GETTING FAMOUS IN COINS
Donn Pearlman is the History of Coin Promotions
My pastime and professional journeys have taken me to Brasher Doubloons, 1913 Liberty Head nickels, Rocky Balboa’s boxing trunks, John Wayne’s iconic eyepatch from “True
Grit,” Series 1934 $100,000 Gold Certificates and the King of Siam proof set. It has been an overwhelmingly happy ride with the royalty of numismatics – both the legendary coins and the hobby’s acclaimed celebrities – combined with careers in broadcasting and then public relations
My first “brush” with coin collecting literally began with a brush. I was about seven or eight years old and used my mother’s nail polish and nail brush on a new Lincoln penny to create a bright, red cent. It was not the last time my weird sense of humor collided with my enjoyment of numismatics.
As with many collectors in the United States, I began searching for cents and Jefferson nickels to fill the slots in my blue Whitman albums. When the weekly allowance permitted, and later with funds obtained working as a young magician at children’s birthday parties, I purchased items at several of the then-many coin and stamp shops around my hometown Chicago area.
The best acquisition, though, was a face value purchase of a roll of Lincoln cents for 50 cents. A boyhood friend went on vacation to Philadelphia in 1960 and got each of us a roll of new cents from a bank in the city. Both rolls were 1960 Philadelphia Mint small date variety cents. I don’t know what he did with his coins, but in early 1964, during the “roll-mania” boom in the hobby, I sold that 50-cent roll for $400. That was a heck of a lot of money for a high school senior back then, who was making
$1.10 an hour working part time at a local McDonald’s.
But then I graduated, went to college, and discovered other things to do with pocket money. It would be 11 years until I returned to the hobby.
ON THE AIR
After stints as a DJ in Lawrence and Topeka, Kansas, and as a television reporter in Topeka and Kansas
City, Missouri, I was hired by CBS in Chicago in June
1970. It was a happy homecoming back to the Windy
City for my wife of a year-and-a-half and me.
Five years later, while walking between reporting assignments in downtown Chicago, I saw a sign in a coin and stamp store window: 1975 PROOF SETS NOW AVAILABLE $25. “Whoa,” I thought. “They were only $2.10 when I used to purchase them from the Mint back in the late 1950s.” I went into the shop, purchased several weekly and monthly numismatic publications and became a reborn numismatist.
In 1977, I combined my hobby with my journalism background and began freelancing stories to hobby publications. In 1978, the Professional Numismatists Guild (PNG) honored me with the anti-crime Sol Kaplan Award for a series of stories I did about suspected mail-order problems.
Within a short period, I had a weekly radio program, “Coin Collectors Corner,” that originated at WBBM Newsradio 780 in Chicago and was picked up by some other CBS-owned radio stations. I carried my Sony tape recorder to coin conventions around the country and interviewed experts on various topics, then aired portions of the recordings for the weekly radio shows.
PUTTING PEN TO PAPER
In the 1980s, I began writing a weekly column for the American Numismatic Association’s monthly magazine,
The Numismatist. It was numismatic humor – or at least things that made me laugh about the hobby. Editor Barbara J. Gregory moved the column to the inside back page, which actually is a prominent placement. Over the years, people told me my column was the first thing they turned to in each issue. I would respond with a straight face, “I read the obituaries first. If I’m not listed, then I know I have to write next month’s column.”
My favorite column headline was during my two terms on the ANA Board of Governors, 1989-1993 when I wrote about sitting through monotonous hours and days of board meetings. The headline stated: “I Came, I Saw, I Concurred.”
During the mid-1980s, I started writing books, all now long-out-of-print. There was Breaking Into Broadcasting, a guide for students on getting jobs in broadcasting (and
I’ve long thought about creating the appropriate sequel, Breaking OUT of Broadcasting); two books about collecting baseball cards and a book about coin collecting.
Much of my early broadcasting career involved street reporting, going to fires, crime scenes, court hearings, news conferences, parades, and so on. I also did some television news anchoring. From the spring of 1984 to the spring of 1986, I worked seven days a week, Monday through Friday, anchoring during the mid-day on all-news WBBM-CBS radio and weekends as a reporter for WBBM-CBS. I interviewed many political, entertainment and sports celebrities during my 25 years with
CBS, and even occasionally filled in on weekend radio
features when CBS News “On The Road” correspondent Charles Kuralt was on vacation. It was an interesting career, but not what I originally intended to do in life.
With about a year’s worth of planning and an understanding wife, I left broadcasting in January 1996 for a full-time career in public relations and marketing with a touch of advertising here and there. I was self-employed for five days when I got a phone call from Raymond Minkus, a PR agency owner in Chicago I’d met through a mutual friend six weeks earlier. He hired me to be an executive at his firm.
Over the next seven years, I was Senior Vice President and then Managing Director of Minkus & Dunne Communications, a PR firm with offices in Chicago, Madison, Wisconsin and Washington, DC. I learned a lot about the PR business from Ray (“It’s not what you bill; it’s what you collect.”), and I helped mentor junior staff members on media relations.
A PASSION FOR PROMOTION
Besides work for the firm’s diverse business clients, I brought in many numismatic clients, including the Professional Numismatists Guild, American Numismatic Association, Bowers & Merena (later Stack’s Bowers), Heritage Auctions, Ira & Larry Goldberg Auctions, Rare Coin Wholesalers, California Gold Marketing Group, the Long Beach Coin, Stamp & Sports Collectibles Expo, Professional Coin Grading Service, Professional Stamp Experts, and other hobby and trade companies.
In February 2003, a new company formed, Minkus & Pearlman, and I served as president. Just five months after we started the new firm, my wife, Fran, and I decided we had enough northern Illinois snow. So, I told Ray that with so much of my work focused on California-based clients, we should set up a “Western States Office.” Fran and I moved to Las Vegas that October, but I remained with Minkus & Pearlman for three years, successfully still doing business by email, on the phone and occasionally flying back and forth to Chicago. In July 2006, I set up a Nevada corporation, Donn Pearlman, Inc., doing business as Donn Pearlman & Associates Public Relations.
COINage columnist Michael
Fuljenz, president of Universal
Coin & Bullion, became a client and friend that year.
I’m the luckiest PR person in the world, combining a pleasurable, educational hobby with a professional career. You might not know me personally, but chances are, you’ve seen some of my numismatic-related handiwork that generated major headlines in both hobby and mainstream news media.
A PR stunt I created in early 2003 actually resulted in the re-discovery of the long-lost Walton specimen
1913 Liberty Head nickel. The owners had mistakenly been told in 1962 that it was fake, and they unsuspectingly kept it for 41 years in either a closet or a bedroom nightstand drawer in Virginia until it was authenticated by PCGS (Professional Coin Grading Service) in 2003. I continued working on projects with that nickel when the ANA subsequently exhibited it and when it was sold at auction by Heritage for nearly $3.2 million in 2013.
I started working in early 2003 with Steven L. Contursi, now Chairman of Rare Coin Wholesalers, who had purchased a superb 1794 Flowing Hair silver dollar. Over the course of that year, he let dozens of experts in early American numismatics closely examine it. The consensus-based on its characteristics and diagnostics was that this coin probably was the first silver dollar struck by the young United States. For the next eight years, I happily did the publicity whenever and wherever Contursi exhibited the historic silver dollar until he privately sold it for $7.85 million.
There were also extensive publicity projects when Contursi owned the King of Siam proof set and the unique 1787 Brasher Doubloon with the EB (Ephraim Brasher) punch mark on the eagle’s breast. One of those assignments resulted in a two-fold reunion. He brought the coin for a public display back to New York, where it originally was struck by Brasher as the first gold coin made in the United States.
In 2020, I was reunited with that magnificent specimen strike 1794 silver dollar when I assisted Legend Rare Coin Auctions promoting the auction of early American coins from the Bruce Morelan Collection. Also, in 2020 I consulted with Numismatic Guaranty Corporation (NGC) after NGC authenticated the third known “Ides of March” (EID
MAR) gold coin commemorating the 44 B.C. assassination of Julius Caesar. It subsequently sold in London, England for nearly $4.1 million, a record price for any ancient coin.
To promote the 2006 National Coin Week and the latest edition of his popular book, The Coin Collector’s Survival
Manual®, I assisted COINage Executive Editor and former ANA Vice President Scott A. Travers with a publicity stunt involving him deliberately spending a few rare coins in New York City. One of them was a 1909-S V.D.B. Lincoln cent valued at the time at $1,000. TV crews surrounded Travers as he prepared to spend one of the rare coins in Times Square. He was featured in The New York Times, on NBC’s
Today Show and with other local and national news media. Some people ask, “What’s your favorite PR work?”
Well, the PR stunt that solved a decades’ old mystery with the 1913 Liberty Head nickel formerly owned by George O. Walton certainly is one of the career highlights. Another highlight is working each year at ANA World’s
Fair of Money® conventions with the outstanding
U.S. Treasury Department teams at the United States
Mint and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.
In 1996 I was asked to combine my broadcasting and numismatic knowledge to write the script for an ANA-PNG video joint project, “Money: History In Your Hands.” When informed that acclaimed actor James Earl Jones would narrate the video, I tore up the draft script and started fresh with his baritone voice in my head. The revised video’s opening sequence is a montage of images of different forms of money, with Jones doing a commanding voice-over of slang terms for money. The final word in the segment is “moolah” as only he could forcefully announce it.
For continuing excitement and unexpected, eye-opening discoveries, my favorite work continues to be with noted numismatist, business entrepreneur and philanthropist, Dwight Manley. He is managing partner of the California Gold Marketing Group that since 1999 has acquired nearly all of the sunken treasure recovered from the S.S. Central America. The fabled “Ship of Gold” sank in 1857 while carrying tons of California Gold Rush era coins and ingots.
Manley and his group have staged splendid, multi-million dollar exhibits across the country of recovered treasure items.
Other happy hobby memories include the American Numismatic Association selecting me for its highest honor in 2015, the Farran Zerbe Memorial Award, and the Professional Numismatists Guild giving me its Lifetime Achievement award in 2018.
There have also been many enjoyable non-numismatic publicity projects, such as assisting Heritage with auctions of Hollywood memorabilia from the estate of legendary actor John Wayne, and an auction of iconic props and costumes from “Rocky,” “Rambo” and other famous films personally consigned by the movies’ star Sylvester Stallone.
There was a wonderful 1997 Wisconsin project with Tommy Bartlett’s Robot World & Exploratory when the fabled showman Bartlett purchased a 20-ton, 55-foot long core module of a Russian Mir space station for permanent exhibit in the Wisconsin Dells. There were many headlines along the lines of “Mir Space Station To Land In Wisconsin.”
Of course, there were some disappointments along the way. To quote a Frank Sinatra song, “Regrets? I’ve had a few.”
A carefully planned and coordinated 2002 event in California with United States Mint Director Henrietta Holsman Fore unveiling a 1933 Double Eagle for the first time in public on the West Coast disappointingly didn’t attract the anticipated crowd of news media. There were mud slides in the Los Angeles area that day, and I learned later that three television stations had crews stationed non-stop near a Pacific coast house that was expected to slip off a cliff and into the ocean at any time. We had only one TV crew for the coin’s unveiling, not the six or seven local and network crews we anticipated.
There also was a frustrating situation when news media showed up as scheduled to see the first public display of a multi-million dollar coin, but the guest of honor showed up late. Those responsible for securely sending one of the three known 1822 Capped Bust Half Eagle gold coins from one part of the country to the other had not allowed sufficient time for its arrival at the planned destination.
Still, heads or tails, I’ve gratefully come up a winner most of the time, helping to promote the enjoyment and excitement of a wonderful hobby.