Mr. Mint -- Alan Rosen

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Posted By: warshawlaw

I saw his antics firsthand at a show in SF in 1989. He gets people as they come through the door, loudly. Once the laydown is finished, he says "the briefcase please" and his bobos hand him a briefcase of cash. He then counts out the hundreds as fast as humanly possible (proving to all who see that money is no big deal to him--being as familiar with big cash as he is lets him count it rapidly--or proves he works part time as a teller at a casino), pushes the stack at the awed mark, and says take it or leave it. I saw him pick up a few hundred 1950s cards for $5,000 or so at that show. By the next morning, the lot had been subdivided into two $3,000 lots and wholesaled to two other dealers (Rosen was bragging about the flip to his minions, so I know the numbers). He hates grading with a passion not just because of the Olbermann incident but because he can't **** all over the walk-ins' cards for condition if the cards are slabbed, nor can he hype his overgraded stuff with any degree of credibility to the real collecting public. What remains alluring for the walk-in yokels about him is (1) cash and no records, and (2) he buys it all without bitching or cherry picking. Of course he pays diddly for the "all" but the yokels don't know that. We could all learn a bit or two about marketing from this money-monkey.

And I think the knee-cap sucking article in SCD on his new look was a low even for that rag.