Q. David Bowers - Interest in Numismatics

Interest in Numismatics

Robert L. Rusbar, a local tax collector, had a collection of rocks and minerals, and Bowers visited him. After a session with rocks and minerals, Rusbar asked Bowers if he collected coins, to which he replied in the negative. Rusbar presented a small green-covered album of Lincoln cents, pointed to one of the first openings, and showed that he had paid $10 for that particular coin. He carefully explained that it was a Lincoln cent made in the first year of issue, 1909, with the initials of the designer, Victor David Brenner, V.D.B., on the reverse. Bowers would soon discover that the reason for the high value was that beneath the date, there was a tiny "S" signifying it had been made in San Francisco. This mint mark jumped the value from a few cents up to the $10 he had paid. Bowers discovered that 484,000 had been minted and became inspired to find one himself. Rusbar would give Bowers a couple of blue Whitman coin folders and a few mintmarked Lincoln cents to get started. Inspired with the idea of making money by selling coins, rather than cutting grass, Bowers traded a $10 bill for 1,000 mixed Lincoln cents. Bowers' goal was to find the 1909-s VDB., 1914-D, and 1931-S pieces.

From finding Lincoln cents in circulation, Bowers moved towards other series, including Mercury dimes and Standing Liberty quarters. Seeking to gain more knowledge, Bowers discovered the Numismatic Scrapbook Magazine, a monthly journal put out by brothers Lee and Cliff Hewitt in Illinois. The dozens of pages were filled with stories and tales about coins and coin collecting, but advertisements offering things for sale were a catalyst in stimulating Bowers' affinity for coins. The first coin Bowers ever ordered through the mail was an Indian cent, an 1859 proof at a price of $11 from the Copley Coin Company run by Maurice Gould and Frank Washburn in Boston. His enthusiasm for the Numismatist Scrapbook Magazine also resulted in an accumulation of back copies dating to 1935, and a file of several decades of The Numismatist. A local insurance agent, George P. Williams, would take Bowers under his wing. Together, they would attend meetings of the Wilkes-Barre Coin Club held in the YMCA.

Bowers became a vest-pocket dealer in 1953, when he was not quite 15 years of age. He had begun collecting coins just a few months earlier, and he found he had an aptitude for buying and selling them advantageously. Bowers would start running advertisements in the classified section of the local paper seeking coins. As his growing dealership prospered, so would his capital. He would buy coins locally from the public and from other collectors and then sell them at the coin club and to collectors he met there. In the early years, becoming a dealer had its challenges as there were no guides to use as a reference. One of the risks included the authenticity of a coin, while another point of tension was condition. As there were no published standards, what one person called Gem Uncirculated could be what another might call About Uncirculated.

By his senior year in high school, his business was flourishing, and coin dealing had become the young entrepreneur's principal extracurricular activity. Academically, he excelled as well. He was a finalist in the first National Merit Scholarship competition in 1956, and he won further academic distinction at Penn State University, graduating with honors in 1960.

In 1958, while still in college, Bowers teamed up with James F. Ruddy — the first of several partners to figure in his career — to form the Empire Coin Co. in Johnson City, New York. The company rode the crest of the mail-order boom in the early 1960s to become one of the nation's leading coin dealerships. In 1965, Paramount International Coin Corp. acquired Empire. Bowers left the coin business to indulge one of his other great passions: automatic musical instruments.