CATALOG REVIEW: D. BRENT POGUE COLLECTION, PART I

Auction catalogs occupy interesting and sacred spaces in Numismatics.

A catalog’s immediate goal is to entice potential buyers to place bids. To that end, catalogs are, in essence, long-form advertisements–a craft in and of itself.

Yet if we grant them further consideration, we find that catalogs become much more than that. Each one is a final accounting of the personal enterprise of collecting. They become part of the permanent ledger of taste, skill and success. And more than all of this, catalogs form the connective tissue between the hobby as we experience it today–in the flesh, in real time–and the hobby of yesterday.

Today’s catalogs are far different than the photo-starved and description-deficient booklets and broadsheets of the days of yore. To compare the two is to do reference work in the field of apples and oranges.

But for the serious scholars among us, a four-page listing of numismatic items published at the turn of the 20th century could be the sole reference point of the collector origin of a great American rarity, like those that pour out of the pages of Stack’s Bowers Galleries and Sotheby’s The D. Brent Pogue Collection: Masterpieces of United States Coinage, Part I.

The catalog’s primary writing credit goes to coin dealer John Kraljevich. Kraljevich, based in South Carolina, is a brilliant numismatist and highly knowledgeable in the field of Americana. He’s also a talented writer and columnist for Coin World Magazine. Q. David Bowers provided the assist, writing many of the catalog’s historical vignettes. Coin photography was handled by PCGS (though not specifically cited, one assumes Phil Arnold handled the imaging duties).

As a leisure read, we found Kraljevich’s approach to each listing to be workmanlike and understated. Lots follow a logical progression and the narrative of these early American coins unfolds freely, aided by an easy flow of technical and historical information. Lot listings yield vital information about the coin’s pedigree, rarity, and physical characteristics.

Yes, potential buyers are urged to bid, but it’s not a hard sell. Some catalogers try so strenuously to evoke excitement that isn’t there that one is reminded of the waitstaff at a chain restaurant promoting the daily special.

That the Pogue family assembled a majestic and historic collection goes without saying. The surprise announcement that the collection was coming to market caught many off guard, however, and the skittishness of the industry in its present state shows that the pending Pogue sales have hung like the sword of Damocles over the high-end coin market, despite the fact that Heritage Auctions has successfully maximized the profitability of the Eric P. Newman Collection over the course of several sales held in the past couple of years.

But the Newman and Pogue Collections are entirely different animals.

Newman, a first-class numismatist, owned a fair share of great rarities, but he was also an accumulator who owned hundreds if not thousands of “collector coins”. The result was that virtually any collector that wanted a Newman coin could get one.

The Pogues, on the other hand, were not accumulators.

The composition of their collection shows a dogged pursuit of the best-of-the-best and the rarest-of-the-rare.

To read the complete article, see:
First Read: The D. Brent Pogue Collection: Masterpieces of United States Coinage, Part I (www.coinweek.com/auctions-news/first-read-the-d-brent-pogue-collection-masterpieces-of-united-states-coinage-part-i/)

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