(05b) Mexican Numismatic Profiles: Volume 1 Issue 1: Last Revision: 05/01/04
Outstanding Coin Dealers & Auction Houses:
Was B. Max Mehl the first direct marketing genius and king the United States ever saw? Some historians may argue this point, leaning more toward Sears & Roebuck or Montgomery Ward, but Mehl was surely the first numismatic direct marketing guru of the 20th Century. He developed many marketing techniques that are still in use today, long after his passing.
B. Max Mehl the man may have been best described by John. H. Adams in the opening paragraph of his book United States Numismatic Literature- Volume Two and I quote. “The career of B. Max Mehl was an impossibility. He had three strikes against him: 1) he was an immigrant Jew in a then-gentile hobby; 2) he was located in Fort Worth, Texas, at a time when 95 percent of the business was done on the East Coast; and 3) Lilliputian in stature and colorless in terms of personality, he adopted a business plan that relied on creativity and promotion.”
Max Mehl went from selling shoes to dealing coins at the tender age of 17, to owning his own building having a large staff of women just opening his mail and mailing his Star Coin Book to tens of thousands potential clients in a relatively short time. His first mail bid auction took place in 1903 with only 33 lots and ended in 1955 with a sale of 1,473 lots. Martin Gengerke, in his 1990 edition of American Numismatic Auctions, tells us that during these 50 plus years Mehl produced 120 mail bid sales with 8,605 pages and handled 184,814 lots that included most of the rarest U.S. coins ever minted at least one time, and many more than once.
His promotional skills far exceeded those of any of his contemporary fellow dealers. I’m sure he first found it hard to “buck” the Eastern Establishment of coin dealers and their customer bases, so he leaned heavily on the concept of creating new collectors, which would become his customers rather than those of the old line dealers he was competing with.
One of his early winning ideas was the Star Coin Book, which became one of his greatest new prospecting tools and new collector generators. By 1914 The Star Coin Book was being published under the name of The Numismatic Bank and started with a circulation of only 10,000 but soon exceeded this original figure by a factor of ten. Mehl was the first coin dealer to use advertising outside the numismatic market starting with Collier’s and later included ads in all the great American magazines of the time; Saturday Evening Post, American Weekly and many others. Breaking the mold even further, Max Mehl started advertising on the radio and in some newspapers.
All of this advertising brought in leads, so in 1908 he created another device to convert these leads into collector-customers when he created Mehl’s Numismatic Monthly. John Adams states this publication was on equal footing with The Numismatist during this period with original articles that Mehl paid the then great numismatic writers to produce. In fact, one of Mehl’s earliest contributors gave him his first large consignment to sell in 1911. By the 1930s his advertising budget was suppose to exceed over $1 million dollars per year, far more than any other dealer then or since. His incoming mail reached record levels, where in one 24-hour period it is reported Mehl received 72,000 pieces at the Fort Worth, Texas Post Office.
But the real Max Mehl story is the fabulous collections he handled and the great mail bid sales he produced and conducted during his long career. The great sales began as early as 1917, when he personally bought Dr. Alder’s U.S. Large Cent collection and Waldo Newcomer’s duplicate pioneer gold coins. Then in 1918, the Elmer Sears collection and in 1919, the H. O. Granberg collection, all helping place Mehl in the highest ranking of that day’s coin dealers and auction houses.
It didn’t stop there, for Mehl knew that persistence was what counted, it took him six years to convince Colonel Green that he was the one to sell his great collections. Later, Colonel Green’s patronage would help convince other great collectors such as Dunham, Atwater, James Ten Eyck and many other great American collectors, that the little man from Fort Worth should handle their collections.
But I’m sure your question is, “did Max Mehl handle any Mexican coins?” And the answer is a definitive yes! Probably the earliest sale of note was the Capt. J. A. Anderson sale in 1930, where there was a small, but nice selection of Mexican coins. In all probability Max Mehl’s greatest Mexican sale occurred in January of 1943, when the Thomas Voetter collection containing over 100 lots of Mexican Republic gold alone hit the mail. Another great Mehl Mexican sale came about late in his career when he was selected to sell the stock and private collection of El Paso’s L. W. Hoffecker having 70 lots of Republic gold plus many other coins.
There is however a fly in the ointment, Max Mehl was truly a minimalist when it came to describing the Mexican coins in his sales, many of them were lumped together into large lots with little or no attributions. Thus leaving us to only guess at what was really sold in those large lots today? And like many dealers of today, Mehl was known to sell many mid-level rarities by private treaty, so we may never know the extent of the great Mexican rarities that were sold by the little man from Fort Worth, Texas.
While Max Mehl produced 120 or more sales, none of his catalogs that I have seen so far, are necessary requirements for the average Mexican collector’s library, for most descriptions and attributions are lacking quality and photos are almost non-existent.
This said, I’m sure Max Mehl handled many Mexican coins that didn’t appear in his auction sales. It is a known fact that many of the rarest coins he handled were distributed through private treaty sales, he was known to buy whole collections, then sell off some of the better and rarer pieces quickly, thus paying for the entire collection. In fact, I have a copy of a letter from Max Mehl dated April 22, 1955, answering correspondence with a well-known Mexican coin collector and historian stating; he didn't normally stock any Mexican coins, but he would notify Mr. Hubbard when new Mexican material came to him. One can only wonder how many of the extreme rarities in this great collection came directly from B. Max Mehl?
One of the things Max Mehl should be remembered for is bringing new collectors into numismatics through his advertising campaigns and personal contacts. According to legend-- one of the most famous U.S. and Mexican collectors of all times started collecting because Max Mehl gave him a coin of his birth year at a luncheon they both attended in Fort Worth, Texas. The collector later approached Max Mehl about other coins from his birth year and went on to form one of the finest collections of U.S. and foreign coins and paper money assembled in the United States. Later, after his death, his son would continue the tradition of buying many coins and especially extreme rarities from Max Mehl. This father and son from Fort Worth, Texas were the famous Carter family: Amon Carter, Sr. and Amon Carter, Jr., both highly interested in Mexican Numismatics, thanks to B. Max Mehl.
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