The Collector is on the lower level of the Collector Galleries building on Route 9, just east of the center of town, next to the Northampton Post Office.

Click here for a Mapquest map.

Augie opened The Collector in 1970. He got started with coins in 1959, when he owned Lizotte's tobacco shop on Main Street.

"A couple of women got me started. I had the door open and they just walked in and asked if I wanted to buy a silver dollar. I don't know why they picked my store. I wrote the date down and everything else, but I wasn't really interested in buying it and they left. A few days later I had a coin book and I looked it up and it was a rare date.

"I put up a sign - buying coins, selling coins - in both my stores." [He owned another tobacco shop in Amherst also.] "I had someone come in and wanted to sell me a double die for ten dollars and I thought, 'Ten dollars for a penny?' and I wouldn't buy it.

"It wasn't big then. I went full scale in 1970-1971-1972 when I opened this store."

Augie's is a unique store - almost a neighborhood hangout.

"You have to come down and see it for yourself. I've got everything - coins, stamps, books, supplies, Indian artifacts, my grandson has a few baseball cards for sale. I'll buy, I'll swap, I'll trade, and if they're down in the dumps tell them to come by and I'll cheer them up. And my friends when they come down they always bring me coffee and a donut - any kind of donut, doesn't make any difference."

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Note added December 2006:

Augie is a Pearl Harbor Veteran and there was an article ("Veterans Recall Pearl Harbor") about him in the Springfield Republican on Dec. 7, 2006. To read the whole article follow the link; excerpts are below:

"On the morning of Dec. 7, he had an early breakfast and was lying around, debating whether or not to go to Mass, when he heard what he thought was dive-bombing practice by the Navy.

"'I looked out and the USS Arizona was in flames,' he said.

"Japanese Zeros were strafing everything in sight. Woicekoski, a radio operator, went to work receiving messages. By nightfall, word was that the Japanese were invading the island, a rumor that proved to be false.

"'The moon was out,' he said. 'There was a lot of shooting. You were scared, but you didn't know what the hell to do.' ...

"Woicekoski flew more than 30 missions in the South Pacific after Pearl Harbor. On one, his plane was shot up by Zeros and just managed to escape into the clouds. Later, Woicekoski found a 50-millimeter shell casing that had pierced the ammunition box he was tending.

"'They said 'Ski' look at that,' he recalled his comrades saying. 'You should have been dead.'"