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Thieves enter shop from hole in rear, cut open steel safe
By Carl Chancellor
Beacon Journal staff writer
Published on Thursday, Dec 20, 2007
Before he could slip his key in the door to open his coin shop Monday morning, Chester Endress knew something was very wrong.
''I saw one of the (display) cases up against the door and I got sick,'' the 73-year-old Endress said. ''Right then, I knew everything was gone.''
Endress, who owns Chet's Coins in a shopping plaza on Carnegie Avenue in Akron, found the steel doors on the refrigerator-size safe wide open and one of them had a gaping hole where there had once been a combination lock.
Endress ran his hand across one of the vault's empty shelves.
''They got everything. . . . I easily had a half-million dollars worth of coins,'' he said Wednesday, still finding it difficult to come to terms with the loss.
Pointing to a large opening punched into the rear wall of the small storefront, which sits across the road from Nesmith Lake, he marveled at the chutzpah of the robbers.
''They disabled the alarm and busted in through the back wall. Then they took a torch to the safe,'' Endress said, picking up a scorched square of metal the same size as the hole in the safe. ''It had to take them a while to get it open.''
Endress believes there had to be several thieves because the coins, some of which were kept in valises weighing close to 100 pounds, would be too heavy
for one person to haul away.
''These guys were professionals,'' he said. ''They knew what they were doing.''
Endress said the break-in occurred sometime after he closed the shop around 4 p.m. Saturday and before he returned at 8 a.m. Monday.
''There were a ton of coins in the safe,'' he said. ''Most of them were part of my private collection.''
Plopping down heavily on a folding chair, Endress put his hands on top of his head and fought valiantly to hold back the tears.
His ex-wife, Donna Endress, and his daughter-in-law, Tammy Kohut, were at the coin shop Wednesday to lend moral support and help him straighten up.
''Coin collecting is his life,'' Donna Endress said. ''He loves it.''
She recalled how during the early years of their marriage, he would take his weekly grocery-store paycheck to the bank and have it cashed in coins.
He smiled at the memory.
''I got paid $104 a week,'' he said. ''I would get the coins and take them home and check through them.''
Two of his most valuable coins were a 1795 half-dime and a 1795 Washington coin.
''The half-dime is worth about $1,800. The Washington piece is very rare, maybe one of just two,'' Endress said.
This is the first major break-in Endress has experienced since he retired from the grocery business and opened Chet's in 2000.
''I retired on Oct. 4, 1999, and four months later, February 2000, I opened the shop. You can only take so much Oprah Winfrey and Jerry Springer,'' he joked.
The store wasn't a money-maker, according to Endress.
''I probably wasn't even making minimum wage, but I enjoyed coming in and talking to customers about coins. It was a lot of fun, but that's all done now,'' he said throwing up his hands in surrender.
Endress said the business wasn't insured — ''the cost was just too prohibitive.''
He doesn't plan to reopen the shop.
''I don't have the heart for it now,'' he said. ''Even if I tried, I'm afraid someone would just steal it all again.''
While cleaning and straightening a desk, daughter-in-law Kohut made a discovery — a plastic-encased dollar bill.
''It was the first dollar I ever made at the shop,'' Endress said, quipping that at least the thieves hadn't completely cleaned him out.
''Don't get it wrong — this really hurts,'' he said. ''I feel like sitting down crying somewhere. But what are you going to do?''
Endress is hoping that someone saw something and will contact Akron police.
But he doesn't hold out much hope.
The coins ''are gone and I'll never get them back,'' he said, '' . . . There were coins I had for 50 years. It took me most of my life to get those coins and they came in and took them in a couple of hours.''
Carl Chancellor can be reached at 330-996-3725 or cchancellor@thebeaconjournal.com.
Before he could slip his key in the door to open his coin shop Monday morning, Chester Endress knew something was very wrong.
Get the full article here.
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