Hobby leads to coin career

• By BRIAN HUDGINS
• Special to The Advocate
• Published: Jun 30, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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LAFAYETTE - A handful of coins gave Louis Pizzolatto a history lesson, a hobby and his livelihood.

Soon after Pizzolatto received a group of coins from his grandparents when he was a child, he started studying the stories behind the coins.

“I like the history part of it,” he said. “That is what got me into it. I went back and did the research. My collecting interest developed from there.”

Pizzolatto’s introduction to coin shops came “in the late ’60s or early ’70s.” He went with his mom to Dorman’s Camera Shop in the Oil Center. The back of the shop was a regular Saturday destination for coin enthusiasts.

“When I was growing up, there was one shop in Lake Charles and there was one shop in the back of Dorman’s. It was pretty much like it is today with one shop per city.”

Pizzolatto’s interest in coins developed to the point of him opening his own shop. He operates Coin and Treasure.

“This is a standard coin shop,” he said. “People want it to be old and unusual and not have an antiseptic feel.”

When Pizzolatto, 50, was getting his feet wet in the coin dealing business, the setup was quite different than what it is today.

“From 1970 to ’75 or ’76, my mom and them hauled me around to every coin shop you can imagine,” Pizzolatto said. “One of my early business cards had my mom’s phone number on it.”

Pizzolatto said there are only 10 coin dealers in the state. The communication among coin dealers is friendly because of the need to work together for the benefit of collectors.

“You know one guy by himself will not be able to provide what a real collector wants,” Pizzolatto said. “You just don’t have access to everything. In 30 days, I usually talk to all of the other coin dealers. When we first started, it was a teletype system 25 years ago. Now, we get download feeds and most stuff comes over the Internet.”

  The majority of Pizzolatto’s stock consists of U.S. coins, with 75 to 80 percent being domestic coins and the remainder foreign coins.

A glance at his coins reveals a connection to lands halfway across the globe. French francs from the 19th century are visible. Spanish and Swiss coins are also present.