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MORE ON NUMISMATIC POSTCARDS AND ALBUMS
David Gladfelter submitted these notes on numismatic postcard albums. Thanks!
-Editor
I would like to make a couple of corrections to Frank Draskovic’s interesting piece last week about coin postcards. First, the original publisher of the “H.S.M.” type of cambist cards was Hugo Semmler of Magdeburg. His name and city appeared on the earliest of his cards (see upper left corner of accompanying illustration). For some unknown reason, Semmler later replaced his name and city with the initials H. S. M. (for Hugo Semmler, Magdeburg). The reason may have been so that Semmler could license his postcards to other distributors and jobbers; the later cards indicate that they were made in Bavaria as well as in Saxony. A later version of the same post card is also illustrated, showing these initials. Draskovic is correct in dating the earliest of the Semmler cards to the year 1904. One of his cards in my collection is postmarked 25 April 1904, the earliest postmark seen thus far. (Coin postcards, embossed as well as surface printed, were made before 1904, but were not of the cambist variety showing currency exchange rates. One such is a New Year’s greeting card made by Paul Süss of Dresden with embossed 2 and 20 mark German coins, postmarked 31 December 1900. Another has images of Switzerland’s first silver coins of 1850 and later, made by L. Meyer of Canton Luzern and postmarked 5 March 1900.)
Second, the album in which Mr. Draskovic’s collection is housed is not a “Blümel” album. It is one that was sold by Fortuna Hornung, proprietor of a stationery store in Vienna, as the detail showing her label indicates. The address on the label is an earlier location of her store, Josefstädterstrasse 58. A few years later she had moved to No. 82 on that street, and by 1914 the store was being used as the address of Alfred Josef Blümel (see illustration of his postcard album with 1914 date). By that time Semmler’s business had been succeeded by a Berlin publisher, Max Heimbrecht.
I hope these postcards could become a project for E-Sylum readers. What little I know about them was written up in our print journal, The Asylum, several years ago (Spring 2005 and 2006 #1).
The Blümel attribution was entirely my mistake. Sorry! We'll update the article on our web archive.
-Editor
Don Kolkman writes: Interesting articles on coin card postcards! I have one that doesn't appear to be from the same groups shown. I have attached front and back for your observation. The scan may show the left vertical strip on the flag as green, but looking at the card it appears to be blue and therefore a French flag. The flag doesn't have the Mexican symbol in the center as well. Lower right corner of the front also has "Le Mexique". The card is used and appears to have had a stamp on the front (no longer there) as well as the back. The postal stamp is Scott # 634 issued in 1922.
Don adds: I just ran across a bunch of coin cards on a German ebay site. I have attached a picture from his site showing the exact same Mexican coins. My card appears to have been made from the same dies at a later date. The site has 35 different coin cards for sale as Buy It Now with different prices. Unfortunately the US card is no longer available as I purchased it.
To view the eBay postcard lots, see: 35 results found for Geld / Münzkarte
To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
BLUMEL COIN CARD POSTCARD ALBUM CENSUS
(www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v17n02a29.html)
The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org. To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor at this address: whomren@gmail.com To subscribe go to: https://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/esylum All Rights Reserved. NBS Home Page Contact the NBS webmaster 
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