Joe Barnet is well recorded in magazines of the 1930s and 1940s. “Abe Kosoff Remembers,” copy of which is not at hand as I send this e-mail, probably tells of him. He was a dealer and in the field of Civil War tokens a great resource.

Joseph Barnet was inducted into the Civil War Token Society Hall of Fame in 2003. He's listed on the page for the Hall of Fame on the CWTS Web site.

Joseph Barnet was a major collector and researcher of Civil War tokens during the first half of the 20th century. He is noted for bridging the years from Hetrich and Guttag to the Fulds. Barnet did extensive research into attempting to locate maverick Civil War merchants. He produced a supplement to Hetrich and Guttag’s work in 1943-44, updating that book and adding information previously unpublished. Barnet amassed a wonderfully diverse and high-grade collection of Civil War tokens, which eventually found its way to George and Melvin Fuld in 1948.

I did a bit of digging on Joseph Barnet and was able to come up with some documentation of his background.

The key piece of information is the 1940 census for Kings County, NY, which identifies him as a dealer in coins.

There's a genealogy for this family on Ancestry.com which seems to be mostly correct. However, it misspells Joseph's name as "Jesue" as taken from the 1880 census. There's nothing more on him in this genealogy.

From several passenger lists on Ancestry.com I found the information that Joseph Barnet was born in New York City on 18 June 1868. There's an entry in the New York City death index for Joseph Barnet, age 80, who died in Kings County, NY on 29 November 1948. This seems right for a man who phased out his numismatic activities in the mid to late 1940s. Obtaining a copy of the death certificate here would complete the documentation of this linkage.