DECEMBER 9
1975•Burglars Steal Dealer’s American Coin Inventory
2013•Ellen Wilson First Spouse Gold
Burglars Raid Craftco and Steal a Dealer's Working Inventory of American Coins
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On December 9, 1975, burglars broke into Craftco, a coin business in Laurel, Maryland, and stole roughly $3,000 worth of numismatic inventory. According to a contemporary report published by Coin World, the thieves entered through an office window and carried away a broad cross-section of the kinds of coins that formed the everyday working stock of an American coin dealer in the mid-1970s.
The inventory reads almost like a compact survey of popular U.S. collecting: approximately 600 rolls of mixed Wheat cents; partial tubes of Brilliant Uncirculated and circulated Lincoln cents; circulated Buffalo nickels; rolls of Brilliant Uncirculated clad Washington quarters; rolls of circulated Walking Liberty half dollars; smaller quantities of Indian Head cents, Liberty nickels, Buffalo nickels, Barber dimes and quarters; and a box of numismatic errors.
Craftco owner David M. Gottlieb later offered a $250 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the burglars and reported that a comprehensive burglar-alarm system had been installed after the theft.
Unlike a famous museum robbery involving a single legendary rarity, the Craftco burglary is historically interesting precisely because of what was taken: dealer stock. The stolen coins show what collectors were buying, selling, rolling, accumulating, and searching for during the great hobby boom of the 1970s.
A Burglary Report Preserved in the Numismatic Press
The primary surviving account appears in the January 21, 1976 issue of Coin World.
The report states that the burglary occurred on December 9 at Craftco in Laurel, Maryland.
It identifies David M. Gottlieb as the owner and gives a detailed description of the missing inventory.
That contemporary report is the basis for placing the event on December 9 in this calendar.
Craftco was not an obscure name appearing only because of the burglary.
Advertisements from the period show the company actively buying and selling U.S. coins by mail from Laurel.
Its ads sought collections, sets, rolls, accumulations, and individual coins.
Other advertisements offered price lists and promoted auction consignments.
The business therefore participated in the broad national mail-order numismatic market that flourished before online commerce.
Coin Dealing Before the Internet
In 1975, collectors could not open a website and instantly compare thousands of certified coins.
Print publications were essential.
Dealers advertised in Coin World, Numismatic News, club publications, and other hobby periodicals.
Collectors wrote for price lists, mailed checks, telephoned orders, attended shows, and shipped coins through registered or insured mail.
A post-office box and a national advertisement could connect a Maryland dealer with customers across the country.
The Craftco list is remarkable because it contains no single coin identified as a spectacular six-figure rarity.
Instead, the thieves took volume.
Rolls, tubes, circulated pieces, Brilliant Uncirculated coins, older silver, and errors disappeared together.
For a working dealer, such material represented liquid inventory: coins that could be sold individually, in rolls, as set fillers, or in bulk.
The largest specifically reported category was approximately 600 rolls of mixed Wheat cents.
A standard roll contains 50 cents.
Six hundred full rolls would therefore represent as many as 30,000 Lincoln Wheat cents.
Even when individual common-date Wheat cents were inexpensive, that quantity represented substantial dealer stock.
Victor David Brenner's Lincoln cent debuted in 1909.
Its reverse displayed two wheat ears surrounding the denomination and the words “ONE CENT.”
The Wheat reverse remained in use through 1958.
In 1959, the Lincoln Memorial replaced it.
By 1975, every Wheat cent was therefore already an obsolete design type, even though many remained affordable.
Wheat cents offered several advantages to collectors.
They were historic, recognizable, inexpensive in common dates, and available in enormous quantities.
A beginner could buy rolls and search them for older dates, mintmarks, varieties, and better-condition pieces.
Albums offered spaces stretching from 1909 onward.
For dealers, rolls of Wheat cents were dependable inventory.
The thieves also took partial tubes of Brilliant Uncirculated and circulated Lincoln cents.
The distinction is important.
Circulated coins served collectors filling ordinary date-and-mint sets.
Brilliant Uncirculated pieces appealed to buyers seeking coins that retained original Mint luster.
Long before modern third-party grading holders dominated the market, tubes were a normal way to store quantities of uncirculated coins.
Indian Head Cents
Smaller quantities of Indian Head cents were also stolen.
Issued from 1859 through 1909, the Indian Head cent was already a classic series by the 1970s.
Its long run, numerous dates, and recognizable James B. Longacre design made it a natural collecting series.
Common circulated examples remained accessible while key dates offered serious challenges.
The burglary report lists Liberty nickels among the missing coins.
Often called “V nickels” because of the large Roman numeral V on the reverse, the Liberty Head five-cent coin was issued from 1883 through 1912 for normal circulation.
The series contains one of America's greatest numismatic mysteries: the five famous 1913 Liberty Head nickels, which were never officially authorized as a regular issue.
Craftco's stolen pieces were not identified as such rarities; they were dealer inventory from the broader series.
Circulated Buffalo nickels appear prominently in the report.
James Earle Fraser's design entered circulation in 1913 and remained through 1938.
The coin's Native American portrait and American bison made it one of the most distinctive designs of the twentieth century.
By the 1970s, Buffalo nickels were enormously popular with collectors.
Buffalo nickels presented a special challenge.
The date was positioned where circulation wear could gradually erase it.
Many heavily circulated examples became dateless.
Full-date coins therefore had a practical premium over otherwise similar pieces with illegible dates.
Dealers could sort Buffalo nickels by date visibility and grade, making bulk quantities useful stock.
The thieves also took smaller quantities of Barber dimes and quarters.
Chief Engraver Charles E. Barber's Liberty Head design appeared on the dime, quarter, and half dollar beginning in 1892.
By 1975, Barber silver had been obsolete for decades.
Circulated examples nevertheless remained a major part of the affordable classic-coin market.
Silver Coinage Had Changed Only a Decade Earlier
The timing of the burglary is especially interesting because America's circulating coinage had undergone a fundamental metallic transformation only ten years earlier.
The Coinage Act of 1965 removed silver from dimes and quarters and reduced the silver content of half dollars.
Older 90-percent-silver coins rapidly disappeared from normal circulation as their bullion value increased.
By 1975, pre-1965 silver was both collectible and precious-metal inventory.
Rolls of circulated Walking Liberty half dollars were among the stolen stock.
Adolph A. Weinman's celebrated design was issued from 1916 through 1947.
Liberty strides toward the rising sun on the obverse while an eagle occupies the reverse.
The design later became so admired that the Mint adapted the obverse for the American Silver Eagle bullion coin beginning in 1986.
A standard roll of half dollars contains 20 coins with a face value of $10.
For pre-1965 Walking Liberty halves, that roll also contained a significant amount of silver.
By the mid-1970s, precious-metal markets had become increasingly important to coin dealers.
Thus the stolen Walking Liberty rolls had both numismatic and bullion characteristics.
Not everything stolen was old.
The burglars also took rolls of Brilliant Uncirculated clad Washington quarters.
These represented the newer copper-nickel-clad monetary system introduced in the 1960s.
The fact that a dealer stocked rolls of uncirculated clad quarters illustrates a basic collecting truth: collectors often save new coins at the moment of issue, long before anyone knows which will later become scarce or desirable.
George Washington had appeared on the quarter since 1932.
But collectors in 1975 were living through a major transition.
The familiar design was being modified for the Bicentennial.
Dual-dated 1776–1976 quarters with Jack L. Ahr's colonial drummer reverse were entering the marketplace.
Modern quarter collecting was therefore unusually visible when Craftco was burglarized.
Perhaps the most intriguing item in the report is simply described as a box of numismatic errors.
No detailed inventory is given.
That means we cannot responsibly claim which errors were inside.
But the category itself is significant.
Error-coin collecting was already a recognized specialty by the 1970s.
What Counts as a Mint Error?
Mint errors can arise from many stages of production.
Coins may be struck off center, struck multiple times, struck on the wrong planchet, produced with clipped planchets, or exhibit other abnormalities caused during manufacturing.
Some are dramatic and obvious.
Others require specialist knowledge.
A dealer's box of errors could therefore contain an eclectic assortment unlike ordinary date-and-mint inventory.
Coins present special problems for theft investigations.
Many common coins are not individually traceable.
A 1940 Wheat cent can look like thousands of others.
A roll can be broken apart in seconds.
Coins can be mixed with other inventory, sold individually, spent, melted when precious metal is involved, or transported easily.
Without photographs, distinctive marks, or rarity, identification can be extremely difficult.
Paradoxically, an extremely rare coin can sometimes be harder for a thief to sell than common material.
A famous rarity may have a documented pedigree, photographs, certification numbers, or distinctive surface marks known throughout the trade.
Dealers and auction houses may recognize it immediately.
Bulk rolls of common collectible coins lack that visibility.
The Craftco inventory was therefore particularly portable and divisible.
The contemporary report says the burglars gained entrance through an office window.
That detail is simple but revealing.
A coin dealership concentrates large value into a very small physical space.
Unlike furniture, machinery, or automobiles, thousands of dollars in coins can fit into a few boxes or bags.
Physical security has therefore always been a serious concern for professional numismatists.
Gottlieb reported that a comprehensive burglar-alarm system was installed after the crime.
The response illustrates the painful way security practices often evolve.
A theft exposes weaknesses that may have seemed theoretical beforehand.
For a dealer, the cost is not limited to lost inventory.
Business interruption, insurance issues, customer confidence, record reconstruction, and improved security can all follow.
The $250 Reward
Craftco offered a $250 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the burglars.
That was a meaningful amount in 1976.
The reward also turned the national collecting community into a potential network of observers.
If suspicious quantities of Wheat cents, Walking Liberty halves, Buffalo nickels, or other matching material suddenly appeared, dealers and collectors could potentially alert Craftco or authorities.
Before instant electronic communication, numismatic newspapers played an important role in circulating theft information.
A dealer robbery in Maryland could be reported to readers nationwide.
Descriptions of stolen rarities, dealer inventories, and suspicious material helped make the hobby press a form of community security system.
That function remains relevant today, although online databases and social media can spread alerts much faster.
Crime was the reason the inventory appeared in print, but the list now has another value.
It preserves a snapshot of a dealer's stock in late 1975.
Wheat cents by the roll.
Buffalo nickels in circulated quantity.
Barber silver.
Walking Liberty halves.
BU clad quarters.
Error coins.
That mixture says a great deal about the American collecting market of the period.
The hobby was changing rapidly.
Precious-metal prices mattered increasingly to collectors.
The Bicentennial coinage program was generating enormous public interest.
Modern proof sets and Mint products had become established collecting categories.
At the same time, classic nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century coins remained staples of dealer inventories.
Craftco's stolen stock crossed all of those worlds.
One reason coin theft can be misunderstood is that face value says little about market value.
Thirty thousand Wheat cents have a face value of only $300.
Yet sorted by date, mintmark, grade, and variety, a dealer could retail them for substantially more.
The same principle applies throughout numismatics.
A coin is money, metal, historical artifact, and collectible object simultaneously.
The contemporary Coin World text reports the stolen coins as valued at approximately $3,000.
The digitized scan contains garbled optical-character-recognition text in the headline, which can make the amount appear differently in automated search results.
The body of the contemporary report provides the clearer figure.
For historical accuracy, this article therefore uses approximately $3,000 rather than relying on the damaged headline OCR.
Why This Burglary Belongs in a Coin-History Calendar
At first glance, a dealer burglary may seem less important than a new coin authorization or Mint opening.
But numismatic history is not only the history of government production.
It is also the history of collectors, dealers, auctions, discoveries, hoards, thefts, recoveries, markets, and the everyday movement of old coins after they leave the Mint.
The Craftco burglary captures that secondary life of American coinage unusually well.
The thieves did not take one famous coin.
They took pieces spanning generations of American design.
Indian Head cents reached back to the nineteenth century.
Barber coinage represented the turn of the twentieth century.
Buffalo nickels and Walking Liberty halves embodied the artistic renaissance of the early 1900s.
Lincoln cents and Washington quarters extended the inventory into modern circulation.
The stolen stock was a miniature history of U.S. coinage.
On December 9, 1975, burglars entered Craftco in Laurel, Maryland, through an office window and stole approximately $3,000 in coins.
Owner David M. Gottlieb reported a loss dominated by roll stock: roughly 600 rolls of mixed Wheat cents, along with Lincoln cents, Buffalo nickels, Brilliant Uncirculated clad Washington quarters, Walking Liberty half dollars, Indian Head cents, Liberty nickels, Barber dimes and quarters, and numismatic errors.
Craftco responded by installing a comprehensive alarm system and offering a $250 reward for information leading to the burglars' arrest and conviction.
The crime itself was damaging to a working coin business. Half a century later, however, the surviving report also gives collectors something unexpectedly valuable: a detailed snapshot of what sat on the shelves and in the tubes, boxes, and rolls of a mid-1970s American coin dealer.
It reminds us that coin history does not end when a piece leaves the Mint.
Coins continue to circulate, disappear, become collectible, enter dealer inventories, rise and fall with metal markets, change hands—and sometimes become the targets of crime.
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