Dealer in Old Money Feels Aura of History in His Coins, Currency

Honorably discharged after four years in the Navy as a gunner’s mate, John P. Fitzgerald started looking for a way to make an honorable living without a weapon.

He held jobs as a shipping clerk, a salesman in a coin shop, a waiter and later as a bartender where another bartender introduced him to old money, some of it reaching back to Civil War days.

With his savings, Fitzgerald bankrolled himself to a starter set of old bills and coins.

Now the 29-year-old Huntington Beach man owns a money business that includes various types of old certificates and old money worth much more than the face value of the bills.

Some of his $1 bills are worth $35 and others run into the hundreds and thousands of dollars.

“I always get compliments about my money,” said Fitzgerald, who has worked seven days a week since he started the business two years ago. “In a way I’m selling a little bit of history.”

Two of those days are the weekends he spends in his money booth at the Orange County Swap Meet. The rest of the time is working in his Pacific Coast Art and Frame store in Orange.

“I’m just an ordinary guy but it makes me feel good to hear someone say nice things about my money,” said Fitzgerald, who frames the money he sells in glass to show both sides of the old bills.

He said the bills are usually bought by people for other people “who have everything and are hard to buy for. These certainly are unusual and handsome gifts.”

During his pitch to sell the old money and certificates as gifts, Fitzgerald likes to give an oral presentation of the history of each bill, knowledge he learned from reading books and consulting with experts on old money.

He often gets a chance to spend a lot of time talking about the bills since most of his customers want the full history of what they are buying.

“That’s the fun of this business,” said Fitzgerald, who will exhibit some of his more important and unusual bills and certificates at this year’s Orange County Fair in the hobbies and crafts building.

Fitzgerald said he was looking for something unique to do with his life after his military service.

“This is something that will keep me going for the rest of my life and just think of all the different people I get to meet and talk to,” he said. “It gives me a chance to have a hobby and a business at the same time.”

Although there are others selling old money, “I don’t know many who sell it at a swap meet or at a frame shop,” he said.

Besides selling the money as gifts and to collectors, Fitzgerald feels he’s spreading the word about American history, pointing out that “each of the bills were minted while the country was growing up and there is history attached to them each step of the way they were minted.”

The money he sells is usually purchased from estate sales, auctions or collectors, and sometimes from people who run across bills stored away in their homes.

“I have some bills I won’t sell to anyone,” vows Fitzgerald, who also collects autographs of presidents of the United States and has an interest in collecting old bottles.

“Actually I’d like to keep them all but some of them are special because of their historical value and some are just irreplaceable,” he said. “And all of them are beautiful.”

One of those is a stock certificate signed by Harry Houdini when the escape artist owned a motion picture company.

Nearly five years ago Mari Quigley Watkins of Corona del Mar tried to break into modeling at age 35 as a storefront mannequin model.

“I didn’t want to wake up someday when I’m 60 years old and regret I didn’t at least give modeling an honest try,” she said at that time.

Well, it didn’t work out and now, at age 39, she has become a shoe detailing specialist, another name for a shoeshiner.

Watkins shines shoes in the Birtcher-Xerox building in Santa Ana.

“This is the most fun,” said Watkins, who has held jobs as a secretary, a nurse’s aide, a cashier and a waitress. “What’s the next thing? Who knows. There will be something.”