countermarks, West Indies exonumia and Chinese chopmarks speak of this catalog in hushed tones. I saw it on eBay only once and it brought $46. 1999. I cataloged the Otto Kallir German Airship Collection as half of my NY International Numismatic Convention auction. (I bought Kallir’s 1600-piece 1783-1953 Aeronautical medals collection–the finest in existence–in 1993.) This catalog brought $80(!!) on eBay. (Ed: It’s since brought $113!)  2003-2004. Since 9/11/2001, business in NYC stores has been horrific. MANY are empty. The Bush administration, thru FEMA, has called for the break-up of Wall Street, and kept NYC on “Code Orange” or “Code Yellow” or whatever. POLITICS ASIDE, I feel this administration is bad, economically, for NYC, and if Bush is elected in 2004 I will probably close the store. So, come fast! In years to come, when the grandkids ask, in hushed tones, “what was Bosco’s store like?” you’ll have answers. By the way, the Bush administration took out Osama bin Laden (it seems), and FEMA/SBA gave me a modest emergency loan that probably kept me in business. Another nice thing post 9/11 was the veritable OUTPOURING of sympathy from eBayers, as they realized where I live.

2005-2006. I closed the store, after a dispute with the landlord over flood damages. I won in court – or I wouldn’t have been there – but it wasn’t worth it. I work in a storage room in a very secure building near Wall Street, where I am not supposed to do retail and I see almost no one. I am finally doing something I should have been making the principal focus of my business: SELLING ON EBAY. Soon, I will start doing a few shows, issue price lists and service want lists. Also, conduct auctions. I will have the best US auctions of medals in the categories of Judaica, aviation, Golf, Numismatics & Minting, World Art Medals, and so on. Also, the best auction of US Art medals since 1931 (Chas. Senter auction). But it will take up to a decade to conduct all these sales.