RAYMOND CHANDLER & THE BRASHER DOUBLOON

Sometime in 1960, a friend’s enthusiasm for coin collecting proved contagious, and I began sorting through pocket change and noting dates and mint marks.

- Lawrence Block

Before I knew it I was subscribing to a weekly numismatic newspaper and buying coins from dealers and at auctions. I’d collected stamps as a boy, and now I was collecting coins with at least as much pession, and a little more money to commit to the pursuit.

I’d been doing this for three years or so when my writing career hit a bad patch. A falling-out with my agent led to my losing access to the publishers who had long sustained me. Fortunately, I had nothing else to fall back on—no college degree, no vocational experience. So I had to keep at it, and I developed some additional markets for my work.

And while I was at it I wrote a couple of articles for numismatic publications. “Raymond Chandler and the Brasher Doubloon” was the most interesting of them, and it opened a door for me in Racine, Wisconsin. That’s where I sent it, to a fellow named Kenneth E. Bressett who was editing a new magazine called the Whitman Numismatic Journal. He snapped it up, and before long he found an excuse to visit Buffalo, where I was living. Our meeting led to a job offer, and by July of 1964, I’d sold our house at 48 Ebling Avenue, in the Township of Tonawanda, and relocated with wife and two daughters to 4051 Marquette Drive, in Racine, where I worked on the magazine and related enterprises for a little overt a year and a half.

It was the only job I ever had after college, and I surprised myself by discovering an unexpected ability to survive and even flourish in a corporate atmosphere. Toward the end of my stay, I learned that my boss planned to move me out of the backwater of the Coin Supplies Division and into general marketing, which told me that I had found for myself, astonishingly, A Job With A Future.