QUERY: EARLY EDITION OF RAYMOND'S STANDARD CATALOGUE OF U.S. COINS

Conventional wisdom has it that the first edition of the Standard Catalogue of United States Coins was the 1934 hardcover book published by Wayte Raymond, Inc. In the course of searching for old coin album ads I acquired an earlier edition published with paper covers by the Scott Stamp & Coin Company. It was compiled by Raymond but not published by him. This book has a cover date of 1931 but is copyrighted 1930 and described on the title page as the second edition. Evidently there was another one a year or two earlier.

I don't believe I've seen this earlier version mentioned in print before, though I imagine some bibliophiles already have a copy. While the book is slim and lists the higher denominations by type alone, it is otherwise identical in format to the later Raymond catalogs. The photos are the same ones used in 1934 and for the next several years.

The payoff for me was a nice ad for the National Coin Album, even though it turned out to be the same one then running in The Numismatist. 1930 was the year that Wayte Raymond acquired the rights to M. L. Beistle's coin albums, though the latter's company continued to manufacture them for Raymond and his successor, Alan Faxon, as late as 1967. Raymond initially marketed these albums solely through Scott Stamp & Coin Company, but this relationship ended a few years later.

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web