SUMMER SEMINAR BOOK SALE FINDS

Each year I teach a class at the ANA's Summer Seminar, and one of the most anticipated events for all is the fund-raising book sale at ANA headquarters. It kicks off Saturday evening, after student registration and the seminar orientation. Everyone is eager to secure a low number for entry into the book sale room, as occupation within this small space is rationed for safety. There's always a mad scramble for those who get in the earliest, and there are often some pretty nice books and catalogs that go for a fraction of their values at auction.

Since my library is pretty much complete for all the titles I'd want or need, I typically bypass that first session altogether. I do like bonding with students and my fellow instructors, but not in quite such a physical manner, as the room becomes all elbows and knees in a matter or moments.

The book sale reopens the next day during lunch time, and that's when I make my first pass. There's never a concern that I've missed something important, as I seek the items that others leave behind. My purchases consist of popular, unscholarly hobby magazines, dealer buying guides and ephemera of the sort that sells for 25 cents apiece (by the last day of the sale, prices have been slashed to the point where $5 will buy as much as one can carry). These are the bits of numismatic literature that tell me the where, when and how much of coin folders, albums and gadgets that I collect as hobby history and use for researching my own books.

During this year's event I scored a long run of The Coin Press, a decidedly unsophisticated monthly published by Frank Spadone in East Orange, New Jersey. The issues run from 1959 through the end of 1961, when this title was purchased by Krause Publications. Initially, just the "The" was dropped from the title, but it re-emerged as COINS Magazine with the first issue of 1962 and continues as such to the present day.

I found some real nuggets that will be of interest. These include an early photo of Q. David Bowers with Empire Coin Company partner Jim Ruddy, as well as the first publication of the Large Date/Small Date varieties of 1960 cents which topic came to dominate all the remaining issues of 1960 in this and other popular journals. Best of all, perhaps, is a scathing report of Walter Breen's speaking engagement at the Middlesex Coin Club in New Jersey. A more unlikely setting could not be imagined, as the members were likely all focused on BU rolls, proof sets and BIE Lincolns, much to the disgust of prickly scholar Breen.

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web