Welcome to The E-Sylum: Volume 3, Number 44, October 22, 2000: an electronic publication of the Numismatic Bibliomania Society. Copyright (c) 2000, The Numismatic Bibliomania Society. SUBSCRIBER UPDATES We have one new subscriber this week: Robert Heisley. Welcome aboard! Art Noot asked to unsubscribe, and with the loss of John Bergman our subscriber count is now 347. JOHN BERGMAN Ken Barr writes: "According to Jim Bergman, John's service / funeral will be held at 3:00 PM on Monday, October 23 at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, 4471 Lincoln Avenue, Cypress, CA 90630, 714-828-3131." Charlie Davis writes: "I was so sorry to hear of John Bergman's death. I had known him for almost 20 years as a friend and colleague, confidant and sounding board. When I first went into business putting out fixed price lists, John would always call and tell me what I had grossly unvalued. He never picked the items off but always found a polite way to tell me I screwed up. Whenever I went to Long Beach, John insisted that I stay at his house and I was never allowed to stay in a hotel. Each night we would come back from the show and be up most of the night talking books. Whenever NBS had a contested election, John was the one asked to receive and count the ballots. Whenever you bid in his auction, you knew the lot was properly described and that your bid would be reduced. Honest almost to a fault, and knowledgeable to the nth degree - this is how I will remember John. He will be sorely missed" Allan Davisson writes: "I am saddened to hear of John Bergman's untimely death. We did not have a great deal of contact over the years but every time I did deal with him I was impressed by his knowledge and decency. This is a year of loss for numismatics as relatively young--men in their 50's--are passing away. Patrick Finn is gravely ill and in hospice care. Bill Warden passed away earlier this year. The passing of all three of these expert and generous people leaves a void in our numismatic community." David Sklow writes: "Sherry and I were deeply saddened by the news of John Bergman's passing. I have known John for more than twenty years, and considered him a good friend. He was always the calm cool and collected one! The last time I saw John was when he attended the auction of another follow bibliophile who left us before his time, the Ken Lowe sale last November in Dearborn. There is definitely truth in the saying, "the good die young." I know I speak for all of the numismatic brotherhood, when I say John will be missed!! If there was one thing I learned from John Bergman, it was if you are going to sell Numismatic Literature, do it right and pack it right!! You never wanted him to find a book touching the inside edges of a carton! We have lost four giants of Numismatic Literature in the last few years, I only wonder what great stories, Bergman, Champa, Collins and Lowe are swapping upstairs!" [Editor's note: John's love for fine numismatic literature is evident on his web site: http://www.numismaticliterature.com/, particularly in his article, "The Art of Mailing Books."] BURNS DOES BALTIMORE Numismatic book dealer John Burns of N. Huntingdon, PA reports that he will be setting up at the Suburban Baltimore Show October 27-29. KOLBE SALE Catalogues for George Frederick Kolbe's December 2, 2000 auction sale of rare and out of print numismatic literature will be available on November 1, 2000 and may be obtained by sending $10.00 to the firm. The catalogue is also available at the firm's web site: http://www.numislit.com/. Included in the sale are selections from the libraries of Dr. Moses Johnson, Frank Van Zandt, and an extensive offering of key works from a major European library. Sale highlights include a very fine set of The Numismatist, complete from 1891 to 1990, uniformly bound; a selection of major 16th and 17th century works on numismatics; an original set of Eckhel's Doctrina Nummorum Veterum; key works on 18th century English tokens, including an original set of Dalton & Hamer and Pye's rare 1819 token work; plated Chapman sales, including hardbound editions of the Zabriskie and Bascom/ Brown catalogues; etc." KRALJEVICH COMMENTS John Kraljevich writes: "Thanks for the mention in The E-sylum. However, I'm afraid I can't claim credit on the Kunz commentary. The responsible party there is QDB, who adds much of the commentary that takes the cataloguing from pedestrian to worth collecting. The Bryan money was in fact all I did in that catalogue; that collection was my interview try-out for B&M. I guess I passed ..." ROLAND ELIE ADDRESS SOUGHT Yosef Sa'ar writes: "Do you have an email address for Roland ELIE in France, author of "Monnaies de Necessite Francaises?" Shalom from ELAT on the Red Sea" Elie is not an E-Sylum subscriber - perhaps one of our readers can locate him. Yosef Sa'ar may be contacted at this address: ysaar@actcom.co.il ITALIAN MEDAL BOOK PUBLISHED Massimo Rossi reports: "I am glad to point you out the new volume in Italian, LE MEDAGLIE DEI GONZAGA. Format 30 x 23,7 cm. 194 pages, 275 medals colour illustrated and described. Green cloth with dust jacket. This work is a careful research whose starting point is the A.Magnaguti collection of medals, now belonging to the Banca Agricola Mantovana. The author of the volume has found, in public and private collections, pieces lacking to the Magnaguti Collection and some of them are unpublished. Cover price. FSv 115,00 + shipping rates. Trade discount 10% AVAILABLE AT: info@astartesa.com" REVIEWING THE REVIEW Regarding Doug Ball's criticisms of the Morgan book, Texan Fred Reed writes: "With all due respect to Douglas, his own work is flawed, too. He seemed much more interested in having a twit and promoting himself than in dealing with Jim's serious research. Jim Morgan went to Oklahoma State University, not the University of Oklahoma, as could easily be ascertained by actually READING Jim's book. This may make little difference to the erudite New Yorker, but as an Okie "them's fighting words" in these parts. I knew Jim quite well. We went to graduate school together, and when I was News Editor at Coin World we published his work there, too. By the way, for the bibliophiles in the audience, I own Jim's actual thesis, autographed to me. I believe the "graybacks" in the title was the "effort" of the publisher, not Jim." [Editor's note: Dr. Ball's review was not reprinted in its entirety. He also noted: "there are some very interesting chapters on the Oklahoma Indians and their monetary relations with the Confederacy and themselves and there are some useful chapters on state note issues."] ANOTHER DEVASTATING REVIEW Joe Boling writes: "For the devastating reviews input, here is a review I wrote in 1984. It was published in IBNS Journal 23:3 ([Oct] 1984) p.78; and Paper Money 23:5 (Sep.-Oct. 1984) p248.' [Editor's note: the review is too lengthy to quote here in its entirety; however, here are a few key segments] United States Paper Money Grading Standard by Herbert J. Kwart; Five Seasons Publishers, PO Box 397, Hiawatha, IA 52233; 1984; 44pp, softbound. "Alas, I am sorely disappointed. This booklet is poorly written, unedited, contains errors of fact, and provides no new insights for collectors of notes in grades below XF. It seems to be aimed at investors, with the intent of justifying a price structure for uncirculated paper money similar to that used for US coins." "Moving down scale toward fine and lower grades, the new standard follows the Pick standard fairly closely, and is a full grade different from the Sandrock/Long standard in grades below XF. Having two different standards presented in the same booklet is needlessly confusing. It is at these lower grades that I was hoping for better definition of "how grubby is dirty" and "how flabby is limp." The new standard does not help." "In short, this booklet is not very useful for the hobbyist. It may have some utility for dealers who like to sell adjectival puff or whose buyers know nothing about paper money and will feel more comfortable with something that sounds like ANACS." "The book is NOT RECOMMENDED. I'm sorry to say so, because I was hoping for so much more. Reviewed by Joseph E. Boling, N.L.G." NOTES FROM THE NUMISMATIST The October, 2000 issue of the American Numismatic Association's journal The Numismatist brings several items of interest to bibliophiles, including: "The Curious Case of the Collectors Kline" by NBS Board member Joel J. Orosz, solves a mystery about coin dealers A. C. Kline and John W. Kline (p1147). "The Inventive, Controversial Ormsby" by Gene Hessler in his "Notes on Paper" column, writes about Waterman Lilly Ormsby, Sr., author of the rare 1852 work, "A Description of the Present System of Bank Note Engraving." (p1166). BIG PRICE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN NEW AND USED As a public service, The E-Sylum occasionally highlights collecting hobbies even stranger than our own, so we can say to our spouses, "Gee honey, it's not as bad as collecting <fill in the blank here>" The October 4, 2000 issue of The Wall Street Journal featured an article about the history and collecting of airline airsickness bags. "The year 2000 edition of Guinness World Records lists Dutchman Niek Vermeulen as having the largest collection - 2,112 different bags from 470 airlines, past and present. He says his trove actually consists of 13,000 bags, including duplicates.... He says he knows of 80 other collectors. And there are at least two dozen Web sites devoted to this strange passion. (An interesting one is http://www.vomitorium.co.uk)." [Editor's note: the site's marbled background has an uncanny resemblance to the background we use on part of the NBS web site. Scary, huh?] FEATURED WEB SITE This week's featured web site is James N. Roberts' EARLY ISLAMIC COINS site. "This is a noncommerical site dealing with the coins of early Islam, dating from about 690 to 1500 AD. The concentration here is exclusively on the silver and copper coins struck in Europe and northern Africa and in western and central Asia, excluding the Indian subcontinent." http://w3.nai.net/~jroberts/ 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)
