Rhode Island’s
Bank Collectors’ Club
by F.H. Griffith - HOBBIES Magazine - February, 1954
Probably one of the most exclusive collectors’ organizations in the world is the
Antique Bank Collectors’ Club of Rhode Island. A feature story in the Providence
Sunday Journal of January 3, by Robert L. Wheeler with pictures by John P. Callahan, tells
of the club and the activities of its members.
According to author Wheeler the club has nine regular members. In order to obtain a
membership one has to own a minimum of five mechanical banks of the vintage when thrift in
children was encouraged by gifts of banks which performed tricks by placing pennies in the
slots. Or one can have a membership if he owns a minimum of twenty-five "still"
banks. The stills have no mechanical action, and were made in great varieties and numbers
by yesteryear manufacturers. They are therefore more plentiful than the mechanical action
banks.
The club holds four meetings a year. It was at a recent meeting that author Robert L.
Wheeler obtained data on the collectors themselves and the objects of their avid hobby
pursuit, whom we quote, in part:
"DeForest W. Abel, president of the Automobile Mutual Company of Providence, was host
in his home at the recent meeting. Two other company presidents, Edwin M. Caldwell, Jr.
(Caldwell Motors Company, West Warwick) and W.W. Yando (Braided Rugs and Specialties
Company, Pawtucket); a man in the building materials business, Oliver I. Clark; an
attorney, Edward T. Richards (Edwards & Angell), and a stock clerk at Central High
School, Rudolph A. Salvatore.
"Also a banker, Frederick L. Macalister, assistant manager of the Slater branch of
the Industrial Trust. Another banker, Rupert C. Thompson, president of the Union National
Bank of Providence, couldn’t make it. Neither could Donald B. Derby, president of the
U.S. Finishing Company, Norwich, Conn., and the collectors’ only out-of-state member.
There are two honorary members, F.L. Ball of Cambridge, Mass., dean of dealers in
mechanical banks, and Andrew Emerine, Fostoria, an internationally known collector.
"Lawyer Richards is president of the Antique Bank Collectors of Rhode Island and
Stock Clerk Salvatore is secretary – treasurer. After talking mechanical banks for
about so long the collectors lunched on chicken sandwiches and pumpkin pie and then went
back and talked mechanical banks some more.
"This reporter mentioned the lighthouse bank he owned when he was a boy to one of the
Collectors and the latter said yes, he had a chance to acquire one once, a lady who was
using it for a table decoration offered it to him for free if he would rent her apartment.
They couldn’t come to terms.
"The history of mechanical toys goes back a long way. When you come right down to it,
what was Friar Roger Bacon’s talking skull but one? And of course there were the
cathedral clock jacks of medieval times, the little figures that came out when the hours
struck, and jerkily gestured. The Robot was with us long before the play R.U.R. gave him a
name. But it remained for the New England Yankee to originate a type of toy that performed
for a penny, presumably to inculcate habits of saving and giving you action for your
money.
" ‘Still’ penny banks made their appearance fairly early in the history of
the Republic. The first large penny pieces were issued by the U.S. Treasury in 1793, and
before long there were penny banks of wood and clay for the youngsters to stack the
occasional copper. Some of them were made of glass. And sometimes the penny bank was just
a gourd with a slit in it.
"In 1869, however, a certain John Hall, a citizen of Watertown, Mass., devised a
penny bank that made saving fun. He invented the patented ‘Hall’s Excelsior
Bank,’ a rather simple affair, just a little cast-iron house with a bell and cupola.
But when you pulled the bell, something interesting happened. Up flipped the roof of the
cupola and up popped a monkey who accepted your penny—and down-popped. He would do
this as many times as you could wring pennies from papa.
"Mr. Hall’s ingenious incitement to thrift was an instant success and he
promptly put it into production. Hundreds were manufactured and a new industry was
born."
