Several weeks ago, I requested assistance in the E-Sylum about needing a reference written by a Frenchman about Cambodian coins. I received a response from Scott Semans about which of the many references written by that Frenchman had his study about Cambodian coins and that he saw it in the American Numismatic Society library many years ago.

I had met Elizabeth Hahn, the ANS Librarian, at the recent Baltimore ANA and she suffered with me being at the booth next to hers. When I wrote to her that I would like to have the pages in the reference about the coins plus the title and copyright/printer pages, she immediately answered my request that she would be happy to assist me and the cost. I approved the cost to her and I quickly received the pages in the mail. I responded with a check to cover the cost and additional dollars as a donation. The process and the correspondence could not have been better and I am as happy as a lark.

For anyone familiar with the early 19th century British silver shilling and sixpence tokens the name Henry Morgan will be equally familiar. Some tokens bear his initials, some his name and some his name and street address - the notorious 12 Rathbone Place. But who he was has always been a mystery.

The most recent attempt I know of was from the masterful Peter Clayton in three articles in the Seaby Coin and Medal Bulletin of 1987. Ultimately, Clayton did not know the answer, but did make a great story. Now Andrew Wager has attacked the problem from a genealogical point of view rather than from the standard numismatic view. He presents a very convincing story built up fact by fact until an almost inevitable conclusion. He is to be complimented on his original approach, and I, a distant colonial, believe he has it right. The book is well illustrated with photographs, including 12 Rathbone Place, numerous tokens, and other relevant matter, much of which was of recurring errors passed down over the 200 years since.

Wager even found a hand-addressed, printed letter from Morgan for sale on the web, a vital clue in his search. Anyone who has a few of these tokens will find this a fascinating read which (for me at least) answered a vexing question. No, Morgan was not related to Henry Morgan the buccaneer, but one could wonder!

Although I haven't acquired the book, I have heard the author speak on his ongoing researches on the subject at several UK Token Congresses. Andrew is a very well respected numismatic researcher specialising in UK tokens.

The extensive series of silver tokens issued bearing the name or initials of Henry Morgan had long intrigued UK collectors as his name could not be found in postal directories at the address quoted on the tokens. This, coupled with the fact there was a famous pirate named Henry Morgan lead most people to assume it was an alias.

Andrew's dedicated researches took him beyond those assumptions to find that he really did exist, his name really was Henry Morgan, and he did reside at the address quoted on his tokens, although he did have a piratical way of doing business (issuing underweight tokens and copying those of other issuers). The premises in question were listed by directories under the name of his father-in-law, a prominent merchant in a totally different line of business. This is an object lesson to those doing research - a quick scan of the directories is not enough.

There have been 15 COACS for which the proceedings have been published. The publication schedule has lagged considerably in recent years, so that the proceedings for the 1999 conference (on Money of the Caribbean) was not published until 2006. The price of these publications has also increased, from $15 per volume for the first 6 years, then $25 per volume for years 7 through 14. Volume 15 had another price increase. Don’t know why the Mark Newby volume costs $125 or why it is being published ahead of the proceedings of the conferences held in 2000-2007.

As you know, ANS also publishes a bibliographic periodical, Numismatic Literature. It used to cost approximately $3.00 per issue. In recent years the price per issue has gone up to $40 and the print run has been substantially reduced. This reflects a conscious decision by ANS to discourage reliance on the printed version in favor of the on-line version.

622 Julian, R. W. & Keusch, Ernest E. MEDALS OF THE UNITED STATES ASSAY COMMISSION, 1860-1977. Lake Mary: The Token and Medal Society, Inc., 1989. 91, (1) pages, illustrated throughout. Quarto. Original red cloth, gilt, original printed card covers bound in. Near new. (50.00)

Special Hardbound Edition. Autographed on front flyleaf by Keusch in a scarcely legible hand. Presumably quite scarce. Though attractively bound, the binder has unfortunately misspelled the first author's name (JULIEN) on both the upper cover and the spine.

In a 2001 conversation with the author, Mr. Julian related that Mr. Keusch notified him of the spelling error before the volumes were distributed but he decided, since the family name originally was de St. Julien, that the volumes should not be rebound but issued as is. Julian's recollection is that 75 or 80 copies were specially bound.

I bought a hard bound copy in 1990 and had it signed by Ernest Keusch. I didn't get Bob Julian to sign it until 1995 and he signed it with an A instead of an E as on the cover.

When I first started collecting in the 1960's, I bought a book from Aaron Feldman at one of the coin shows in St. Louis (my hometown). The book, The James H. Stewart Lockhart Collection of Chinese Coins, was published in 1915 as a large size paperback (more than 12 inches tall). I had the book hardbound in a nice blue cover, but the binder got the title wrong. It reads: The Stewart Collection of Chinese Coins. I sold that book in the 1970's or 1980's, so somewhere out there, someone owns the only known copy of the Stewart Collection.

When these books are upright on the shelf, the titles on the spine reads from bottom to top. Distracting.

• Early Michigan Scrip brown hardcover by Harold L. Bowen, no date.
  
  
• Sovereigns of the British Empire, J.J. Cullimore Allen, Spink & Son, 1965. Blue hardbound. Title is up-side-down on the spine and the dust jacket.
  
  
• Schwer Price Guide to 18th Century Tokens, 1983, Schwer Coins, card cover

These have no titles on the spine:

• United States Half CentsGilbert, Coinage of 1793 Cents and Half Centsby S.S. Crosby, Elder Numismatic Press, maroon cloth hardbound
• The Fantastic 1804 Dollar, Newman & Bressett, Whitman 1962. Brown hardbound. Whitman should have known better!
• United States Commemorative Coinage, Arlie Slabaugh. 2nd printing 1963. Grey hardbound
• Confederate Currency and Stamps 1861-1865, Claud E. Fuller, 1949 Grey hardbound
• Texas Confederate County Notes & Private Scrip, Bieciuk & Corbin, 1961. Card cover
• 1977 Standard Catalogue of Canadian Coins, Tokens, & Paper Money, Charlton

I'll give "some" card cover booklets a pass on not putting a title on the spine. But if it is bound such that a title can be on the spine then it should be!

Here's my all time favorite: I have a "special" 4th edition in black binding of Grover C. Criswell's "CONFERERATE CURRENCY" (per the spine), signed to me by the author. The title on the cover is spelled correctly.

I enjoyed the article on Colonel Ned Green. I had never read too much about him, except his ownership of the 1913 nickels. I have read about his mother Hetty. I don't believe she was really as evil as her reputation paints her. She just had this thing in her about not spending money, except as a tool to make more money, at which she was brilliant.

If she was on the street and saw you slip and fall, she probably would be the first to help you up and see if she could aid you, as long as she did not have to spend any money. She probably inherited these traits from her father who once refused a gift of a 10 cent cigar. He said he was happy smoking 4 cent cigars, and was afraid if he smoked the 10 cent one, he would not like the 4 cent ones any more.

I found the Colonel Green/Eric Newman material utterly fascinating. Would that Eric could reminisce about his dealings with the legendary dealers' dealer, B. G. Johnson of St. Louis. I certainly would welcome learning more about Johnson and his activities.

I've seen B. G. Johnson's name referred to often enough that on more than one occasion I've wondered about his dealing activities. What was his background before becoming a dealer? Was his business in St. Louis conducted from an office or a shop (I assume the former)? When did he flourish? What was his background prior to becoming a dealer? Was he in effect a midwestern Wayte Raymond in his importance although minus Raymond's publishing and auction activities? Was he involved in other major "name" deals apart from the Colonel Green estate? Was his dealing primarily with other dealers rather than with individual collectors? Who were some of these principal dealer counterparts (I believe, for example, that Ran Zander in his early dealing days acquired a great deal of material from Johnson)? What were his specialties as a dealer?, etc., etc.

While I am generally familiar with American numismatic literature, I am not intimately familiar with it, so perhaps the answers to some of my questions concerning this eminence grise of the dealing profession already exist in print.

Regarding the New York Times interview about the Lincoln Cent, I spent quite a while with the reporter on the phone. As is typical of such encounters, what was actually used was but a fraction of what we discussed. I haven't seen the printed version of the article, and it may have been more substantial than the online excerpt.

Working with the non-numismatic media is always a bit frustrating, with most remarks published entirely out of their original context, though that wasn't the case with my one brief quote. What was left out, however, seems to me to have been of greater interest to general readers, and it's regrettable that this turned out to be mostly a fluff piece.

The debate over whether collectible objects should be held in public institutions or kept in private hands is not a new one, particularly in the field of Numismatics. Numerous instances are cited of rare coin types that are now almost wholly unavailable to collectors because most of the known examples are held in museum collections, the most well known instance possibly being Walter Breen’s article on coins “impounded” in the Johns Hopkins University collection.

My answer to the question is “it depends.” It depends on the objects in question and the circumstances surrounding them—should a unique coin be held in a museum collection when there is no intention of ever displaying it? Or should it be held by collector for 40 years to be seen only by close friends, its whereabouts or even existence unknown to the world at large?

Is the public better served by having objects permanently held in public collections or having them circulate in the private sector as part of collections to be bought and sold?

Another way of looking at the debate is to ask the question; Would there be collectors without public collections? Or its converse; Would there be public collections without collectors? In, both cases the answer is “Yes!” But, in both cases, I would modify the answer by adding that they (either the collectors or the public collections) would be diminished by the absence of the other. To be sure, collectors would have more material to collect, but scholarship about that material, particularly in the form of comprehensive catalogs, would be much harder, if not impossible, to produce.

Does anyone have a numismatic literature inventory spreadsheet that works well for them?

As for a good software program for numismatic literature, I use Filemaker Pro - you create the fields you want and they are all searchable and the list can be ordered by any field or sequence of fields you like. I use title, author, type (in my case, numismatic vs military history or other subject areas), category (within numismatics), period, binding (hardbound, paperbound etc.), price (the price I paid, generally), and if it is a 1st edition. If you want to get advanced with it, you can do all sorts of things - add images, create labels, etc.

I use MS-Excel. My own structure is not appropriate for most non-dealers, as it includes customer, and sales record data, but the basic fields are: Author, Title (including variant spellings and transliterations for foreign languages), Description (# pages, binding, print date, edition, comments), Content coding, and I would add: Date Acquired (with "wanted" or a unique symbol for want-list items not yet acquired, to generate a want-list), and Cost (to help when time for owner or heirs to sell).

Some will want to separate page count and other features into separate fields, but I've found no disadvantage to lumping them all together. The content coding is what makes the database more useful in doing detailed research than a simple word search, and it encourages the coder to think critically about contents. I assign this from a reading or in-depth skim on acquiring a book or reading a good review, using a made-up "country codes" listing which can be expanded and modified to cover either broad or minutely detailed subject matter. It is the same coding I use to abbreviate customers' collecting and research interests, organize my stock, and name web-pages.

If eBay and auction firms used something similar as prefix to standard reference numbers, it could both organize the contents of an auction, and enable bidders to locate very specific items, or broad ranges using what amounts to a numismatic universal search term. The code list is public domain and I will be glad to send out copies.

At the Long Beach coin show last week, I had a long conversation with Mike Kliman, Abe Kosoff's former son-in-law and once married to Abe's daughter Sonny Kosoff Kliman (both since divorced and remarried).

Mike, now 78, and Sonny both attended the 1954 Farouk Cairo sale with Abe. To my and Mike's knowledge, there are only three living Americans who attended that sale - Mike, Sonny and Maurice Storck of Tucson Arizona and Massachusetts. Maurice, approx 90 yrs old, still has some of the auction lots he purchased in the Farouk sale!

Tony Tumonis of Tucson sat in on our conversation. Tony knows Maurice well and says he was given Maurice's annotated Farouk auction catalogue and numerous paper and photograph souvenirs of the Farouk sale saved by Maurice. Mike says he has Abe's annotated Farouk catalogue with buyer's names, lot comments and indications of who "partnered up" on what lots.

There's supposed to be an elderly Canadian numismatist still alive who attended the Farouk sale - no one could immediately recall his name. Perhaps a Canadian E-Sylum reader can tell us his name?

The only person I can think of is James Charlton, who started all the Charlton Catalogues on Canadian numismatics. He was a big (and rich) coin dealer who would have gone there, along with John J. Pittman, to see what Canadian coins he could buy. We know that Pittman bought some, but I don’t know of any that Charlton bought.

I believe that Chuck Moore may have some knowledge of which coins, if any, Charlton owned that came from the Farouk sale. I know I didn’t attend. I figured that if I didn’t even have the bus fare to get to the airport terminal, I sure wouldn’t have the money to fly there and actually buy something.

Alan Weinberg asked me to forward my photo of his gold Washington funeral medal by Jacob Perkins which is contained in a crystal bezel. I think this piece is somewhat different from the half dime blown into the stem of the piece of Sandwich glass, but a fantastic piece nevertheless. The Sandwich Glass Museum has a few of those blown pieces, and there is a longtime friend of mine in Massachusetts who has a small collection of these incredibly rare pieces.

There are approximately twenty specimens known of this thin 25 mm x 31 mm uniface gold (24 kt pure ) Jacob Perkins 1799-1800 George Washington piece (Rulau-Fuld & Baker 169). The reverses are incuse reverse impressions of the obverse. The legends are in Latin.

These thin, fragile pieces were likely made to wear in lockets and or mounted as pins by Ladies of the period as a very few are known in pearl brooches or encased in crystal glass lockets as this one is. A few others are holed for suspension (the Matthew Stickney piece) or in a period frame - as with the Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall piece auctioned a few years ago. I acquired this at a Long Beach coin show perhaps 8 years ago.

I thought it might be appropriate to show as it is a numismatic piece encased in glass, perhaps the only one in a period glass locket. It'svery difficult to photograph as the locket is three dimensional, the glass surfaces convex and the gold planchet itself a bit wavy with "watery" proof surfaces.

Someone told me some years ago that while Mary Brooks was Director of the US Mint, she ordered the Mint's archives destroyed. My understanding is that the older records were sent elsewhere before her time (the National Archives?). What she destroyed were the records for the late 1800's up into the 20th century. Can someone confirm this and tell me what years have been lost?

Contact Bob Julian for a summary of the talk he once gave on Mary Brook's ordered destruction of U.S. Mint records. I would love to have a copy of that talk in my files!

I was tracking it today as I pursued my own Stewart family history, and found this mention of its location in the family 100 years ago in History of Tennessee and Tennesseans by Hale, William T. & Merritt, Dixon L. Chicago: Lewis Pub. Co, 1913. v.7, pp. 1851-5

COL. DEMETRIUS MINOR STEWARD. It is infrequent for one to meet, in a city as crowded with men impatient to reach still higher successes, whether in commercial or professional life, as Chattanooga undoubtedly is, an individual who is content with the rewards which early years have brought in respect to fortune, and is willing to devote himself to works of beneficence for the welfare of the community. Rare as this combination is, it is found exemplified in the career of Col. Demetrius Minor Steward, soldier, business man and philanthropist, a citizen than whom none have done more to advance the interests of Chattanooga and its people. Colonel Steward was born at Eaton, Preble county, Ohio, May 23, 1841, and is a son of John Beam and Anna Mary (Link) Steward.

Colonel Steward comes of a military family that traces its ancestry back to Sterling, Scotland, and to a grandson of Robert Bruce, who was high steward under Robert Bruce, and was permitted by royal decree to assume the name of Steward as his family name, the first to bear that title. There is a family tradition that the family emigrated to the Bermuda Islands and came thence to Maryland at a very early day.

The great-grandfather of Colonel Steward, John Steward, enlisted for service during the Revolutionary war as first lieutenant of the Fifth Maryland Regulars, and rose rapidly in rank until he became general in command of one wing of the American forces which captured the British guns at Stony Point. He was twice recommended by General Washington for promotion and was voted thanks by Congress, a medal being struck in his honor, and this medal is now the property of Colonel Steward.

While it is not a new site for numismatic research, it was new to me. This week I learned about NewsPaperArchive.com.

It is a subscription service ($72 / year $12 / month) by which you can access 2,402 American newspapers in their database (completely searchable). Over the 241 years covered in this database the names of newspapers have changed with mergers and acquisitions, resulting in 3,306 different titles in 806 cities.

The site claims some impressive parameters: over 3.24 billion names, and over 1.08 billion articles. You can search among its 100.3 million pages.

I asked a good friend and savvy internet researcher, Dan Lynch, for his opinion on this site. "Find a library that subscribes to this service and use it there. Or try Google News Archive to be sure that you can't get what you need for free."

"Also, it’s possible that a subscription to WorldVitalRecords.com may actually include a subscription to NewspaperArchive.com as part of their overall offering and be a tiny bit cheaper. I don’t recall what is or isn’t included in their service."

Dan's latest book, just published, is "Google Your Family Tree; Unlock the Hidden Power of Google" is extremely useful in researching people and a sample of his researching acumen. Dan is an authority on Ellis Island as a genealogical resource and a consultant to The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, as well as internet sources FamilyLink.com and FindMyPast.com in London. His website is www.GoogleYourFamilyTree.com. Mention my name when you contact him.

I have been writing about numismatic research in E-Sylum for six years. Since our readers are interested in numismatic literature it is a service thankfully provided by our Good Editor to include useful information for the writers of that literature. My first such article was on Accessing Original Material and appeared in the November 4, 2001 E-Sylum (vol 4, no 45, art 8). Still good advice today.

Perhaps you have uncovered a resource on the internet useful to your numismatic research. Please share that with others of us who could also find it useful as well. That is exactly what I did recently in the December 31, 2006 E-Sylum (vol 9, no 53, art 9) when I uncovered Historical Directories of the British Empire.

The number of professional numismatic researchers in the field may be small. As one of the requirements for the job as Director of Research at Medallic Art Company in 1966 I had to prepare a report for my boss, William Louth, MACO president. Titled "How To Do Numismatic Research," it was heavily annotated by lists of handbooks for students of term papers. Best I could list at the time.

We have advanced eons beyond that today. We have the most useful tool for extracting needed information from all the data has gone before us. And a lot of that data is on the internet. However, we need to keep up-to-date on how to access it. Pass on to The E-Sylum any you use.