Dick Johnson writes:

Whoever coined the phrase take a penny leave a penny, doesn't know Bob Bruce. Owner of two of the biggest coin shops in the Gulf Coast area, this coin collector and previous law enforcement office knows how to catch thieves red handed.

Bruce was recently awarded the Sol Kaplan Award from the Professional Numismatists Guild for recovering more than $100,000 worth of valued coins. This led to a further investigation, which helped recover over $2 million worth of coins.

Bruce said the coin thief was in a ring with a group that had helped steal over $2 million worth of coins out of a dentist's safe in Ohio.

Unfortunately, the thieves didn't have enough brains to crack the safe code, so they did the next best thing�they pulled the safe through the wall.

"They hooked the safe up to a trailer and pulled it out of the house. It did a lot of damage to their house," said Bruce.

"The guy came in and tried to sell these expensive coins, and he didn't know how to handle them. That's when we knew they were stolen," said Sullivan.

Once a meeting was set up to sell the coins, FBI agents hid in the back room of his Pensacola store. "I had FBI agents in the back with machine guns," said Bruce.

"They had been looking for this guy for a year," said Bruce, "He had walked up behind some guy and shot him in the head."

Bruce had no problem dealing with the thief, and was the first to jump at the man when he reached for his gun.

After an all-out brawl, which was later posted on youtube.com, all of the people involved in taking down the armed man walked away with some kind of injury.

To read the complete article, see:Local coin shop owner awarded(http://www.srpressgazette.com/news/penny-8233-
whoever-local.html)