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Explore your curiosity - Interesting people with fascinating stories.
Life consists of three things:
-The stories we tell others
-The stories others tell us
-The stories we tell ourselves.
Russ, welcome aboard to the show. So happy to have you with us today. Pleasure to be here. So many years ago, you did something that most people don't do. You joined the army.
Speaker 1:So before I start singing, you're in the army now. Tell me what were you thinking.
Speaker 2:You know, I come from a background of very blue collar, very much not a lot of opportunity. My dad is a guy that didn't finish his sophomore year of high school. My mom was, you know, kind of a homemaker, kind of all over the place. So there wasn't a lot of opportunity that I really saw growing up. And one of the things I knew I wanted to do was always pursue a higher education.
Speaker 2:And I knew that to do that, I would have to kind of figure some things out. So the military became one way to think of that. So that was, I would say, half of the motivation for joining the military. The other half was truly just to serve. It's something that I've always thought was important.
Speaker 2:You know, I I describe myself as as violently American in the fact that I I love my country. I love the people of my country. I may not necessarily love the government or whoever is running said country, but I really do believe that America is a special place. So I wanted to do something with that. And, yeah, that led me to joining the military literally two weeks after I turned 17.
Speaker 2:Went to basic training between my junior and senior year, all that stuff. And then that was about technically, all in about fourteen years that I did. So
Speaker 1:What was your best, worst, and funniest moment from basic training?
Speaker 2:Oh, man. God. There's so many of them. Probably the best would be so I grew up in I grew up in Northern Colorado, but we weren't like a hunting family or anything. I had never even seen a firearm until I got to basic training.
Speaker 2:And then I ended up shooting expert and being a really good shot, and that led to a bunch of more opportunities. So that's probably one of the best ones is was kind of that, you know, finding a new skill and finding you're actually really good at it, which was really neat. The worst oh, man. There's so many that qualify. I went to basic training during the surge.
Speaker 2:So this is, like, 2009. So it was it was different. There were a lot of different and kinda kinda crazy experiences. Probably the the worst was when I when I first went, I was actually I was a fat kid. I was the big guy.
Speaker 2:And I was always worried about the physical fitness part. And surprisingly, I had passed everything up to that point. I had done pretty well, and I was really shocked by that. And I had gotten a lot better. And so the the final the final physical fitness test comes around, and I I missed it by one push up.
Speaker 2:I don't know how. My I just I spaghetti arms and just couldn't do it and just fell to my knees. And I was so embarrassed and so so heartbroken that I thought I was gonna, you know, fail this and all these things. And, thankfully, it turned out that I was okay, and there was some makeup stuff that happened. But that was that was probably the worst and funniest, man.
Speaker 2:There's there's a million of them. You know, you've you've been there in the military, and that's that's, I think, universal for for any military is that the way you pass time is always interesting and things like that. So, I mean, I've got a million funny ones. Probably one of the funniest ones would be we had a we had a drill sergeant who was a little islander guy, and he would love to sneak up into the barracks on, like, a Sunday when you were supposed to be you know, you're not doing anything, but you're not supposed to be sleeping or acting a fool. And so he would come up, and he would he was he was little enough, and he was unassuming enough that you would never notice him.
Speaker 2:So he would catch people doing the wrong thing all the time. And so he had some just some some hilarious stories of just catching guys and then just, you know, wrecking guys in the sandpit and things like that. So
Speaker 1:I was I was really bad when it came to, like, you know, having my shoes polished and wearing the uniform properly and, like, doing all the things and being shaved like I wasn't properly shaved. He bring up a credit card or something like like this on my and and he would he he had the eyesight of a hawk, I was real sergeant. He would scream from the other side of the base, and this must be, I don't know, 50, a 100 feet away. Sultan. And you knew he was screaming at you.
Speaker 1:Like, you knew. And he had this Hawkeye thing going on. Oh, yeah. And then and then he would he would make you walk all the way through the base all the way to him. Right?
Speaker 1:And then you're mine. You're like, okay. I'm gonna get it. And then he pulls out his credit card or he looks at your shoes. And then if it was the shoes, you know what that son of a bitch did?
Speaker 1:He pulled you up to one of the shoe shining spots. He shined your shoes himself.
Speaker 2:Oh, jeez.
Speaker 1:So he made you go through that humiliation of the, you know, the sergeant shining your shoes Dude. Because you couldn't. Oh my god. It's just lord. I you you want because he's giving you a lecture throughout the whole thing, obviously.
Speaker 1:You don't wanna get there. So so so you got through boot camp. What happened next?
Speaker 2:So I have a man, my my story is very odd because so, essentially, I joined in the middle you know, I joined through my junior year of high school, came back my senior year of high school, finished my senior year, and I had actually been accepted to here in The States, we have a unique system. There's the military junior college system. So essentially, you can go to it's a it's a junior college. And after two years, you commission as an officer. And then you go to a four year university and finish your degree, and then you go on to active duty.
Speaker 2:I had actually been I had actually been accepted into one of these programs. And so my senior year of high school, I'm thinking I'm going to this military junior college. And I'm talking to my recruiter, and he's like, hey. So you're going to advanced training in a month. And I'm like, no.
Speaker 2:I'm going to Georgia. I'm going to going to school. And he's like, oh, yeah. No. That paperwork never got done.
Speaker 2:So that's not happening. So I quite literally drive down to the recruiting station and start raising holy hell. He had actually literally, that day, that was his last day. He went to South Korea. He got assigned to South Korea.
Speaker 2:And so he had literally never done any of this paperwork. So I didn't get to go to this military junior college. When I contacted them, they're like, well and I had a full ride scholarship for this.
Speaker 1:Oh my lord.
Speaker 2:So they go, well, we can't really do anything. You can apply for next year. So I got really disillusioned. And so my I was technically in the reserves at this point. And so what I ended up doing is I said, screw it.
Speaker 2:I threw a Hail Mary for another job, and I took that. So I stayed in the reserves for a few years. And, yeah, my my career is really weird because essentially, I have I have time in all three components. I have time in the reserve component, the active component, and the guard component. So most of my time was spent between the reserve, guard and reserve component and also on active duty with the national guard.
Speaker 2:It's kinda weird, but so it's it's kind of an amalgamation of things. I was in for a really long time in very different capacities. So like my last duty station, my last active duty time before I completely got out of the military at all was in the Texas Army National Guard on a program called active guard reserve duty, which is essentially you're a guard soldier, but you are on active duty. So you're doing all of the things to keep the unit running. You're doing all the admin.
Speaker 2:You're doing all the all the really boring stuff that no one ever wants to do. But there's, like, three of you for, like, a 160 people. So it's an incredible amount of work. And it's a lot of it's a lot of admin, and it's a lot of trying to make things run smoothly. So, yeah, my my my time in the military is very, very atypical from what a lot of guys have have done.
Speaker 2:So it's it's very weird.
Speaker 1:What what you know, kinda looking back on your service, what is the the key, let's say, insights or changes to to you that had happened there that you're kind of a different person coming out than coming in?
Speaker 2:I will say that I definitely think that the military taught me not just resilience, but the it's kind of an it's kind of an alchemy, I guess, is the way I describe it. The the military was there there was so much of it where you look at it, and you're like, I don't know if I can do this. I really don't know if I'm good enough to do this. And to be really honest, for me, for for quite a while in the military, that was kind of an impostor syndrome that I lived with. And my big turning point was I had a a platoon sergeant that there was this competition coming up for the the best soldier in the division.
Speaker 2:And he was like, hey. You're gonna do this. I was like, I really don't want to. And he's like, well, that really sucks because you're gonna. And so I was like, alright.
Speaker 2:So did the first level, which was just, you know, the battalion level, so out of about, you know, 600 guys. And I did well, and I won. Okay. Great. So that gave me a little bit more confidence.
Speaker 2:And then I went to the brigade level. So now we're talking about, like, 3,000 people. And I smoked it, and I won. And, oh, okay. Suddenly, I get a little bit more confidence.
Speaker 2:And, essentially, I took this all the way to past the division level. And it was a big deal. And it really it really taught me that I have that that fear more than anything is usually the limiting factor for things. And that if you just try something, you know, nine times out of 10, the worst that happens is you fail. One you know?
Speaker 2:And the other times, if you if you do, you win, and you win big. And so that was a big thing for me was being able to just try, and realizing that it's not the end of the world. And and even if you fail, who cares? At least you tried. Because that was one of my biggest things is, especially in combat arms, which is what I was in, failure is not tolerated much.
Speaker 2:And there was a certain school. I went to I went to a mountain school, And I had actually been at to a couple mountain schools, and I'm I'm pretty pretty darn good at it. And I went to this one, and I failed, of all things, the knot test. And it was one knot, and it was it was ticky tacky, to be honest, but but by the standard, I did not meet the standard. And I I failed that school, and that hit me really, really hard, especially in combat arms because you don't fail schools.
Speaker 2:That's that's wrong. But the more I looked at it and the more I kinda, you know, went with it, it was, okay. You failed it. That doesn't make you a failure. You know?
Speaker 2:Right. That's kind of the dirty little secret is that you're you're gonna fail. Right? It's what you do with it after. So being able to realize that, you know, you have to try things.
Speaker 2:And even if you fail, it's okay because the experience is is what actually matters was was a big one for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I I empathize with that a lot. I think that's a lesson that's very valuable for a lot of people to learn, not just the youngsters. And I have my officer used to say to me that there's only there's only one way not to fail for sure, and that's not to try. Yep.
Speaker 1:So that was his his thing. So you're on your last day, you are about to start wearing civilian clothing for for a long while. What's going through your head?
Speaker 2:You know, at this point, I was just happy to be I was happy to be done. And I still am happy that I'm I'm not in currently. My biggest thing and especially then as well, it wasn't missing the the day to day. You know? I don't miss getting up at 04:30 in the morning and, you know, doing five miles of PT and things like that.
Speaker 2:What I do miss is the boys. I miss my guys. I miss that camaraderie. When I got out of the military, I moved to a completely different part of the country where I quite literally don't know anybody. And it's been a slog, you know, having a community.
Speaker 2:And what's amazing about the military is that it's built in. You know, you don't don't get me wrong. There are people in the military that I would love to forget, But there are a lot more people in the military that have left such a distinct impression on me as a person that not having that is is difficult. Not being able to look at, you know, somebody you work with, and they're not they're not people you work with. They're your they're your best friend.
Speaker 2:They're the person you actually trust your life to. That that takes a little bit of getting used to. But for me, getting out was it was a good thing. You know, I had reached a point where I felt that my talents weren't going to be my talents weren't gonna be able to be as utilized as they could be in somewhere else because that's just the way the military works. It's it's structured.
Speaker 2:It's hierarchical for a reason. And you can't always have, you know, freewheeling people with great ideas running around. It just doesn't work that way. And so I'm glad that I got what I did out of the military, but it made me realize that I need a little bit more of a freer hand to do things on my own. So
Speaker 1:There there are some places in the military that allow for that type of personality, but there are few far between them and hard to get into them. Very. I was lucky to be in a place as such, but, it's not, it's not common. The what are we gonna talk about today? Ancient Rome?
Speaker 1:Are we give me a give me a point in time in history and Okay. Make me feel like I'm there.
Speaker 2:Okay. So I will tell you, I'll tell you about what what I actually, what my specialty is. So I'm an expert in basically anything 1792 to about 1892, really into the the twentieth century as well. But one of I'll I'll give you a really neat story about history. So in eight
Speaker 1:days Wait. Hold on. Before we you get into that, what the hell? How did you get how did you fall in love with history? Like, what Yeah.
Speaker 1:From a from a, you know, army guy to a history buff, where where maybe that started before. I don't know. But what's the what's the backstory?
Speaker 2:You know, it started when I was a kid. I've always been obsessed with history. You know, at first, most most boys are obsessed with with military things, military history, so they start reading more about that and things. But I've always loved history. What I've really found with history is that it's just stories.
Speaker 2:People get really, really caught up on dates and figures and things that don't matter so much. Yeah. It it doesn't matter so much. What I tell people about history is that, you know, they they have this misconception or this this kinda crazy notion that people two thousand years ago were different than people twenty minutes ago. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But people are the same. They get happy. They get hungry. They get horny. Yes.
Speaker 2:Across time. Yes. And so I've always loved stories, and I've always loved history. But, basically, my story starts when I was about eight years old. I was in Northern Colorado, which is where I'm from with my mom walking through our local town.
Speaker 2:And there's a storefront, and it's full of coins. And so one thing leads to another. We go inside, and the guy that owns it was named Leon, and I worked for him on and off until I was 16. Okay. And so I became an expert in that.
Speaker 2:And it's just something that I was able to thank God I was able to monetize after the army in my new position. And it's just something that I love deeply and is a big core part of me.
Speaker 1:So so make me fall in love with the eighteen o five. I'm gonna give you Why should I be in love with eighteen o five?
Speaker 2:I'm I'm gonna give you eighteen sixty one, and I'm gonna give you a really neat story. So, again, the civil war starts in January or so of eighteen sixty one. And at this time, The US is making coinage in a couple different facilities. One of them is in the mint at New Orleans. So in January 1861, when the when Louisiana secedes from the union, the militia troops, the the Louisiana militia seizes the Louisiana mint.
Speaker 2:As they seize this mint, under the the auspices of the sovereign state of Louisiana, they decide that they're gonna keep making coins. So what they do is they arrest everybody that works for the Mint. They essentially say, you can sign this loyalty oath to Louisiana or you can go away. So most of them do. And they start making coins, but they're not doing anything special.
Speaker 2:They're making the exact same coins with the exact same design with the exact same metals that they have. So they're doing this for about two months, and then they end up joining the confederacy. So the same thing happens. The confederacy comes in and the confederacy starts making coins. But, again, they're the exact same design, all these things.
Speaker 2:And they're mainly making 50¢ pieces and $20 pieces. And what's really neat is through a bunch of nerd dom, which is really just looking very closely, it's called a die study. We can actually tell who made these coins, under which auspices. So you can literally get a coin that was made by the Confederate States of America, which is very neat. But the cool part of this story actually kind of butts into a story that takes place in my shop.
Speaker 2:So with all that background in mind and knowing that I really like those particular coins, about two years ago, we had a lady come in and she has a suitcase, nineteen fifties vintage suitcase. She hands it to me. She hands her number to my counter manager, and she goes, let me know when you're done. She walks out. Okay.
Speaker 2:So we open the suitcase and we start going through it, and we about fell over. It was probably the it was probably the freshest and most original collection anybody's seen in about thirty years. It was all bought from dealers in the 1940s, which is unheard of. And it all had essentially tags with it, which is also unheard of. So we start going through this collection and we start finding just incredible stuff.
Speaker 2:By the time it's all said and done, this collection is worth well over $500,000.
Speaker 1:Oh my.
Speaker 2:So we call this woman as we're going through it. We go, do you have any idea what's here? And she goes, I don't know. A couple thousand dollars? Why?
Speaker 2:And we go, no. No. You don't understand. So we explain it to her, and she breaks down crying because it turns out the only reason she's selling this collection is because she's about to lose her house. So not only were we able to save her house, she was able to buy her house outright with what we paid for this.
Speaker 2:But she tells us more of the story, and it turns out that this collection was actually put together by her great grandfather who was born in the eighteen sixties. He was a collector until about the nineteen forties. When he passed, her mother had it in her in her under her bed for like thirty or forty years. And it was under this woman. It was in this woman's closet for another thirty years.
Speaker 2:And she literally never sold it while she was going through all these hard times because she had no idea what it was worth. She had zero idea until she brought it to us. But so while I'm going through this collection, in one they're small Manila envelopes. I pull out one of these envelopes, and on it is written $0.5, $18.61 New Orleans mint, how much he paid for it, which was a dollar in February 1916. And so I pull this coin out, and it is what it is.
Speaker 2:And it is a it is a it is a specimen that unless you're a big nerd like me, it doesn't mean a lot, But it is unbelievably rare. It is a Louisiana issue. So the state of Louisiana was actually the second probably about the second week they started making them. It's one of those. So it's made by the state of Louisiana.
Speaker 2:But what's amazing to me and why I love the coin so much is one, it's made by the state of Louisiana. So that's got a cool factor for it. Number two, it comes from this collection, which has another super cool factor from it. And number three, I'm the second owner of it. Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:The guy bought it in 1916 and he died in the nineteen forties. And that collection has been hidden for well over ninety years at this point. And so it turns out that I'm now the second guy that owns it. And to me, I'm a steward of history. I'm a steward of these things.
Speaker 2:They're gonna they're gonna live long after I do. And now I'm a part of that story. I hope that someday, you know, it'll be in an auction and it'll be, you know, part of the Russ Beggar collection or something like that. But what's what's amazing is that through literally, you know, hundreds of years of history, I I've now added to it. Not only have I added to it, I'm part of that story.
Speaker 2:And that's what makes this stuff so cool because they're just a bunch of stories. Right. You get to make your own part of that story, which is what I love about this.
Speaker 1:It's amazing. Did she keep something of that collection as a as memorabilia?
Speaker 2:I think she kept a piece or two. But what we actually find a lot is most people, you know, especially with a collection like that, they they don't generally care too much. Some people do, but most people would rather take the money and run. Right. Which I understand, but I'm also a big sentimental softy.
Speaker 2:I work on a collection, I generally buy at least one piece from it. I I really like honoring the memory of the people that did this. And that's, I think, a little bit because I'm gonna be that person. You know? In fifty or sixty years, my collection will go through the same thing.
Speaker 2:But I really like owning just a small piece just to honor that person and their time and their commitment to it. Because I think hobbies kind of get a bad rep sometimes of, like, being, you know, a noble or, you know, kind of things like this, a waste of time. Right. But I think anything that anybody takes time to do and do well and really care about, I think, should be should be honored, at least to some degree. So
Speaker 1:What's the is there anything that goes into it from a perspective of you've bought this piece or part of a collection? Are you documenting these stories? Are you capturing them in a way that kind of they continue to live? What does that actually look like?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I actually really try to do that a lot. I am a I'm pretty I'm a pretty prolific writer and also presenter. So I speak at a lot of so, you know, the the the world of coins is kinda mystifying to a lot of people, but we're like any other hobby. We have big conventions.
Speaker 2:Right? So we have big conventions every year. We have them multiple times a year. I'm actually delivering a lecture at one of them in August, and I usually deliver lectures probably three to five times a year with this stuff. And what I do is I I'm a little bit less academic with it, and I'm more of the storyteller.
Speaker 2:So, like, that story I told, you know, that that's been written about. I have others that I've written about. And I I really like writing articles. I like writing things that that put people in that frame of mind. So one, like, a really neat story that's that's kinda quick is, essentially, we had a woman come in with a $10 gold piece from 1797.
Speaker 2:Gorgeous coin. Very, very well preserved. We bought it from her. We sold it. Blah blah blah.
Speaker 2:And the entire time I'm asking her, I was like I was like, I wanna know more. Where where did this come from? Where did this come She goes, oh, well, maybe I'll tell you the story one day. And so finally, I pry her enough for her to tell tell me the story, and the story's amazing. The gist of the story is the fan the coin has been in her family since about eighteen o five, eighteen o six.
Speaker 2:And it was owned by her her ancestor, a guy named Captain John. And he was a a New Jersey socialite, essentially, and he kept running away to sea. And his father finally got sick of it and said, if you're gonna if if you're gonna do this, if you really want to go to sea, you're gonna be a sea captain. So he apprenticed him to a Swedish captain. And before he left on his European adventure, he gave him three $10 gold pieces and he said, buy something for your sisters.
Speaker 2:He has three sisters. Okay. Well, he comes back a couple years later. He still has the $10 gold pieces. He made enough money, blah blah blah.
Speaker 2:And this this coin was passed down with his sword for literally the next two hundred years. Wow. And the woman is in my shop selling it to me. And so finally, I get the story of why she's she's selling it to me. She sold it to fund her daughter's PhD.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:But what's
Speaker 1:So was his daughter, but his great great great great great great great granddaughter.
Speaker 2:But what's amazing is this family has a history of doing this, of running away. And her so I love that. Captain John's grandson, kept running away and, eventually became a confidant of Walt Whitman.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:So not only is this family a bunch of sailors and poets, but they know it. And she is actually a poet as well. So she wrote me a little blurb, and it was probably one of the most beautiful things I've ever read, to be really And the the gist of it was essentially, you know, sometimes all a all a parent can do is give their children a little bit of gold or the little bit of gold that they have and hope that they've armed them with enough knowledge and enough compassion to go out and make it in the world. And so I thought that story just I mean, how how perfectly does it over time, you know, just just fit together? So I wrote about that, and I wrote her story.
Speaker 2:And that to me is so powerful. And so, yeah, that's that that's what it is. It's all stories. It that that that that's it. That's it.
Speaker 1:You're not gonna get a fight for me. We're we're literally called Story Samurai. I'll tell you more than that. I think that that even most people don't know it, but every single person has a story to tell. Everybody has at least one story, and and by god, it's many more than one.
Speaker 1:So that's part of our mission here. We have only one first of all, this has been fucking delight for us. Thank you so much for coming on the show. We have one fixed question that we ask every single guest. It's if you had to go back to the hardest point in your life, what advice would you give yourself?
Speaker 1:Man,
Speaker 2:I think that's a hard one. There's a lot of points in my life that I kind of used to look at the hardest. You know, I'm a single dad. I'm a guy that got divorced a few years ago. My my life has been a lot of struggle throughout it.
Speaker 2:I grew up in a in a a tough in a tough home. You know, I lost my mom really early when I was about 17. I haven't spoke to my dad in a really, really long time. Lot lot of turmoil and things. But
Speaker 1:I
Speaker 2:think the advice that I wish I could give my younger self kind of in any of that is god. It's gotta be somewhere along the lines of take a breath. There were so many times where I would panic so much, so much in anything. It's that fear. It's that weight pushing down on you.
Speaker 2:And so you're making decisions that may not even be decisions that make sense or that aren't even right or you're just catastrophizing things. So my biggest advice to myself has, I think will always continue to be take a breath. Most things are not the end of the world. I actually, I I had a a master sergeant who was my my boss for a while who gave me some advice that that really resonated with me. At one point, he said and this is, know, we're in a garrison environment.
Speaker 2:We're doing paperwork, essentially. He says nothing we're doing right now is life or death. And realizing that, realizing like, hey. Like, it's not the end of the world is a big thing. And so I have gotten a lot better over the last the last few years of being able to say, let's take a break.
Speaker 2:Let's take a breath. Let's reevaluate. Let's let's let's do the let's let's let's not do a bunch of dumb shit that is going to make us, you know, go uphill. Because that's always the worst, right, when you make more work for yourself out of panic. And so Zen.
Speaker 2:I think Zen.
Speaker 1:I I god. If I had to if I had to answer that question, I I feel deeply empathetic with your story, and I I I would say almost the same thing. Slow down, Ari. Yeah. You're about to do something stupid.
Speaker 1:Yep. Russ, what an absolute delight. Where's your where's your store? How can people find you?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So we're at 31 North Clark Street in Chicago, Illinois. Our company is Harlan J. Burke Limited. You can find us at hjbltd.com.
Speaker 2:We do our my firm specializes we're the largest ancient coin dealer in North America. We're one of the larger antiquity houses. We also do US coins, bullion, things like that. What I tell people about where I work is that it's a giant museum where you get to play with everything. When I tell you that this is an open invitation to come in and quite literally play with ancient history, that's what it is.
Speaker 2:We love it. So
Speaker 1:Russ, thank you so much for joining the show. Sorry. Appreciate you.