Welcome to The E-Sylum: Volume 2, Number 52 December 26, 1999:
an electronic publication of the Numismatic Bibliomania Society.
SUBSCRIBER UPDATES
We have three new subscribers this week: Dave Allen,
Chet Dera, and Henry Bergos. Welcome aboard! This
brings our year-end subscriber count to 265.
Some of you may have received a copy of the November
28th issue in your email this week. I wish I could say I knew
how this happened, but it's a mystery - perhaps another email
glitch. In any case, sorry about the confusion.
NBS MEETING AT FUN SHOW
The Numismatic Bibliomania Society (NBS) will hold a
regional meeting at the Florida United Numismatists show
in room 311E at the Orange County Convention Center,
Florida. The time of the NBS meeting is 11:00 AM,
Saturday, January 8, 2000.
Fred Lake, numismatic book dealer, will offer a presentation,
"Which Books to Buy, So You'll Know Which Books to
Buy." The meeting is open to all interested in attending, not
just to NBS members.
LIBRARY SALE BOOK FINDS
Carl Honore writes: "One good way to update your library is
to check local library book sales. I just scored Breen's Half
Cent book for $10.00 at one of these. At another I got the
5th-10th editions of the Redbook - $10.00 for the lot of em.
Old coin books ARE out there!!!"
QUICK QUIZ ANSWERS: CANCELED AUCTIONS
Saul Teichman and Joel Orosz took the hint and correctly
named the 1865 J.N.T. Levick sale by Edward Cogan.
Originally scheduled for April 27-29, 1865, the sale was
postponed due to the assassination of President Lincoln on
April 14th, 1865. Lincoln was shot while attending a
performance at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C.
E. J Attinelli, in his 1876 work "Numisgraphics", had this to
say about the sale: "... it was thought advisable to postpone,
in consequence of the excited state of the entire people,
consequent upon the assassination of President Lincoln by
Junius B. Booth, who had escaped, but was subsequently
captured mortally wounded." [NOTE: Attinelli confused
the facts here - Junius B. Booth, also an actor, was the
FATHER of John Wilkes Booth, the Lincoln assassin.]
"The catalogue was printed and issued in several ways, with
and without the part in which was the catalogue-portion of
Mr. Levick's collection, also each separately; also, 12 copies
of each printed on large paper. Mr. Levick, in consequence
of the state of affairs, issued but few copies with the cover
bearing the preceding date, the greater portion of the
edition was stripped of its covers and replaced with a new
one, bearing the following date, when the sale took place."
Attinelli lists the sale as having taken place May 29th. In the
"show-n-tell" department, I have a copy of this sale in my
library. It is a priced copy, one of twelve interleaved with
ruled paper, as noted in the sale's last lot (lot 135). It bears
the original sale date of April 27-29, 1865. Anyone else
care to report a copy of the sale?
THE VANISHING PROOF SET MYSTERY
Ed Krivoniak brought up another recent "sale that never was."
He writes: "You failed to mention an American sale that was
canceled just a few years ago, involving a consignment of early
U.S. proof sets. The owner of the coins was a lady from
Butler, PA, who had been judged incompetent for a number
of years and had a caretaker. This caretaker talked the old
lady into going with her to the safe deposit of a local bank
where the coins were withdrawn. The caretaker then sold them
to a local Butler coin dealer for $60,000. The dealer in turn
consigned the coins for sale at auction.
The lady's son-in-law saw some of the remaining coins in the
house and started checking on the values. When he found out
that they were worth significantly more than what the lady was
paid, he raised a stink and got an injunction to stop the sale.
The coins were eventually sold by Superior for $1.5 million."
Ed interviewed Pittsburgh dealer Saul Weitz for some of the
foregoing information, becoming in the process the first free-
lance reporter for E-Sylum. Thanks, Ed! A postscript:
"Saul also told me that a large number of early proof sets
started turning up on the East coast at that time and he
suspects that more of the sets were sold under the table, so
to speak. There was never any inventory so nothing could
be proved but the son-in-law remembers seeing 1936 proof
sets years earlier that never turned up anywhere."
DYE'S COIN ENCYCLOPEDIA QUESTION
Jørgen Sømod of Denmark asks: "Can you tell me what the
opinion was, when Dye's Coin Encyclopaedia, Philadelphia
1883, turned up?"
Can anyone point us to contemporary references to Dye's
book? What did people think of it at the time?
ANS STATUS
Richard Doty writes: "Have any of our members heard anything
more about what's going on at the ANS? The Coin World article
raised more questions than it answered." Perhaps some questions
will be answered a Special Meeting of "all Fellows and Associate
Members" called for Saturday, January 15th, 2000 at 11:00 AM
at the Society's headquarters.
An opinion article by George S. Cuhaj in the December 21, 1999
issue of Numismatic News calls "Save our Society!". The
headline reads "ANS supporters must come through now."
The article says that a long-running deficit has forced severe
budget cuts. "...the only editor has already been dismissed, and
the curators have been told that their numbers would be reduced
from five to two or three within 45 days." Cuhaj calls for firm
action, in the form of financial support, from dealers and
collectors in the numismatic community.
OUR FIRST SUBSCRIBER
With the close of the year upon us, I thought it would
be fitting to recognize our first subscriber. Although all of
those signing up at the NBS meeting at the 1998 Portland
ANA convention probably qualify as "Charter Members",
the first person to sign up after The E-Sylum was
announced on the Internet was Peter Gaspar of the
Chemistry Department of Washington University in St. Louis.
Peter signed up on Saturday, September 5, 1998. Now here
we are at the end of 1999 with over 250 worldwide
subscribers, and still going strong.
But let's not rest on our laurels. Please help promote The
E-Sylum to your friends, customers, and fellow bibliophiles
in the coming year.
This issue brings to a close our first complete calendar year
volume of The E-Sylum. Happy holidays to all, and a
Happy New Year.
FEATURED WEB SITE
This week's featured web site is the Presveis Project,
"a EU co-funded project, aiming to raise the awareness
of an international public to the fact that monetary unions
have happened in the past, under a variety of circumstances."
Co-sponsored by the Athens Numismatic Museum and
The British Museum, the site features a number of numismatic
exhibits.
http://www.culture.gr/nm/presveis/
Wayne Homren
Numismatic Bibliomania Society
The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a
non-profit organization promoting numismatic
literature. For more information please see
our web site at http://www.coinbooks.org/
There is a membership application available on
the web site. To join, print the application and
return it with your check to the address printed
on the application. For those without web access,
contact Dave Hirt, NBS Secretary-Treasurer,
5911 Quinn Orchard Road, Frederick, MD 21701
(To be removed from this mailing list
write to me at whomren@coinlibrary.com)
|
