Welcome to The E-Sylum: Volume 3, Number 13, March 26, 2000: an electronic publication of the Numismatic Bibliomania Society. Copyright (c) 2000, The Numismatic Bibliomania Society. SUBSCRIBER UPDATES We have four new subscribers this week: NBS Member Brian Hingerty, Nolan Mims (referred by Fred Lake), Larry Lee, Curator, Western Heritage Museum (home of the Byron Reed Collection), and Sebastian Heath of the American Numismatic Society. Welcome aboard, one and all. This brings our subscriber count to 291. A BLESSED ARRIVAL Asylum Editor E. Tomlinson Fort and his wife Gosia are the proud parents of a baby daughter. Tom reports: "the world's youngest numismatic literature collector is Annamaria Fort, born 22 March 2000 at 9:07 AM, weight 6 pounds 10 ounces. Fortunately, she looks more like her mom than her dad." Mother and baby (and Dad, too) are doing fine, and your scribe can attest that the child has a fully functioning set of lungs. A MINT DEPARTURE An article in the March 23rd Wall Street Journal notes: "The dot-com world has finally found an executive who really knows how to mint money." "Philip Deihl, director of the U.S. Mint, is leaving to run Zale.com after helping turn his corner of the federal bureaucracy into a savvy consumer marketer. The online jewelry-sales arm of Zale Corp., of Irving, Texas, is expected to name him President today." "Though he is eager to get to Zale.com, he concedes he has one possible shortcoming: He wears almost no jewelry himself. "I'm too old-fashioned to wear anything like an ear stud or nose ring," he jokes, "though working at a dot-com may change that." KOLBE BASS IV CATALOG AVAILABLE George Kolbe reports: "The fourth and final major section of the Harry W. Bass, Jr. Numismatic Library will be sold at public auction during the Long Beach, California Coin Convention on June 10, 2000. The catalogue has been printed and will be sent out in early May. Catalogues may be ordered by sending $25.00 to George Frederick Kolbe, P.O. Drawer 3100, Crestline, CA 92325. In the meantime, the catalogue is accessible at our web site: http://www.numislit.com/. The estimates of the 600 lots in the sale total some $250,000 and many great American rarities are featured: Colonel Green $5 & $10 Gold photographic albums; a unique 1868 manuscript on American copper coins by Henry Phillips; American Numismatic Association "Official Publication No. 1"; an 1881 Andrews on cents; sets of The Numismatist, AJN, and rare E. Mason periodicals; dozens of plated Chapman sales, including a superb Henderson; John Robinson's 1875 "Subscription" Crosby; superb paper money rarities (Ormsby, Lee Confederate, Bond Detectors, Heaths, unique copies of Schultz, many more); unique research materials on fractional California gold coins; Linderman's 1867 "Rules" concerning patterns; an original inventory of Waldo Newcomb's American colonial coins; etc. Presently, we're working on our June 13th sale (catalogues will be sent free to all ordering Bass 4 - also available online in late April). Featured are "great" antiquarian numismatic works , including the first edition -1517- of the first illustrated numismatic book, a superb library on Renaissance medals, key works on virtually all numismatic topics. Between the two sales, a half million dollars of rare and desirable numismatic publications will be offered for sale in a three day period." DIGITIZING SLIDES Alan Luedeking writes: "I want to thank the responding members for the super feedback on slide scanning --- with hundreds of mounted slides stored in a particular order, there was no way I was going to send them out. I look forward to attempting the suggested scanning solutions and will report the results in due course. Besides wanting to digitize slides for easier presentation and e-mailing, now I'm particularly intrigued by Mr. Metras' observation on the possibility of scanning even small areas of the slide; I've long thought of doing a little contest amongst friends in my particular area of specialty: identifying a banknote from a vignette, or the coin from just a device or part thereof. Careful masking and rephotographing was out of the question timewise; this new approach should make the game feasible..." ANS LAYING GROUNDWORK FOR ONLINE IMAGES In discussions on the ANS members' mailing list, ANS web manager Sebastian Heath notes that he and the Society's photographer are "right now are putting the processes in place by which the Society can handle millions of online images and terabytes of data. This will be the end result of putting our entire collection on-line. We are years from this point but are thinking about it now. We are also in the initial stages of raising money for this endeavor." ARMENIAN COIN FINDS PUBLISHED Georges Depeyrot of France sent notice that the third volume of the series "Inventory of Coin Finds in Armenia" by Khatchatur Mousheghian, Anahit Mousheghian and Georges Depeyrot has just been published. "This volume contains coin finds from Duin (4-13th c.) and the inventory of Sasanian and Byzantine coins (pre islamic) found in Armenia (6-7th c.) with a general study of history, economy and settlement in Armenia during this period." The book may be ordered via http://www.cultura-net.com/moneta/ BYRON REED RESEARCH HELP WANTED New subscriber Lawrence J. Lee, Curator, Byron Reed Collection, writes: "Fellow inmates of the E-sylum: another technopeasant now joins your ranks. The only thing better than the Asylum is E-Sylum! I had contacted Wayne several months ago about getting help finding catalogs with early collector Bryon Reed's name in them so that I can determine the pedigree of Reed's coins. Karl Moulton was kind enough to supply me the Reed data from his named Parmelee catalog, so I was able to determine which lots and coins (105 total!) Reed purchased at the pivotal sale. I now can refine my request even further. We know Reed traveled yearly back to New York to visit relatives, and he often would attended major sales in person. On the other hand, it is also known he purchased coins through agents, including Ed Frossard, John Haseltine, Lyman Low and Ed and George Cogan. So I am looking for any pre-1890 named catalog that mentions Mr. Reed. In particular, I am now interested in finding named catalogs for the following sales: Haines 1881, Marvin 1881, Bushnell 1882, Riddle 1882, Newlin 1883, Bushnell 1884, Levick 1884, Randall 1885, Tilton 1886, Snow 1888, Davis 1890, Doughty 1891, Ely (uncertain which ones) Jenks (uncertain which one(s), but for sure Haseltine #69) Any help would be greatly, greatly appreciated. Thank you." Mr. Lee can be reached at: ljlee@uswest.net THE LAST MONEY TREE SALE Though no one knew it at the time, November's sale of the Ken Lowe library would be the last sale for The Money Tree. Several E-Sylum subscribers were in attendance at the sale, which took place in Dearborn, MI, on Saturday November 27th, 1999. John and Nancy Wilson penned an article about the sale for the December 7, 1999 issue of Numismatic News. The final passage of the article follows: "We would like to say a few words about our friend Kenneth M. Lowe. He was a good friend of almost everyone that is known in our numismatic hobby. To sum up Ken’s life - he was like Will Rogers who never met a person he didn't like. We never heard Ken say anything bad about anyone, and he always had a smile on his face. He always had a kind word or cute greeting when you met him at a convention. He was a great conversationalist. We have been receiving The Money Tree catalogs almost from the start and always enjoyed participating in their sales. Over the years, Ken edited one of the most interesting publications you could ever find, “Out on a Limb.” Every year after the ANA convention, he would take the time to do an article in the Limb on the convention. It was always interesting and well done. His passing left a great void in our numismatic hobby. This two part sale of his outstanding library (floor & mail bid and mail bid only), is a testament to how great a collector Ken was when it came to numismatic books and literature." AND I THOUGHT MY WIFE COULD STRETCH A DOLLAR An article in the March 21st Wall Street Journal about the work of British artist Cornelia Parker mentions one work which is "a coil of wire framed behind glass, described as a silver dollar drawn into a thread as long as the Statue of Liberty is high. "Measuring Liberty with A Dollar" Ms. Parker calls it." FEATURED WEB SITE This week's featured web site is "Serbian History Through Coinage", presented by the Serbian Unity Congress. http://www.suc.org/exhibitions/coins/select.html 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 21704 (To be removed from this mailing list write to me at whomren@coinlibrary.com)
