Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Please join us now in extending a warm virtual welcome to another member of the numismatic world. Today, Patrick McBride checks in with boar sizzle. Let's take a few moments to enjoy a visit with Patrick as he kindly goes under the loop.
And there he is. Hey there, path. How are you doing? How you doing? Okay.
[00:00:31] Speaker B: Doing very well.
[00:00:32] Speaker A: Okay.
I'm glad you were able to join us. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to catch up. You go ahead. What are you going to say?
[00:00:41] Speaker B: I say that the name of your podcast is apropos to the coin show environment right now. Bors, a lot of shows those maybe have.
[00:00:58] Speaker A: Okay.
I was trying to figure out what to call, and I was putting everything together, and I just, you know, was running through various things, and I thought, I like two word things, you know? And. And I wanted something that said, that said coin and boar seems to just encapsulate all that. And. And then I wanted to give it some pizzazz. And so that's where we get the sizzle. And. And there we go. But, of course, our special segment with you is called under the loop, where we do not look at a coin under the loop. No, we put you under the loop for just a few minutes there. Let's let the folks see a little bit about you.
Here we go. We are with Mister Patrick McBride. Let's look at some gold nuggets and silver pieces about this gentleman.
Very well known in the coin community. He's dedicated a significant part of his life service to the coin world. And we are, like I said, really, really happy to have him today.
All right, so first nugget here, Pat, a little birdie told me that you started collecting coins in 1962. Is this correct?
[00:02:26] Speaker B: Oh, yes. I'm well, quickly approaching 72 years of age, so.
[00:02:31] Speaker A: Okay, well, I want to tell you what's significant about that year, and I want to tell you what's significant about a week from today. And that year, something will happen where I will acknowledge something about my own self.
I found that to be quite interesting. When I saw that year, I said, hmm, interesting. How about that? But that's fantastic. That's fantastic. Okay. And as we've been telling people, you're a distinguished member and officer of the Pennsylvania association of Numismatists, and it's better known as Pan.
Now, you're currently the president, is that correct?
[00:03:15] Speaker B: Yes, that's correct.
I was elected president after our elect, our former president, Tom Uram, who's currently the president of the ANA.
[00:03:26] Speaker A: That's right. I met him in Pittsburgh last year last summer. Yeah, yeah.
[00:03:34] Speaker B: Yes. Tom travels a lot to a lot of shows, but. And he's still on our board. He comes to all the meetings, and he's still very active in band, but the ANA keeps him pretty busy. Also, now, I've.
I've been secretary of Pan since probably the mid 1980s, so I certainly got a feel how the organization runs.
[00:04:01] Speaker A: That's. That's the thing. I thought I also saw you. You've been a member since 1984. Is that correct?
[00:04:10] Speaker B: Yes, that's correct.
[00:04:12] Speaker A: Okay. Now, I'm not meaning this to drill you and to bring, truthfully, under the loop title. I'm just wanting to make sure so everybody knows that you have just your degree of dedication. That's really what I'm trying to bring across here to everybody. Okay, now, you are most. Not most, but you are extremely famous. And it's kind of a dual thing here of, do people know Pat or do they know Ben Franklin?
You have a dual Persona as Mister Franklin, and you appear at various events, as in his garb. And.
Yeah, I want to save a little more discussion to find out about the association with Ben Franklin a little bit later. But just to finish things up for us here, I like to include a little fun fact about folks. And I saw a little blurb that said you've got a. Your background includes that in wallpaper hanging. Is. Did you do that for a little period of your life?
[00:05:25] Speaker B: Oh, it was a long period of my life.
[00:05:28] Speaker A: Okay. Okay.
[00:05:31] Speaker B: In Ben Franklin's world, I would have been considered a tradesman.
[00:05:35] Speaker A: Okay, there we go. There we go. Now, that's fantastic. That's great. And when about.
When did you stop hanging up wallpaper?
[00:05:48] Speaker B: Well, actually, I almost. I was working right up till, oh, about a year and a half ago.
[00:05:55] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness. How about that? Okay. Okay.
So I did not realize that.
That's very, very interesting. What I'd like to do now is I'd like to take a look at the website for Pan, and I thought you and I could take a look at it and maybe go over some things that.
Here we see that the pan fall coin show is coming up October 17 through the 19th. So it is about two weeks away. Well, is that right? Two weeks? Yeah, yeah, a little. Maybe three. Is it three weeks? I'm thinking of? Yeah, about three weeks. It's about three weeks. And.
But how is. How is the planning coming along for that?
[00:06:56] Speaker B: Oh, we're doing very well. Our boar spores sold out. We have a rather long waiting list right now. We're getting phone calls every day about, can I get in? Are there any tables available? So the other thing that's good that I'm getting with some of our dealers is they want to add additional tables to what they have. And.
[00:07:25] Speaker A: Well, I won't ask you to give away any secrets, but I guess you have to make various decisions about whether or not to open that space up for another person or to maybe give a long time, a loyal dealer a little more room. I know that those are the kinds of decisions that have to be made, but the reason it is this way is because your organization is just fantastic, Pat. It is a well oiled machine and you just do everything top notch and a number one.
I think that you are a model for other state organizations to follow. And not only that, I feel like your organization itself is a model for other organizations to follow. So I just really appreciate the professionalism. I get communications as a member. I am a member of Penn, and so I get communications. I just went to my mailbox, was it yesterday? And I had the information from the show, and I believe it's, is it quarterly that you produce the magazine? Is that correct?
[00:08:47] Speaker B: Almost. It's three times a year.
[00:08:49] Speaker A: Three times a year. Okay. Okay.
And you're staying in touch with members. You're letting them know what's going on. And I feel that that's just really, really important. And you're maintaining that connection. Let's, I think we were talking about the floor plan and the deals. Let's take a quick here. You can see I love the clock here. It's like everybody's on the clock. There are 20 days.
So you have been warned.
But let's take a quick look at the floor plan here and let me see if I can make this a little larger so that people can enjoy. Again, the website location is scrolling beneath. I wanted to make sure everybody had an opportunity to see that again, it's www.pancoins.org dot. So you can easily get there. But let me see if we can make this a little larger and.
[00:09:59] Speaker B: Yeah, it's getting there.
[00:10:00] Speaker A: Yeah, I've got.
Let me see here. Let me do it.
[00:10:05] Speaker B: Talk a little bit about what that is.
I created this out of just a plain excel spreadsheet. So anybody that knows how spreadsheets are, or Excel, it's mainly an accounting program for numbers. And each of those little squares on an excel sheet are like little number blocks that you would do in accounting. Well, what I did with them is I expanded them to be, instead of little rectangular places to put numbers, I made them into squares and put dealer names in there instead of a number.
[00:10:49] Speaker A: Ok. Ok.
Well actually I will go ahead and confess that just as you've got. You're secretly or not secretly a tradesman of wallpaper hanging. I am secretly or not secretly a tradesman. As a CPA, I have 30 years of experience of doing that. So I appreciate your use of the terminology there and the techniques. That's great. Now is there anything else on this page in particular you'd like for us to look at before we leave it? Or did you just want to get the effect of letting people know that this is how things are organized essentially?
[00:11:33] Speaker B: I would only say we don't have to dwell on that. But if you go to our website, I always like to keep pertinent information. This is the critical information at 20 days out from our coin show.
You know, that's type of information I like to have handy where you don't have to go into a website and try to hunt through a bunch of pages to find, you know, a dealer map.
[00:11:59] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:12:00] Speaker B: So everything is kind of on our front page. Okay.
[00:12:06] Speaker A: Let me see if we can get us back there. So I'm going to scroll up now and you go ahead and you just let us know what you want us to know. Okay.
[00:12:16] Speaker B: Now, you know we have, there's a picture of the show floor where we just went past. Now the next thing is the hotel when there's a room block. And if you see that picture of the hotel near the convention center, you can easily click that and book your room. And then nothing works without raising some extra money. Part of.
[00:12:38] Speaker A: So we got a little raffle here.
[00:12:39] Speaker B: Got a little raffle going on. And this is pretty full because it's an MS 636.
I think that's an NGC one, but a $20 gold piece.
[00:12:49] Speaker A: You know those don't grow on trees, do they?
[00:12:53] Speaker B: No, they don't. They don't. I love that phone call. We draw the winning winning ticket out of a barrel. You don't have to be present to win, but that's a phone call I make that everybody loves to get.
[00:13:07] Speaker A: I can imagine that.
And how much are your raffle tickets there?
[00:13:13] Speaker B: They're only $10.
[00:13:14] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:13:15] Speaker B: Got a chance of winning something worth 3000 or more. So.
[00:13:19] Speaker A: Okay. No, no. And you can feel good because if you don't win, you've helped, you've helped to, you know, fund the show and to move and you've helped a lot of people out. So I think that it's a win win situation.
[00:13:36] Speaker B: Yeah, we do those every show. Then as we're scrolling down, there's our, we have an iconic banquet. This next picture is our banquet dinner, that, it's always on Thursday nights. And we usually have them at a restaurant overlooking the city of Pittsburgh with the convergence of the three Rivers.
[00:13:57] Speaker A: Okay. Okay. Yeah. I grew up for reasons I won't go into the entire period from 1972 to, say, 81, from, from, from Winston Salem, North Carolina. I was your most loyal Pittsburgh Steelers fans.
I was very, very familiar with Three Rivers Stadium and the whole thing. So.
Okay. And then we're going to have some lectures.
[00:14:24] Speaker B: Now, that's interesting there. If you hold, go back just a tiny bit. But we are Clarion editor, which you said you just got your issue in the mail. Richard Jewell was a longtime pan and board member. He was our magazine editor. Okay. Fortunately, he just passed away.
[00:14:45] Speaker A: Oh, I'm sorry about that.
[00:14:47] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Last August. So stacks contacted me. And you see on there, we renamed our lecture series because he always organized that. And we're going to call it the Richard C. Jewell lecture series sponsored by Stacks Bowers.
[00:15:04] Speaker A: Okay. Okay.
[00:15:06] Speaker B: I'm on board as a tribute to Richard.
[00:15:09] Speaker A: So we're, now, is this for this show or will this be ongoing in some way?
[00:15:18] Speaker B: Ongoing.
[00:15:19] Speaker A: It will be ongoing. Okay.
[00:15:21] Speaker B: So they're glad to do it. They like the idea. And so I was able to organize. And one thing I tell everybody when I'm trying to do things for Pan, and this includes stocks powers, I says, well, we talk about money and what do they get for the money and this and that. I says, even if this falls apart, you have just the unique experience of saying, I negotiated with Ben Franklin.
[00:15:54] Speaker A: How can you go wrong? How can you go wrong? I don't know. I don't know.
Okay, let's see what.
And, and the man himself. There we go. So, we have, we have yourself. Would you like to say a few words about your other compatriots here?
[00:16:13] Speaker B: I. My friends there. The fellow on the left is Dennis Boggs, which many of you know is Abraham Lincoln. And all three of us are at the pan show. The fellow on the right is rather new to reenacting. His name is Kurt Radebaugh and he plays General George Washington. So the three of us are always that up at.
[00:16:37] Speaker A: No. And I, like many, many other people, have seen you in action. So.
And always, it just, it adds to the, the atmosphere of the show and just, I know they really appreciate you doing it.
[00:16:56] Speaker B: Well, the interesting thing about that image is that was created by Jamie Franke, who's our coin designer on our Jefferson Nickel. With the three quarter modern Jefferson Nickel. Jamie contacted me about doing something for us, and he just did it out of the goodness of his heart. And so he did that imagery. He has me in a rather mischievous look, while my I head gets struck by a bolt of lightning. But Lincoln, more serious because of what he went through during the war. And same with the general.
[00:17:34] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness.
I think this is just great. As I say, I encourage everybody to attend to.
If you've never seen Mister Pat do his thing, then you should show up and treat yourself, too. And so here's a nice little show. And you do not sleep, you don't rest on your laurels, do you, Pat?
[00:18:00] Speaker B: No, I'm always trying to think of other things. Our show floor is about.
For all the farmers out there, it's about an acre of floor space.
[00:18:09] Speaker A: Okay. Okay. So we could grow something if we needed to, right?
[00:18:14] Speaker B: We have. If we get them.
[00:18:19] Speaker A: But you've got it all planned for the next couple years. And again, I go back to what I said earlier. You just got a will oil machine.
You're always thinking, and I really appreciate the whole professional nature of the organization.
Okay, let's. I was thinking we might want to learn a little bit more about you and things of that nature.
So let me do something here. So, again, I appreciate you joining us today so much.
You know, I tell you, I want to go back sort of, to what happened in 1962. Could you sort of.
We said that you got interested in 1962. What was it that captured your eye about coins in that year? Just, I know that. I think everybody just kind of likes an old coin. If they're. If they've got change and they see something, they just kind of hold on to it. Is that. Is that the way it started for you?
[00:19:30] Speaker B: Well, in 62, I would have been ten years old.
Little boy I was, you know, we saw in circulation, of course, everything was silver back then, too. We were still on the gold standard, and silver coinage was everywhere. And. But the early ones that I started saving out of change were, of course, the standing Liberty quarters. A lot of them were pretty worn. The buffalo nickels fascinated me as a boy. I'm just sort of fascinated with the artwork of the.
[00:20:07] Speaker A: Okay, could you repeat that for a second? So, currently, what are your interests currently?
[00:20:12] Speaker B: Currently? Oh, boy. Let's see. My whole numismatic journey has been quite a path.
[00:20:22] Speaker A: I tell you what, I'm gonna.
I do not know the answer to this question at all, but do you have your own little personal collection, or do you just.
How have you handled that?
[00:20:36] Speaker B: I have years of jumping in and out of favorites.
[00:20:43] Speaker A: Okay, okay, okay.
[00:20:47] Speaker B: And after I got out of high school and went to college and then came back and I started, what was interesting is our father in law came to live with us. He was a coal miner up in Connellsville, Pa.
[00:21:06] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:21:06] Speaker B: He had black, but he was a coin collector. So, of course he's living with us, and we start getting his mail. And one of the things that always arrived in the mailbox was numismatic news.
Feeding it again. And I says, oh, man, I'm getting back in for something.
And so I started delving back into. Digging back in mercury.
I started collecting mercury dimes, and I was pretty serious about it.
[00:21:41] Speaker A: Okay, okay.
[00:21:44] Speaker B: And then it drifted off into so many other things, because what happens is when you start joining coin clubs, and this is imperative for anybody that's delving into numismatics.
I'm not saying you can't do it. You can if you want. But if you're cloistered in your private little study with your coins and you never interacting with other coin collectors, you're denying yourself so much enrichment. That fellow.
[00:22:16] Speaker A: Okay.
You know, I appreciate you saying, and I don't know if anyone has directly told me that, but hearing you say that, it really is so true. It really is.
[00:22:30] Speaker B: So I got into. I started getting serious about bust half dollars because I met a fellow in the bust half nut club. And this is when you would do attribution.
[00:22:41] Speaker A: We got to be careful with that term. Do you want to, do you want to, do you want to describe that term? Just so people don't. For people who may not be as familiar.
[00:22:51] Speaker B: Yes, these are people that are. I guess they have an obsession with the half dollars that were.
[00:22:59] Speaker A: Okay, okay. Yeah, I'm just kidding. I just wanted to. Just in case, you know, just in case.
[00:23:07] Speaker B: But I met a guy that was in one of the coin clubs. Actually, it was western Pennsylvania Numismatic Society, one of the oldest coin clubs in the country. They were founded in 1878, and one of the key members, founding members, was George Clapp, who had a killer large scent collection.
[00:23:32] Speaker A: Wow. Okay. Okay.
[00:23:34] Speaker B: This thing was impressive.
And the club still exists. It meets every month. But I met some really knowledgeable people when I became a member of them, and he and this fellow got me interested in bust halves for a while.
[00:23:51] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:23:52] Speaker B: Deviated and started having a fascination with ancient coins in Delaware.
[00:23:59] Speaker A: Okay. One of my recent guests was a professor mister Mike Markowitz. I'm not sure if you know Mister.
[00:24:06] Speaker B: Mike, he is like the premier.
[00:24:11] Speaker A: Okay, okay, okay.
[00:24:15] Speaker B: And so I fell into the not so much of the roman republican period, but the imperial Rome of the Caesars, you know, and started collecting Daenery sesterces and I wasn't rich enough to collect ariai.
[00:24:33] Speaker A: Oh, no, no.
I can imagine. Yeah.
[00:24:39] Speaker B: I delved into that.
And then I, as I went through my roman period.
[00:24:49] Speaker A: So you do think about Rome.
You are one of these people that this thing about the roman empire every.
[00:24:57] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:24:58] Speaker A: Okay, okay.
[00:25:00] Speaker B: This has moved eastward to the byzantine erade. Didn't call themselves byzantine. They viewed themselves as roman.
You know, they were in Constantinople then, or the old, old, ancient town of Byzantium. So I collecting them now, I should say. Here's now moving into. I was really got into exhibiting coins called competitive exhibiting. This is a key thing for any good coin show. If you have a good competitive exhibit area, that is a very wonderful asset to have to a coin show now. And so I've won first place at Ana show.
[00:25:49] Speaker A: Wow. Okay. Okay.
[00:25:51] Speaker B: By byzantine coins.
[00:25:54] Speaker A: Let me ask you this. Do you remember what was your youngest age when you first won one of those competitions?
[00:26:03] Speaker B: Oh, this was the first. The first one I won was first place.
[00:26:10] Speaker A: What year was that?
[00:26:11] Speaker B: 1989.
[00:26:13] Speaker A: Okay. That's right. So you were doing well there in the eighties. Okay, very good. Very good.
[00:26:19] Speaker B: And I was shocked because I believe that one was.
Oh, I know what that was. Paper money. It was NPC's Millie. Military payment certificates.
[00:26:31] Speaker A: Okay. Okay.
[00:26:34] Speaker B: And the later military money from the Vietnam period is very colorful and the imagery and engraving. Engraving, I should say.
[00:26:44] Speaker A: Okay.
But no, it's a plausible, yet a unique theme. And you were able to make it unique to you. I think that's what I'm hearing anyway. Would you agree on that?
[00:27:00] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Yes. My journey through numismatics is going on two levels. It's the collecting level and of course, the mechanics of being involved with a major coin organization.
[00:27:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
And I know that you've got a way to. I recently spoke with a dealer and his quagmire is, you know, he sees a great coin and does he get it to resell it or does he get it to stash it away? You know, and it's sort of a moment of torment for him, you know, every now and then. So it's a different area of torment. You're. You're doing it. It hits you in a little bit differently, but everybody gets hit with it in some way.
[00:27:50] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, dealers. I often thought that exactly the same thing. It has to be tough doing a dealer, of course, you'll go bankrupt.
[00:28:02] Speaker A: And you've got to make the right decision because otherwise. That is true.
[00:28:09] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. And it's like that.
So my journey through. And you meet the most incredible people.
One of our pan shows, Greg Wyman, he was. He still is the attorney for the us mint. Now, Greg brought to our pan show. Brought it to our show, not one, but two of the 1933 $20 gold pieces.
Gave a lecture about the controversy and litigation. It was incredible lecture.
He brought two of them to show both the obverse and reverse.
[00:28:52] Speaker A: Okay, well, there are two sides to every coin. And.
There you go. There you go.
Oh, my goodness.
[00:29:02] Speaker B: Loaded with controversy. So it spells newspapers.
[00:29:13] Speaker A: All that coin controversy.
That's what it's all about. It's all about controversy, isn't it?
[00:29:22] Speaker B: It is about that. And so, you know, these sorts of things allowed me to move in my journey, and not just collecting, but the people you meet and the relationships you have. And that's an incredible.
[00:29:39] Speaker A: You've met a lot of people, made a lot of friends, haven't you?
[00:29:43] Speaker B: Yes. Yes. And I do it. I used to do a talk before my Ben Franklin days about, I called it rare coin basics. And people loved that because I went really. I approached it for that. You know nothing about this. And you come to my talk to see how do I go about this. And what I did was I show examples of all my mistakes that I made in collecting.
[00:30:14] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:30:14] Speaker B: Okay.
So. And then I tell them how to correct that.
[00:30:20] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:30:22] Speaker B: You know, that my favorite.
[00:30:24] Speaker A: But that's just that you're a teacher and you don't want people to. You want people to do the good things you've done, not the bad things. And you want to get them as.
Make things as easy for them as you can. And that, again, all appreciated.
[00:30:40] Speaker B: No, no, that's kind of my mindset with all this stuff. And I, you know, I lived through the, you know, the grading service days. You know, when I was young, there was.
There were no grading service other than the annex photos they took on those little postcards that you would actually send to the ANA.
But that was it for getting a coin graded. But then bcgs, the. The idea of grades and splitting uncirculated grades. You know, in the old days, it was just sixties, 63 and 65.
Sweet stuff.
Speaking of newspapers and controversy, quite the headlines in coin world and numb news about idea of that. Yeah, I lived through all that. Okay.
[00:31:39] Speaker A: Okay.
We're getting kind close on our time, but I just had a thought of.
There has to be a book, although your life is. May just be captured on film as it's being done right now. But is there a written document that. About all of your experiences that is either in the works, is being planned or something like that?
[00:32:07] Speaker B: Well, I don't have anything like that. A little memoir?
I view myself as an insignificant.
[00:32:16] Speaker A: No, no, no.
I think there are a few thousand people that have a different opinion. So don't. You know, I feel like a lot of your history is captured because you are such a notable person in the coin community that a lot of it is on film.
But it might be something, I don't know if there's an ambitious writer out there that might want to tag behind you for a period of time and get some of this documented either on paper or digitized somehow, so that people can have all this information in one place. But that's. That's my little idea I'm sending out to the world here. Okay.
All right. Well, listen.
We are coming up a little bit on time, but we haven't even scratched the surface of everything that you have to say to offer.
As I say, you hear that phrase, having scratched the surface, and it really does apply in this particular case.
So I would like to.
I'm gonna do two things. First thing I wanna do is make. Extend an invitation to you so that if you're willing to maybe come and see us again sometime in the future, would you be willing to do that?
[00:33:48] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely. I surely would.
[00:33:51] Speaker A: Okay, everybody. We're holding them to it.
I'm just kidding. The other thing I wanted to do is, before we leave, since I think probably just because of the nature of the time we are in and we're getting close to the coin show, is there something else you might want to say about the coins show before we head out or about anything else before we. That you might want the viewers to know about here as we're moving into the middle of October?
[00:34:21] Speaker B: Yes. No. If you come to our pan show or the fun show in January or Dana and some other shows, you can find me in Independence hall. That's my backdrop.
Because the major coin show, usually their feet are pretty tired. And so they. They could certainly sit in one of my Windsor chairs and.
[00:34:51] Speaker A: Okay, okay.
[00:34:53] Speaker B: Talk a little bit about history, coinage and the coinage of. Especially the coinage of Ben Franklin's time. The.
[00:35:03] Speaker A: Sure, sure.
[00:35:06] Speaker B: Thank you.
Step into my office, please.
[00:35:11] Speaker A: Take a load off. Right, right. Gotcha. Gotcha. All right. Well, listen, Pat.
Listen. I cannot. I cannot thank you enough for taking the time today. It's.
Again, I hope that everybody is able to take a look at this before the show and can learn some things only about the show, more about you. Get excited for beyond the show, because, as you say, yes, we're doing this in a couple, three weeks, but you're active in so many other areas that they're going to have a chance to catch you.
Anyway, as I say, I appreciate you being here and looking forward to finding out more about you in the future.
But other than that, like I said, just, just appreciate it, and we look forward to seeing you again real soon. Okay.
[00:36:16] Speaker B: All right.
[00:36:16] Speaker A: Take you, take you. Take care. Okay.
[00:36:21] Speaker B: Never know.
[00:36:23] Speaker A: All right. Bye.
