PHILADELPHIA, PA –
Area homeless man Alfred Brown has committed the last ten years of his life to
collecting a remarkable coin collection simply by asking people on the street
if they could give him their pocket change. His first collector’s item—a 1985
no mint mark Roosevelt dime, worth about $40—came to him by chance in 2003 from
a Starbucks in San Diego. From there he was hooked. He started attending collector
conventions and dealing on e-Bay, until one day he came to an epiphany. “I
realized I could just ask people for
their spare change! It’s only change; they won’t mind,” Alfred Brown explained
as he described his plan for begging people on the street for money in the off
chance that they didn’t know what kind of precious coins they had. However,
this hobby soon turned into an obsession, and his street begging took all of
his time. Alfred was fired from his advertising firm; he lost his house; and his
wife left with his two children. He then moved to Philadelphia to be closer to
the U.S. mint facility. At this point, Mr. Brown has amassed a coin collection
worth $1.2 million, but his undying wish is to find the Holy Grail: a 1969-S
Lincoln cent with a doubled die obverse, worth about $35,000. “If I find that,
I can finally focus my attention on my second love: antique liquor bottles.”
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| Praying for a Buffalo Nickel |
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