Maria Fanning writes:

Some of his fellow numismatists considered him to be the P. T. Barnum of coin collecting. But they also admitted that at a time when coin collecting was a hobby of the well-to-do, Benjamin Maximillian Mehl (1884-1957) did more than anyone else to make coin collecting popular among average Americans.

Max Mehl was born in Russia and came to Fort Worth with his family at age twelve. His father and brothers were in the clothing business.Max began buying and selling coins, working out of his family's home on East 2nd Street. In 1903 his first ad appeared in The Numismatistmagazine.

Mehl began placing small classified ads in the Fort Worth Telegram in 1904. He was twenty years old.

Also in 1904 Mehl began selling his Star Coin Book, which listed prices he paid for coins. (The book was published annually forsixty-one years. I found this 1930 edition on eBay.) In 1906 he gave up his day job-clerking in his family's shoe store-and rented an office on SouthMain. Max Mehl the numismatist was on his way.

Mehl built his business a nickel and a dime at a time. A lot of nickels and dimes: By 1916, when he was only thirty-two, he commissioned architect Wiley Clarkson (himself only thirty-one) to design an office building on Magnolia Avenue, across from Magnolia Centre. "The largest and finest appointed exclusive numismatic offices in the world," Mehl called it.

What fun Clarkson must have had with the design. The cast stone of the south facade features coins above the windows and doors. An image of the building, with streetcar passing, appeared on the cover of every edition of his Star Coin Book.

Mehl was a marketing whiz. He advertised heavily in numismatist magazines, was the first numismatist to advertise in magazines for a general readership, was an early user of radio commercials. His mail order business boomed. The Star-Telegram once reported that in 1910 mail addressed to Mehl accounted for more than half the traffic of the Fort Worth postal system. He once reportedly received seventy-two thousand pieces of mail in a single day. By 1924 his advertising budget was $50,000 a year-in 1924 dollars. In 1931 Mehl spent $18,500 for a single ad in American Weekly Sunday magazine. But as Mehl was bringing coin collecting to the masses, he was not ignoring the high rollers. Among his customers were Amon Carter, Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Egypt's King Farouk.

John Mutch writes:

To read the complete Fort Worth article, see:
Once Upon a Penny: The House That Pocket Change Built (http://hometownbyhandlebar.com/?p=2502)

To read the complete Find-A-Grave entry, see:
B. Max Mehl (www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=mehl&GSfn=b&GSmn=
max&GSbyrel=all&GSdyrel=all&GSob=n&GRid=32729077&df=all&)

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
COIN DEALER B. MAX MEHL (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v19n06a16.html)