Buffalo nickel 1/2 rolls from E. W. Clark and Co. - Sealed rolls - Old and wonderful
Pre 1938 nickel rolls - 20 buffalo nickels per roll. E. W. Clark & Co.
This is an unopened $1 roll (also called a "shotgun or 1/2 roll) of 20 Indian head - buffalo nickels - rubber stamped with the bank name and most likely rolled up before 1936 when the Jefferson nickel first was minted. These came from an old, old East coast estate. At one time we had almost 500 of these rolls (from 9 different banks of the day) ... but now down to just these last few. Great little time capsules. Most of the nickels have the full or at least part of the mint date still readable.
Enoch White Clark was born in November 16, 1802, in Easthampton, Massachusetts, a descendant of Captain William Clark (1609–1690), who emigrated from England aboard the ship Mary and John and landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1630, and moved to the town of Easthampton in 1639.[
In 1837, he created the E. W. Clark & Co. financial house with his two brothers.
That firm, E.W. Clark & Co., became one of the 19th century’s most potent financial houses, with a Wall Street arm and a string of branch offices from St. Louis to New Orleans. (The firm’s 1852 building still stands at 35 S. 3rd Street in Philadelphia) In the era before the young United States developed a true national currency, the firm’s exchange notes were widely used as money.
Soon after the Civil War, his son, Clarence Clark and some partners put together another quarter-million dollars and founded the Fidelity Insurance, Trust & Safe Deposit Company–just the second U.S. bank to offer safe deposit services. (Decades later, Fidelity abetted J.P. Morgan’s ill-starred attempt to corner the transatlantic shipping market and took large losses when the Titanic sank in 1912. Still, the firm entered the Roaring Twenties with more than $1 billion under management, built a 29-story skyscraper at 123 South Broad Street, and ultimately survived to 1996, when it was swallowed by First Union–eight years after a record-setting merger. Today, it is part of Wells Fargo, which occupies much of the Fidelity skyscraper.)