Fanton wins Zerbe Award
Iowa coin dealer and longtime American Numismatic Association booster Brian Fanton has been named the Farran Zerbe Memorial Award winner for Distinguished Service. It is the ANA’s top award. He…
Iowa coin dealer and longtime American Numismatic Association booster Brian Fanton has been named the Farran Zerbe Memorial Award winner for Distinguished Service.
It is the ANA’s top award.
He is scheduled to receive the honor at the awards banquet Aug. 4 in Denver at the World’s Fair of Money.
While he was a coin collector as a child, his role as coin dealer now as proprietor of a Hiawatha, Iowa, shop is more in the nature of a second career. It follows his nearly 40 years as a central office equipment installer for Northwestern Bell.
He left that career behind in 2003.
His involvement with ANA grew from the time he joined in 1989.
By 1994 and again in 1998 he was named ANA Outstanding District Delegate.
He was Adult Advisor of the Year in 1998. The same year, he received a Presidential Award.
In 2002, he was Outstanding Club Representative. In 2005, he ran for the ANA board of governors, lost, but as runner-up was on the board by October to fill a vacancy.
In 2012, he was given the Adna G. Wilde Jr. Award for Excellence.
His focus always is numismatic education.
He has attended 25 Summer Seminars, an annual training ground for collectors at ANA headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colo.. He has also been an instructor there.
ANA says he supplied most of the coins in its grading set.
His numismatic education began when his grandfather grilled him on the contents of the 1952 Red Book seven months after he had been given it.
Each correct answer was worth a silver dollar.
Fanton is quoted in the the July issue of The Numismatist, saying, “Learn history, seek what you can afford and enjoy.”
It is a simple approach to the hobby that for him has stood the test of time and taken him far – all the way to the Zerbe Award.
This article was originally printed in Numismatic News Express. >> Subscribe today
More Collecting Resources
• Are you a U.S. coin collector? Check out the 2018 U.S. Coin Digest for the most recent coin prices.
• Check out the newly-updated Standard Catalog of World Coins, 2001-Date that provides accurate identification, listing and pricing information for the latest coin releases.
