A crazy guy and his coin collecting . . . Truly you must read this story ! ! ! All events are 99% factual, you will love this story; TRUTH ! ! !
There was this average American guy around fifty years ago. He was nothing special but he was gifted ! ! !
He wanted to prosper but he was a nobody without a trust fund, while loving engineering he wanted to shoot for the stars with medical school, but he knew all those courses would bankrupt him long before he got into the job market.
Talking to his uncle his uncle said " I will put you though engineering if you pay for your many siblings college educations in the future ". This man jumped at the chance and became a chemical engineer for a photo place called KODAK ! ! !
Knowing he was deeply committed to helping his many brothers and sisters he looked for a hobby, he choose coins. He traveled everywhere he could and planned his vacations around major coin events all across the USA and nearby places.
His discerning eye found coins in ultra high grade, others just collected by the design or year or type; he demanded perfection. Having no extra money his coin collection in his closet was robbed heavily of its best coins, but he went back to collecting.
I am sure his long suffering wife was not amused one day when he ran in to the family home " Honey i'm taking some unplanned vacations days " she breathed ' Oh NO, more coins ? ' Yes he replied . . .
His wife cringed, " where to this time ? "
" EGYPT " he yelled,
You can imagine his wife's response was probably something like " WTF? " (they probably did not talk like that 50 years ago) . . .
" Yes " he said ; " the KING of Egypt has died so I am going to go buy his coin collection ! ! ! "...
You can imagine a little working chemist at Kodak chemist buying up some of the best world class coins from the King of Egypts collection, and this is what he did ; for himself and for others who knew this mans talents !
His wife asked how he planned to go on this crazy buying spree, he replied " Oh , I took out a second mortgage on the home " . . .
This is the lengths this man used to amass the greatest collection of American coins almost in History...
This man was acknowledged as a master class collector and upon his demise he had the finest collections of certain coins in America, his collection as superior to the national collection (for that coin type) of Canada, Mexico and Japan ! ! !
No expert had any idea how to price or auction off his coins, simply most of his coins were so perfect they had never before reached the auction blocks, it was decided to sell of his collection over time in piece meal auctions. . .
His collection sold in three main auctions and netted how much ???
The answer is at the bottom ! ! !
http://www.govmint.com/pages/pittman-collectors-story
http://www.numismaticnews.net/article/pittman_kept_eye_on_quality_when_buying
https://www.universalcoin.com/articles/great-coins-great-collectors.html
http://www.coinlink.com/News/us-coins/the-john-jay-pittman-coin-collection-sale-twelve-years-later/
Closer to forty million dollars, not bad for a lab rat working for Kodak as a chemical engineer ! ! !
Reputedly John J Pittman was the nicest human person people could ever hope to meet in Real Life . . .
Thank you Pixabay for the images.
Who are you networking with ; )
Not crazy at all... it is said that coin collecting is the "hobby of kings". Even today one can replicate something like what he did. People are selling a lot of coins on ebay and sometimes they don't even know what they are selling (=very discounted).
In a way, it works like steemit curation. If you spend a lot of time to find the gems, you can be greatly rewarded. And, unlike the kodak engineer, who had to travel around for coin-related events, one can do that from their homes. But they must know what they are doing.
Yes I would love to travel, but in today's modern world it takes 3 days to get anywhere almost, I just coins graded 70 out of 70 in gem mint quality, encapsulated by the top grading companies . . .
Cool story, my interest in coins is mostly only to the point in which they contain precious metals. Although I have paid up for older or different ones, but I don't care much about the condition so as to get them as cheap as I could.
I like platinum for scarcity but it look a poor gray colour, gold is overpriced simply because of jewelry etc and Silver just just degrades over time, Of course you cannot clean coins so Silver just hurts . . .