Private mint? Is that a license to – literally – make money? Not exactly. "We've been operating since 1845, when the company was founded to make trade checks. They basically represented a bale of hay or some other product," says Jeffrey Stegman, 52, CEO of the two companies, with his brother Todd, 51, as COO. Their grandfather and others bought Osborne in 1943, and later their father and uncle bought the company from them.
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Osborne didn't make U.S. coinage, but some sort of representation for exchange was needed when it was founded. We also did script money, a way to pay workers, back in the day. Early on, we did a lot of advertising coins for drinking establishments, games, hamburgers – like a coupon, except that it could be circulated over and over again.
"We've done campaign coins for many presidents. We did coins for Lincoln, with a beard and without a beard. We have the dies. The one with the beard looks better. The story is that he came in and sat for the designer.
"All the Obama coins were after the fact, and we did make quite a few. In the recent past we've done a lot of amusement type tokens, also for car washes, all that, and we made almost all the river boat casino tokens."
Casino tokens, now a thing of the past, provide a perfect example of this company's ability to change with the market. "We work hard to be flexible. The rate of change is so fast," Stegman says. The gaming market was new to them when they went into it. "We developed new technology, to avoid counterfeiting, by incorporating into the design a reflective ring read by a receptor in the slot machine." Osborne had a near monopoly on the business when slot machine manufacturers eliminated tokens and began using tickets. "The tokens were still live and could be turned in for cash. It was necessary to destroy them, so we created this small destruction truck, where they could be chopped up. We paid the casinos for the coins and got the materials back. It worked out well for them and for us. We built that truck in a very short period of time." This is a company that can turn on a dime – and, virtually, has the capacity to make the dime.
Right now, "We have customers using coins to raise money." The coin accompanies a donation request, and if recipients like it "they send in money. We've done a little angel coin for Catholic charities, it's so beautiful, it out-pulls anything else."
He shows me a charming little gold-colored coin. "We're preparing a test for a coin for the Alzheimer's Association, to recognize caregivers. We use staff and outside designers, or sometimes customers bring in the design." The down economy has meant increased business for Osborne, as institutions scramble to attract donors, and the savings possible through some of Doran Manufacturing's products have also meant good business in a bad time.
Osborne bought Doran "which had been around for a while, too," in the 1970s. "They were making electrical terminals, interconnections, using brass, and we were using brass. Now Doran builds vehicle safety products, for school buses, recreational vehicles, trucks. "Truck fleets all over the country use our tire pressure monitor," says Stegman. The two companies' total work force is about 85 people, who stay on the job for the unusual average of 20 years.
"Part of our purpose here is to create a good place to work. We're always looking for problem-solving mechanical people with the right personality. It's a great work force. People come and stay. We have big jobs come through, maybe things we haven't done before, and have to figure out together how it can be done. It's pretty stimulating. People seem to like it. We have a gym next door, where people can go at lunch time." I ask where the employees live. "All over the place. Some people walk to work, some drive for an hour."
Stegman leads me back to the factory area, passing a domestic-looking staircase with newel post. "This building once was a tenement, behind a store front. Before that Osborne was in the middle of what became I-75. And before that they were where Saks is now. The very first place was on Fourth Street."
Today's factory buzzes and hums and pounds; workers wear goggles and earplugs. We stop at what Stegman tells me is a coining press. Blanks are fed in, and gold-colored coins spill out like something promised by a fairy godmother. The dies, he explains, are sometimes hand-cut and sometimes designed on a computer, and the presses can produce 150, 200, 350 ton pressure. Extravagant-looking, quite beautiful rolls of aluminum and brass strips, perhaps 6 inches wide and yards long in their coils, are near at hand, ready to be fed into the machine that will cut out blank coins. Riddled left-overs from the strips will be recycled – "We recycle everything."
We pass two presses from the 1800s, no longer in use, in which the heavy metal die dropped like a guillotine inside a wooden frame. The Museum Center's America Goes To War exhibition includes the die and press Osborne used to make World War II ration tokens. "We made billions of ration tokens, for the whole country. When the Museum asked us about it, we found the die and the press for them."
The Stegman brothers grew up in the Finneytown/Wyoming area, went to Wyoming high school, but separated for college. Jeff was a biology major at the University of Michigan, and Todd went to Cornell. "My brother and I both planned not to go into the business, but then we did come in from other jobs, about 20 years ago. Our father and uncle owned it, my cousins were coming in, too – there was just too much family. So we brought in a family business consultant, Leon Danko, the first guy to do that sort of thing. He told each of us all the things we couldn't say to each other. My brother and I and my father bought out my cousins and my uncle. So we're one of those good stories of family businesses. Many fail in transition between generations. It's pretty rare to get to the third generation. A lot of it's due to grandfather and father being able to let go, to transfer shares without the ego issue." Their father, Thomas Stegman, is chairman of the board.
"We always have to be thinking about the next thing. It's the entrepreneurial part that's exciting," Jeff says. "We create new businesses and our employees take hold of the ideas and run with them. You could almost call them artistic endeavors" he adds, gingerly. I nod. I write a lot about art, and know exactly what he means. "We're always looking for the new product, new market. Can't just stop. We're investing heavily right now in something we're keeping under wraps. It will be ready next year; it's very future oriented."
In 1845, when Osborne Coinage was founded, Procter & Gamble was eight years old, Thomas Emery's candle company – later to expand to a real estate empire – had been in existence for five years, and Barney Kroger had not yet been born, let alone established a grocery store. Like these better known Cincinnati institutions, Osborne Coinage moves with the times.
Photography by Scott BeselerAll shots taken on location at Osborne Coinage Co.