QUERY: COIN RUBBINGS

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V17 2014 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 17, Number 10, March 9, 2014, Article 13

I just got this neat book by the Guttag Brothers of New York, containing amounts they would pay for coins. My question concerns the coin images: are they drawn by an artist or are they "rubbings"? I've heard of rubbings but I don't remember ever seeing any.

Great question! For those who haven’t seen rubbings, they’re actually very easy to make yourself, assuming you can still find a pencil and blank piece of paper in this digital age. Give it a try! Lay the coin on a flat surface and put the paper over it. Now hold the pencil flat, nearly parallel with the paper. Gently rub the business end of the pencil (the graphite, or “lead”) back and forth across the paper directly on top of the coin. Slowly an image of the coin will appear.

Practice your technique a few times and soon you’ll be a pro. Back in the day numismatists often kept notebooks of rubbings of their coins as a record of their collection. In fact, when I liquidated a fellow numismatist’s collection several years ago, the most valuable item turned out to be a book of rubbings – at $2,000 it sold for almost twice what the most valuable coin brought.

Rubbings don’t damage the coin (at least, not circulated ones). They’re fragile because the graphite can smudge if you’re not careful. But in the days before scanners and digital cameras, when photography was slow and expensive, rubbings were a great way to record a collection, and still work in a pinch.

As for the Guttag book, these images look to me to be woodcuts. An artist would engrave these in a block of wood (in reverse), and the block would be inked to print the image on the page. They may also have been done in another medium, - perhaps an E-Sylum reader can provide more information.

EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY!

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Stack’s Bowers Galleries offers an important employment opportunity for the right person. We are seeking an experienced numismatist in the American series—coins, tokens, medals, and paper money—to work with our “dream team” of catalogers, building on the tradition of the Ford, Eliasberg, Bass, Cardinal, Norweb, Battle Born and other great collections.

If you can write in an authoritative and compelling manner with a high degree of accuracy, this may be just right for you! You will be working in Irvine, a modern community in dynamic Orange County, California—one of the finest areas to live. We offer generous benefits including medical and dental coverage, 401K plan, and more. Our offices are in our own modern, state-of-the art building with all amenities.

If you would like to be considered for this position please contact Q. David Bowers by mail or by email with your resumé, samples of your past writing (on numismatics or other subjects), and salary requirements: Mail to the attention of Q. David Bowers, PO Box 1804, Wolfeboro, NH 03894. Email to: Ckarstedt@stacksbowers.com