by Julie D. Andrews
After browsing the wares, a customer donning a suit and glasses picks up a wooden mallet. “What's this?” he asks, inquisitively. “You know, it's a judge's mallet,” says David Heller, owner of FH Coins and Collectibles at 1187 Lexington Avenue (between E. 80th & 81st) casually, as if everyone who's anyone owns one. “Makes a great conversation piece.” The customer nods. He spins the mallet around and examines it closely. “I'll take it,” he says, “Along with any two-dollar bills you may have.” Heller digs in a drawer in the back office to find five laminated two-dollar bills. When the customer says he just has a credit card on him, no problem, says Heller, who suggests with an air of trust that the man take the items now and drop by to pay for them later. It's that kind of place. Where cash is the mainstay and there are no computers to track inventory or cell phones ringing with orders. Instead, the radio is ever tuned in and there's always time to swap tips on the best barber in town (apparently it's run by a Russian man and his brother on E. 79th St.).
“I never really know what's going to come through that door,” says Heller who has been running his Upper East Side coin shop since 1979 when he first took over the lease from a dry cleaner. “And that's what keeps it interesting.” Heller recalls the day an exquisite three-foot-high engraved Lalique vase was carried in. A lawyer who was unexpectedly moving to Puerto Rico with his wife was holding it ... and would take cash only for the sale.
These days, his primary business is buying and selling silver and gold. He also sells rare coins and collectibles – signed crystal and porcelain including several coveted pieces by Baccarat, Lalique, and Steuben. He occasionally acquires prize framed art works – such as the signed Picasso print of a bordello that he recently sold to a doctor client (after Heller's daughter and wife forbid him from hanging it in his own apartment). Heller expects a signed Miro print recently dropped off by a long-time customer to go for about $4,000.
As we are talking, a woman pops in to ask what Heller would pay for a collection of silver dollars her husband just found. On a given week, when his storefront is filled out to showcase sale items, Heller will see about 25 to 30 such customers walk in, he says. (His store window has been barren for the past few months due to a storefront refurbishing, but should be up again in a few weeks). Sometimes, there's no exchange of goods, just a customer doing a little curious price digging to see what a certain coin or porcelain figurine might fetch or a little price haggling over an item Heller has for sale. Other days can yield an out-of-the-blue sale that's unexpectedly lucrative. Last year, Heller sold a rare ten-dollar gold piece dating back to 1901 (only 85 are known to exist) for $35,000. And, through a Smythe auction, he sold a ten-dollar gold piece from 1801 in mint condition for about $50,000. Heller first began hanging out in coin shops in Queens in the early 70s and liked the culture. He began buying coin shops as a hobby. It was after he had purchased three coin shops and hired employees that he decided to quit his day job as a bottled-water salesman and devote all his energies to the shops. Starting out on your own was easier then, he says, remarking that at one point he had four shops, including one in Manhattan, and paid just more than $1,200 a month total to lease all of them. And when he couldn't afford a telephone in his first shop, he called the phone company and had them install a pay phone behind the counter for free. Though Heller will tell you he didn't grow up aspiring to be a coin collector, everything about his back office shows his knack for collecting and holding onto things. Stacks of books, paper, coins in protective cases, and porcelain vases crowd his office space. On the wall, there's a crayoned drawing that his daughter made after school one day. She's now 28. The penciled rendering of Heller himself as a younger man hanging next to it dates back many years to a day an artist stumbled in and asked to sketch Heller for ten dollars. The caricature has been taped to the wall ever since. It's this same ability to collect – and patience to hold onto something for a long time – that can pay off handsomely for a collector. He shows me a laminated one-thousand-dollar bill (last printed in 1934) that was recently sold to a client for $2,500. “When I first started, there was no money in coins,” says Heller. “That was 30 years ago and now, a rare coin in exceptional condition could sell for millions.
The difference is night and day.” Coin collecting has become more honorable because there aren't that many around any more, he says, and people like owning pieces of American history.
Heller knows the Upper East Side well. His daughter was born at Lenox Hill Hospital and grew up in an apartment just blocks from the shop. He raves about the 92nd St. Y. On this day, he tells me about his tickets to see Kirk Douglas there with the excitement of a school boy. And, for Chinese food, he swears by the grub at Chef Ho's Peking Duck Grill at 1720 Second Avenue (between 89th & 90th). Over the years, he's seen shops along Lexington Avenue come and go. With skyrocketing leases, it's a wonder Heller has been able to stay. He's not planning on going anywhere, though. In fact, he's just been granted a ten-year lease from his co-op building. It's a little like stepping into the past walking through the door at FH Coins and Collectibles. Heller makes time to talk with clients about how the neighborhood has changed, a daughter's wedding, or how an ailing relative is faring. In that, there is something remarkably charming. It's that same personal attention that has kept his customers coming back for nearly 30 years. Heller has another trick, too: “My prices are as reasonable as anywhere in midtown,” he says. Tip: Professional decorators and designers always get a discount.