Mourners recall Brookline man with a token of their esteem

Retired Emerson College history professor John M. Coffee, Jr., died earlier this month, after a lifetime in the hobby of token collecting:

He became one of the founding members of the American Vecturist Association (AVA), the only national society of transportation token collectors in the United States. Organized in 1948, the AVA began with 33 charter members consisting mostly of bus drivers and a few numismatists and college students; since then, its membership has grown into the hundreds. From 1949 to April 2012, he was Editor of approximately 775 issues of the AVA's monthly newsletter, The Fare Box. He is also co-editor (with Harold V. Ford) of The Atwood-Coffee Catalogue of United States and Canadian Transportation Tokens, now in its 6th edition (2007): it describes in detail, and gives the approximate market value of every known transportation token issued in the US and Canada. ... Until his death, John owned the largest collection of transportation tokens in the world.

Also see:
Emerson mourns the loss of Rev. John Coffee.

Via Amy Derjue.