Outstanding Coin Dealers & Auction Houses
T. “Pop” Lindsay was a Mexican Coin dealer in the original 1960’s heyday of interest in the numismatics of our southern neighbor. He took up coin dealing late in life, about 1962 or so, at the age of 66. Friends called him by his first name, Tant, and the moniker “Pop”, we grandkids think, had been adopted by him to enhance his name recognition as a coin dealer, although, true enough, he had always been affectionately known as “Papa” by the family.
“Pop” loved to market and sell practically anything and deal directly with people, having been owner and proprietor, with his wife Viola, of a successful country store (and cultural exchange!) in the cotton farming and ranch country of West Texas in the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s. The small town in Martin County, which grew around their store, had been named “Tarzan”, actually by Tant himself who served as master of the small post office inside the store. (Not that he was all that much of an Edgar Rice Burroughs fan, but a furtive glance at store’s display of pulp fiction – as goes one version of the tale- gave him the inspiration for “Tarzan” when, one day, he became pressured by the US Postal Service to name the town something other than any of his first choices, which had included “Tant, Texas”!)
Abandoned Building at the Site of The Old Country Store in Tarzan
“Papa” and “Mimi” sold the Tarzan store in the 1940’s, and he became a cotton farmer in nearby Stanton, but with occasional forays into marketing to satisfy his natural instincts to sell. One of my earliest memories is of him hawking liquid refreshments at the weekly rodeos of the 1950’s in our hometown. I am sure he didn’t need the money, but he did have a vocational “itch to scratch”, and the combination of soda pop and thirsty, dusty rodeo fans gave him the means to do so.
When coins and collecting boomed in the early 1960’s, he opened his old store safe, long sealed following the sale of the store in 1942. Inside was the ample supply of loose and rolled coins, which had been on hand on the last day of business. (Such a cache was necessary due to the remote locale of the store.) Hundred’s of dollars face value was inside, including original uncirculated rolls of nickels, dimes, quarters and halves from the Denver mint. He again got that urge - not to collect – but, rather, to sell. Selling United States coins would have been too easy given this starting inventory, so he elected to bone up on his “border Spanish” and learn Mexican coins!
His first edition of Neil Utberg’s The Coins of Mexico (1963) would become his bible, and other books on Mexican numismatics to be published during the decade could always be found piled next to his gray Strat-O-Lounger. Auction catalogs of Jess Peters, Superior, Stacks and others would litter (to the eye of our Grandmother) the coffee table. She would always prefer The Saturday Evening Post to be preeminently on display in that area which evinced one’s cultural literacy to the visitors.
“Pop” traveled to Mexico on several occasions to build his Mexican stock from scratch. He loved dealing directly with the Mexicans in their homeland. We never learned exactly how he got his leads for buying in Mexico, but he told me about one encounter in Chihuahua City at the home of an individual, who at one point in the dickering process left “Pop” alone in the living room with a large number of 20th Century coins. Papa was sure that this had been a test and that he had been secretly observed while alone with the coins. When the owner returned, he did so with even more coins, only this time the “good stuff” from the Colonial, Iturbide and Republican eras.
He would return from this and other buying junkets with canvas bag after canvas bag of loose, unsorted coins. Most of the coins would end up in 2x2 cardboard holders of the crinkly acetate variety, although some few ended up in the first generation of PVC flips. Thankfully, there were few coins stored for long in PVC!
Mimi with “Pop” Lindsay As He Rolls One at a West Texas Coin ShowPop” dealt mostly in West Texas at the small coin shows, which were so frequent, even in mid-sized towns and small cities in those days. He could deal, almost as often as he wanted, within 150 miles of home, although he would setup in Fort Worth, Corpus Christi and Galveston when “Mimi” wanted to go someplace special. I traveled with him on more than one occasion to places like Lamesa, Colorado City and San Angelo where I would help him setup in the American Legion, National Guard Armory or wherever and, the night before the show opened, he would carefully replenish his “bargain box”. The bargain box was important, he thought, and he always had some good coins, modestly priced, for, as he would say, “bait”. He almost always had competition at even those small shows where there could be several dealers specializing in Mexico.
When we traveled together it was in his pickup truck. Papa dipped Garrett and Sons snuff, and when he had to spit, he had to spit - even while driving. He had perfected the technique of, while making a right hand turn with his right hand on the steering wheel, opening the driver’s door with the left hand, leaning fully out the door and spitting. This usually, but not always, resulted in a “clean getaway” from the discharged tobacco juices.
He would sell through the mail, too, but not as a matter of course, because, I think, it was too impersonal and not enough fun. We would travel monthly to local coin club meetings in area cities like Midland and Big Spring where interest in Mexico was often high. Vest pocket dealing was the faire at the coin clubs, and collectors in the 1960’s would be unafraid to bring their entire collection in blue cardboard Whitman albums so that they could have the satisfaction of publicly filling a “hole”. How things have changed!
One horror story. On more than one occasion, I would find Papa, sometimes assisted by Mimi, working in their kitchen assiduously scrubbing coins with toothbrushes soaked in baking powder and dishwashing liquid. Even an uncirculated coin, if it showed any signs of dirt, grime or corrosion, could be given a thorough treatment from “head to toe, front and back”! They were proud of this “upgrade” to their inventory. In retrospect, I am glad that this was too much work for all of the coins he bequeathed. Alas, I do have the better part of a roll of 1918 Type 2 Pesos, XF to AU, which have had the “upgrade”. C’est la vie.
Papa told me about meeting the likes of Neil Utberg, Richard Long and possibly other pioneers of the field whose associations with “Pop” I have forgotten. Young Richard Long, my grandmother shared one day, was a “tough sell”, very inquisitive and a good counterpoint to my curmudgeon-y grandfather. “Pop” featured low cost Mexican coins with some scarcer coins, some of which have become rare in today’s market and others of which have fallen in value as a result of the hoards discovered in the last four decades of the 20th Century. As a 13- or 14-year-old, I became fixated on Cap & Rays Eight Reales and began to develop small collections. Papa “subsidized” my Republic 8 Reales, US silver dollars and Lincoln cents.
I
would, all too soon as an older teen, give up coin collecting and did
not pick it back up until 10 years later. I thank my lucky stars that I did not
sell my modest collections nor the coins Tant left behind when he passed away in
1972. After thinking about the fun that he and I had with the hobby and that he
had with coin dealing, I am looking forward to doing this with my first
grandson and Papa’s first great great grandson, Owen Tant Herzog who
turned one year old on October 24, 2007.
(Age 2 ˝ Months)
Owen Tant Herzog (Age 2 ˝ Months)
Karl Herzog is an Oklahoma resident and chemical engineer with a major petroleum refining company. He is a collector of several US and foreign series, including Republic of Mexico Eight Reales. He plans additional research in this Republican series.
mailto:Kherzog49@sbcglobal.net
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