Uncle Bud Builds
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It was only after Charles Dodge's death that his family came to realize the enormity of his coin collection. Bud's large Victorian home in Red Cloud was filled literally almost to the rafters with coins, medals, tokens and paper currency. There were coins in cardboard boxes, coins in cupboards, coins in drawers, proof sets in suitcases and coin albums packed in railroad trunks. The nightstands on either side of Uncle Bud's bed overflowed with coins, his dresser drawers were stuffed with bullion, there were tokens under his bed and boxes of currency in the closet. The coins were not just randomly stuffed into these nooks and crannies, they were carefully organized by Bud into countries, denominations and other sorting categories they he alone seemed to totally understand. One dresser drawer might be full of the coins of Great Britain, another might be money of France, with the bottom drawer reserved for notgeld. While this huge hoard has been a challenge for the family to sort, it is certain Bud was able to walk to any drawer, pull out any box, or open the right suitcase to find the very coin he was looking for. In the living room were four steel shelves, bolted to the wall, stacked with double-wide coin boxes. Each box contained almost exactly 150 coins per side, 300 coins per box. There were precisely 5 boxes to every shelf, with the box color alternating checkerboard-fashion between red and black. These four shelves alone contain almost 45,000 world coins, all perfectly sorted by country, denomination, date and KM number.
Bud had worked briefly in San Diego helping out a friend in a coin
store and he certainly knew what he was doing when it came to
selecting high quality coins, accurately grading the same, carefully
identifying each piece individually and placing it within the overall
collection in its appropriate place. And like any serious numismatist,
he had a solid library of coin books. In short, Charles Dodge knew
what he was doing.
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Chief Petty Officer Charles B. Dodge, U.S.N. |
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And what he was doing seems to be collecting every single coin, of every different type (if not also by date), of every country (and even non-country), that he could find. He collected coins, tokens and medals, and understood the difference between them. He collected paper money of the world, both "wallpaper" and nice pre-war notes of China and Japan. He had a fabulous run of American proof sets in original envelopes and boxes (now sold, sorry). All together, 232 different countries or political entities are represented in the collection and unless stated to the contrary in the lot description, every coin is different from any other in the collection.
Occasionally Bud added to his collection by buying coins from
auctions houses like Bowers and Ruddy, but he primarily seems to
have purchased from fixed price lists of American, Asian and
European dealers. He did not seem to collect ancient coins, or at
least very few were found in the collection. His earliest coins of
consequence are some medieval bractates, but judging by the
number of coins in various categories, his real interests were coins of
the British colonies from the 1700s right up until his death in 2006.
He also had an extensive collection of material from China, Korea,
and Japan, much of which he bought while serving in the Navy.
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As mentioned, Bud lived off his Navy pension for almost 30 years, spending much of it on his coin hobby. He owned his home, he had no wife or children and the cost of living in Red Cloud, Nebraska was not all that high. His family is of the understanding that Uncle Bud spent over $400,000 on his collection over the course of his collecting life; its value is certainly several times that now. When the collection was moved from Red Cloud to a vault nearer the family, it was split into two groups for both security and logistical reasons. Each truckload of coins, packed into tubs, trunks and boxes, completely filled the bottom layer of the rental truck, with a weight well over one ton for each trip. After selling a fraction of the collection on eBay, the family has decided to place the remainder of the collection for sale, broken down by country into large lots. Each lot will be sorted by country, then subdivided into Coins, Tokens, Medals or Paper Currency where applicable. See Terms of Sale for more information about purchasing individual lots. |
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The collection contains several sub-collections that will be sold as single lots: 1,608 different pieces of Canadian municipal trade currency (MTT); a large collection of French and German notgeld; and lots containing hundreds of different, identified Asian cash coins, to name just a few. These can be found under their appropriate Country buttons. Those collectors interested in unusual world coins (as described in the Colin Bruce/George Cuhaj book by the same name) will be thrilled to learn that Uncle Bud was just as intrigued by these unrecognized states as are they. His collection contains at least 300 of these fantastic coins, certainly one of the larger assemblages ever offered in a single group. Some of Bud's American coins, including his many early proof sets, have already been sold. What is for sale is everything else: thousands and thousands of world coins, hundreds of world medals, hundreds of world tokens, thousands of proof sets, mint sets, world commemoratives and type coins, including many one-year types. See the Order Information page for further details on how to purchase one of the lots. Or go right to the Dodge Collection and start your tour of what is guaranteed to be the largest collection of world coins ever assembled in Red Cloud, Nebraska, or pretty much anywhere else for that matter. |
"Uncle Bud" |
 The Charles B.
Dodge Collection
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