Cartwheeler-Dealer

Houston Oilman James Marion ("Silver Dollar") West was a real-life version of the flamboyant Texas millionaire found in jokes, cartoons, movies and satirical novels. Worth an estimated $100 million, Jim West habitually sported a diamond-studded Texas Ranger badge and a brace of bolstered pistols dangling from a gold-buckled belt. He spent much of his adult life playing cops and robbers, riding around town with Houston policemen in a Cadillac equipped with two-way radio, four telephones and built-in racks for assorted firearms. Living up to his nickname, he had outsize pockets tailored into his trousers to hold eight 20-coin rolls of silver dollars for handing around as tips, passing out to strangers, or just scattering on floors or sidewalks.

Last week, five months after West died of pneumonia at 54, executors inventorying his estate added a footnote to the gaudy Jim West legend. Found in a cellar beneath his Houston mansion were bags, barrels and cans brimming with silver dollars, plus a hoard of $2 bills. Estimated total: upwards of $250,000. Fearing that cartwheels might be scarce some day--the last batch was minted in 1935--West built up a reserve supply, apparently added the emergency store of deuces just in case the silver-dollar stockpile ran low. Jim West was no man to let himself get into the embarrassing plight of having to hand out ordinary $1 bills.

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