Collectors converge on Bossier Civic Center

Indistinguishable murmurs filled the Bossier Civic Center as hundreds navigated the slipshod isles looking for seemingly lost treasures as part of the Ark-La-Tex Coin, Stamp and Card Exposition.

“I first started buying baseball cards as a child in 1958,” said Roland Belcher, a sports memorabilia collector from Metairie. “Back then; it was a way of people getting together and trading cards to enhance their own collection. It was more than selling and trading.”  

“I was a Yankees fan and Mickey Mantle was my favorite player favorite player. I had several of them I kept all of the cards when I was a child. I had about 40,000 I told my mother ‘don’t throw my baseball cards away’. I always knew they would be worth some money someday and as it turns out they were.”

However, similar to coin and stamp collectors, Belcher claimed he lost interest in baseball card collection going into high school.

“Kids collect cards from eight to 13- or 14-years-old. Then they discover girls, then money and interests go in another direction and usually it stays that way until they get married, settle down and have a family,” said Belcher.

Ronnie Wiggins, area card collector, claims he got back into card collecting as a result of trying to find an activity to share with his son.

“I got out of it. Girls took priority. Then, I got married, settled down a bit and had a son. [Collecting] was something I figured we could do together so I picked it back up,” said Wiggins. “Now he has more cards than I do.”

Event organizer, Hal Odom Jr., proudly showed his day’s haul of individual coins in cellophane wrappers.

Akin to big game hunters, collectors feel every item in their collection tells a story.  

“On ancient coins you will see an emperor such as Tiberius and you will think about how many people he killed or you see Benjamin Franklin on the commemorative coin of him flying a kite. He never did that, but most coins tell some type of story and sometimes you find a coin in a place and you remember that,” said Odom.

As the crowds shuffled from one lit glass display to the next they seemed multi-generational. While many investors began to collect coins based on their value as a precious metals others a more innocent motives.

“My grandmother collected coins and when she passed away she left me half of her collection,” said Katrina Picard of Bossier City.  “It’s like looking for a lost treasure when you find that coin that is missing out of a set. We found a 1957-penny that completed a set and that is what out son was excited about.”

Picard believes her coin collection gives her added help in teaching her sons history through tangible heirlooms.
“It was neat to see the history, it tells you a little bit about how people were back then,” said Picard. “It teaches them history, it’s about money, but that teaches a lesson. Take the confederate dollar, it’s just money, but right there you can teach a lesson on the civil war.”

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