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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;cladking, post: 26096654, member: 68&quot;]It might never have happened without him. </p><p><br /></p><p>More likely Mehl was just in right place at the right time. The middle class was growing and more people had more disposable income and more time.&nbsp; The depression was going full blown and he had been trying to popularize the hobby for years by issuing his &quot;Star rare Coin Encyclopedias&quot; which offered high prices for old coins and a staggering $50 for any 1913 V nickel that was only a few years old at the time.&nbsp; Of course he knew he already had all of them.&nbsp; Many people were out of work but had the time and money to collect pennies&nbsp; so he sold lots of penny boards.&nbsp; The hobby shifted from being the province of long hairs to being a mass market with millions and millions of collectors by 1964 when the US Mint killed the hobby.&nbsp; There may never be nearly as many people collecting things like wheat and indian cents as there were in 1964.&nbsp; Today most new collectors do collect things like wheat cents because they are told memorials are &quot;uncollectible&quot; and are more common than grains of sand on the beach.&nbsp; Besides most are from an era that US coins were no longer even made.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Who knows what the world would be like today if not for B Max Mehl.&nbsp; I suspect it would be radically different&nbsp; but one thing is sure; the coin hobby would be radically different.&nbsp;&nbsp; My father probably wouldn&#039;t have seen a little booklet issued by the government shortly after the war encouraging parents to interest their children in hobbies like coin collecting and I might never have become interested.&nbsp; I might be the exception who became interested anyway because I paid attention to coins as a means of commerce even before I could talk.&nbsp; Who knows?&nbsp;&nbsp; Lots of coins have been issue by governments and private mints since 1931.&nbsp; Even token and medal production ratcheted higher.&nbsp;&nbsp; There is a lot more aggregate demand for shiny little discs of metal than there once was and they don&#039;t even have to be &quot;shiny&quot;, disc shaped, or metal.&nbsp; Every household has at least a few lying about.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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