WORLD PAPER MONEY AUTHOR ALBERT PICK PASSES AT 93

It is with great sadness that I report the death of Albert Pick in Germany on Sunday, Nov 21. He was 93 years old and residing in a nursing home.

The collecting world owes Albert Pick a great deal for being able to elevate world paper money collecting to a position it had never approached before his first catalog came out in 1975. There were several individual pioneers who did some excellent work with smaller books and price lists- Dwight Musser, Walter M. Loeb and Arlie Slabaugh come to mind- but the major impetus came first from Dr. Arnold Keller of Berlin, Germany. He had prepared a manuscript purporting to cover the entire world of paper money issues from its beginning to 1970 and offered it to Whitman Publishing Company in Racine, WI. It was purchased and our staff was getting ready to begin the necessary editing, supplying photos etc. when management made a decision not to get involved with such a lengthy and risky project. The Keller manuscript, as it came to be called, was subsequently sold to the International Bank Note Society with the financial assistance of Mrs. Ruth Hill.

Several sections of the Keller manuscript were in fact published by the IBNS. But another development saw the production of a new manuscript on world notes, this time by Albert Pick, Curator of the major paper money collection of the Bayerische Hypotheken-und-Wechselbank (Hypobank) of Munich. It had been his own collection before he saw it ensconced in the Hypobank with himself as curator. His manuscript was accepted by Krause Publications in 1974 and the First Edition of the Standard Catalog of World Paper Money was published in 1975.

Of course I had looked forward eagerly to Whitman's working with the Keller manuscript, so I approached management with the idea that if any work I might be able to do for the Pick manuscript would not interfere with anything Whitman was doing, might it be possible for me to help Krause's editors? I was pleasantly surprised by an affirmative answer, so I became Special Consultant from 1975 through 1981, when I was hired by Krause to work only on the catalog. Despite the downturn in the hobby during that period I was able to work for Krause from 1981 to 1985. Afterwards I maintained the position of major editor of this catalog until 2005.

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