Largely focused on direct mail, Littleton publishes catalogs several times yearly and has a "coins-on-approval" program.
As is the case with many numismatic firms, the history of the Littleton Coin Company is part and parcel of the biography of an individual.
Company founder F. Maynard Sundman was born October 17, 1915, in New Britain, Connecticut, the only child of a couple living on a 3.5 acre farm located just northeast of that town.
[5] Sundman began to build a collection of his own, purchasing stamps by mail order from the Herbert A. Kegwin Company of Middletown, New York, one of about 50 American philatelic retailers of the day.
[9] Sundman graduated from Bristol High School in 1935 and set about entering the mail order stamp trade.
[14] Backed by Harris's expanding credit line for provision of wholesale stamps, Sundman's business grew dramatically.
The coming of World War II interrupted Sundman's best-laid plans, and he was drafted into the American military during the summer of 1941, ordered to report for training early in September of that year.
Several decades later, between catalogs, approvals, and correspondence Sundman's Littleton Stamp and Coin Company would generate upwards of 2 million pieces of mail per year.
Harris himself wrote the advertising copy for the first Littleton Stamp Company ad, which promised "Double your money back if not delighted!"
[29] The company's mailing list and sales volume continued to expand, however, until ultimately the Harris line of credit was paid down in full.
"[30] In later years, with the growth of television, the ready availability of transportation, and the expansion of team sports, demographics of the trade shifted somewhat as children were presented with additional recreational opportunities.
[30] Sundman and Littleton moved from a concentration upon advertising in magazines targeted to a young male readership to ads in the Sunday supplements inserted into mass circulation newspapers, with one particularly successful campaign which offered 10 free Bohemia-Moravia stamps depicting Adolf Hitler ultimately distributing half a million sets, boosting the company's mailing list, and cementing Littleton's place as one of the "Big Five" American stamp dealers of the day.
[32] Gradually an awareness developed of the parallel potential of the numismatic market, with the collectors of these items being greatly similar in disposition.
[35] Littleton effectively pioneered the approval method of mail order selling which had been long established in philatelics to the world of numismatics, sending out coins for review, to be either purchased or returned — with no credit card requirement to guarantee the company's safety in the transaction.
[38] This decision was ultimately regarded as a mistake, however, as a crash of metal prices in the early 1980s deflated the coin collecting boom and led to a mass exodus of the casual investor crowd.