I wanted to call it the "1875, Sticky Fingers Reverse," but nobody went along with me!

"This work is intended as an introduction to the business of the American Saloon and a guide for saloon token collecting."

At the 2007 American Numismatic Association Convention, NBS President John Adams proposed a NBS survey of the greatest United States numismatic literature. A candidate list of approximately four hundred items was published in the Fall, 2007 Asylum. Readers were invited to suggest additional candidates, these were added and a final ballot was distributed to the membership. Sixty ballots were returned by NBS members, numbering the top one hundred items from one (highest) to one hundred.

1. Breen, Walter (1988) Walter Breen’s Complete Encyclopedia of U.S. and Colonial Coins

Revered and reviled, Breen’s magnum opus remains the first reference of choice for American numismatists. Although justifiably maligned for technical faults and lack of supporting documentation, Breen’s breadth is staggering. Nowhere else is so much information packed into a single volume. Pre-federal, federal, territorial, commemorative, it is all here. Allowed only one book in an American numismatic library, this would be the expected choice. With copies on the secondary market selling for hundreds of dollars and no competitors in sight, this reference will endure as the standard comprehensive guide for the foreseeable future.

2. Crosby, Sylvester S. (1875) The Early Coins of America

If Breen is one bookend of American numismatics, Crosby is surely the other. In 1875, Crosby had not even the use of a telephone to aid his research. On the other hand, he had access to the great collectors and collections of yore, among them Bushnell, Stickney, Parmelee, Appleton, Maris and others, all giants on the 19th century American numismatic scene. Crosby’s dive into the primary source documentation surrounding colonial issues is beyond remarkable, particularly in light of the lack of modern bibliographic resources. Coupled with his observant technical eye and capable cataloguing, this work is properly described by Davis as “the masterpiece of nineteenth century numismatic literature.”

28. Burdette, Roger (2006–07) Renaissance of American Coinage (vols. 1–3)

Burdette’s three volume masterpiece, exploring coinage designs introduced between 1905 and 1921, is instantly the standard reference on the subject. Here is the definitive word on experimental St. Gaudens’ pieces, proof Peace dollars, and the exposed breast on the Standing Liberty 1916 quarter, to name only a few. Meticulously researched from archival records and thoroughly documented, Burdette’s legacy may actually exceed the work itself if even a few new writers aspire to his methodology. Burdette utilizes to great advantage both traditional and electronic resources and is completely transparent in his presentation. The present writer recently uncovered what was surely new and interesting information, only to find the subject already well treated in Burdette – an experience we expect to occur repeatedly in the future.

This is going to be an occasional blog; a vehicle to showcase the few medals in my collection and a means of opening up the names of the medal holders to a wider audience. I will also use the blog to feature British Army Medals from specific British military campaigns in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

I am away from home right now, but saw thru the Internet that I had successful bids in all four recent numismatic literature sales. I will have some treasures awaiting me when I return home.

Here is another story of cutting up numismatic literature. This one could well be called a tragedy. I first started collecting coins in the late 1940's when on my paper route, people would sometimes pay me with Barber coins and Liberty Head nickels. My first numismatic book, purchased a few years later, was the Red Book, 5th edition.

About 1953 or 54 in my high school English class, I had to write a paper. I decided to write on coin collecting. By that time I had purchased a 6th edition Red Book, so I cut plates from my 5th edition to illustrate my paper. At the time the cut up edition was only one that had been replaced with an updated one.

Years later when I started collecting numismatic literature, I realized what a terrible thing I had done. I had picked just about the scarcest Red Book. After all these years I still have that mutilated book.

The E-Sylum, June 14, Vol 12, #24 had comments by you and Bruce Smith about cutting up numismatic literature. I agree concerning books, but what does one do with wonderful auction catalogs, mostly ancient and foreign, when eventually there are too many to store? It's difficult to even remember where to look for specific info when needed.

I offered some of the catalogs of ancients to the head of the ancient history department at the local university and he was not interested, either for his department or for the school library.

A few years ago I visited the local coin clubs and they were polite but not much interested in non-US coins.

A friend-curator of a European museum collection said he would like to have them but the postage is prohibitive and the weight would exceed our baggage allowance on our intermittent trips.

Considered auctioning them, eBay or other, but again the postage is apparently more than people are willing to pay.

My solution, so far, is to keep certain auction series that cover my old German specialty with a computer index of where to look, plus cutting and filing pictures of coins not pictured in my reference books. One advantage is that I learn about the many variations which aren't shown, often not even mentioned, in the reference books. Also I sometimes see the same coin (same flaw or ?) in multiple auctions.

Any other/better solutions?

Prior to the 1700's, most coins did not carry a denomination."

Of course, the United States' earliest “real coins” (silver and gold) did not carry a denomination either. The first half dime to do so was in 1829, first dime was in 1809, first quarter in 1815, first half dollar in 1807 (unless you count the 1/2 on the 1796 – half what?), first silver dollar in 1836, first quarter eagle in 1808, first half eagle in 1813 and first eagle in 1838. But our copper coins did carry denominations, in words and in fractions, from day one.

Regarding the item about Google digitizing books, Microsoft was staring to do many libraries on the Internet. One of these libraries was Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, IN. Microsoft decided to pull out of this and gave ten state of the art scanners to Archive.org which is located in the Allen County Public Library and several other libraries all over the country.

They are putting many books on line, the most books are from our Genealogy Library. They are also scanning books from other libraries. I am a Volunteer at the Library in Genealogy.

As mentioned in a previous newsletter, the Lincoln Museum in Fort Wayne, closed last year and it was decided to give all of the documents to the Allen County Public Library (the artifacts are going the State Museum in Indianapolis). One of the reasons our Library got he collection is that they are going to scan the collection and put it on line. Another paper money collector, Bill Haines, has volunteered to scan some of the Collection. Bill is also a subscriber The E-Sylum.

I know I would like to put some numismatic items on this web site as I have many of thousands of books, catalogs and other items on coins and paper money.

I think the idea of digitizing the holdings of the ANS and ANA libraries' (public domain) holdings is a great idea, but Google may not be the best way to go. Some scholars have pointed out that Google has not been the best at quality control.

The Internet Archive (www.archive.org) also has a digitization program and, from what I've heard, tends to have higher, more consistent results. However the ANS or ANA go, they should be careful to ensure that strict quality controls are used.

In its frenzy to digitize the holdings of its partner collections, in this case those of the Stanford University Libraries, Google Books has pursued a “good enough” scanning strategy. The books’ pages were hurriedly reproduced: No apparent quality control was employed, either during or after scanning. The result is that 29 percent of the pages in Volume 1 and 38 percent of the pages in Volume 2 are either skewed, blurred, swooshed, folded back, misplaced, or just plain missing. A few images even contain the fingers of the human page-turner. (Like a medieval scribe, he left his own pointing hand on the page!) Not bad, one might argue, for no charge and on your desktop. But now I’m dealing with a mutilated edition of a mutilated selection of a mutilated archive of a mutilated history of a mutilated kingdom — hardly the stuff of the positivist, empirical method I was trained in a generation ago.

A random spot-check of other Google-scanned books has yielded some better results, but the general drift is clear: good enough for our mutilated view of the past, rushed through the scanning process so that Google could lay claim to as many artifacts of our cultural past in as short a time and with as small a budget as possible.

Here's an article about www.scribd.com, a document posting site. As a source of texts, it may be of interest to one of you. I searched for Patristics, and found an essay on web-based resources for translating Patristic Greek.

Perhaps the below sentence is a quote, but surely it cannot be accurate. If it is, the charges should be dropped.

"Cipoletti refuted the claims Friday."

I think you mean he denied them. Could he in fact disprove them?

1 : to prove wrong by argument or evidence : show to be false or erroneous
2 : to deny the truth or accuracy of refuted the allegations

"According to the centennial history of the American Numismatic Society, the first Librarian was James D. Foskett."

New York
March 8, 1858


Dear Sir,

An informal meeting will be held at the house of Aug. B. Sage, at 121 Essex St. for the purpose of taking the preliminary steps toward the organization of an Antiquarian Society in this city. You are earnestly requested to be present on the occasion.

Respectfully,
Aug. B. Sage
Henry O. Hart
James D. Foskett
Edward Groh
James Oliver

Meeting Monday
evening, March 15
7 o'clock

That's a real nice and clear picture of the NYNC meeting at the Chop House! I've been looking for one of the first dinner they had on January 24, 1913, and possibly a list of who's who in the picture.

Mr. Fochtman is asking about the photograph of the first Club dinner, held at the Hotel McAlpin, on January 24, 1913, which is reproduced in the Numismatist for March 1913 (page 146) and the New York Numismatic Club Year Book for 1913 (page 8). That's a different event from the one in the photograph in the ANS Magazine.

The photograph reproduced in the ANS Magazine is a photograph of the Club meeting of November 12, 1909 (not the inaugural meeting - the inaugural meeting of the Club was December 11, 1908). This photograph also appears in Mehl's Numismatic Monthly, December 1909, page 194, and in The Elder Magazine, January 1910, page 14. The same photograph also appears in Adelson's 1958 history of the ANS (facing page 157), with many of the persons identified, although with an incorrect date and with many faces retouched. The reproduction in the ANS Magazine is the best one I've seen so far.

The photographs of the November 12, 1909 meeting and of the January 24, 1913 dinner also appear in the New York Numismatic Club History of 1961 (pages 6 and 19) and the 1992 edition of the New York Numismatic Club history (pages 8 and 21), which was largely a reprint of the 1961 edition.

The date of the photograph can be determined from the dates given in Mehl's and Elder's magazines; and also from the fact that John H. Clapp appears, since he did not attend many meetings (he lived in Washington, DC).



The individuals depicted in the photograph are: Head table, left to right: Bearded man at extreme left, unfortunately unidentified, possibly Charles Leopold Podhaiski or J. A. Clarke; Joseph C. Mitchelson, Elliott Smith (goatee), Daniel R. Kennedy, Albert R. Frey (mustache), Frank C. Higgins (mustache), Edgar H. Adams (mustache), D. Macon Webster (goatee), Thomas L. Elder.

Seated at the left of the front table, left to right: Wayte Raymond (glasses and cigar), Victor D. Brenner (bearded), Elmer Sears, Stephen K. Nagy, Bauman L. Belden (bearded, appears to have a water jug on his head)

Seated at the right of the front table, right to left: George H. Blake, William H. Woodin (mustache, holding cigar), John H. Clapp, and on the extreme right, partly cropped off, William R. Weeks.

Everyone who appears in this picture is important - Brenner, of course, and William H. Woodin, who worked himself to death in 1933-34 saving the U.S. financial system, but it is also the only photograph I know of that shows Stephen K. Nagy (the son-in-law of John Haseltine) whom David Tripp describes in his book on the 1933 double eagle as "the top crook of them all" (Tripp, page 101).

John H. Clapp was one of the prior owners of the Clapp collection, the nearly complete collection of U.S. coins that Louis Eliasberg bought. D. Macon Webster, the attorney of the Club, was a pioneering African-American civil rights attorney. William R. Weeks, another attorney, had a rather uneven career: he served as historiographer and librarian of the ANS, but he also looted his clients' monies and got thrown into Ludlow Street Jail.

While we're correcting things, the Chicago Coin Club was founded in 1919, not 1933, the Brooklyn Coin Club in 1932, not 1933, and the Bronx Coin Club in 1933, not 1934.

The ANS Magazine also has a photo of the 1910 ANA Convention (although the person that is identified as Zerbe I think is actually John Henderson). That's noteworthy because there is no official photograph of the 1910 convention - Mr. "Charles F. Allen," who took the official photograph, collected money from everyone for it and then disappeared.

The photograph in the ANS Magazine (which also appears in Adelson, facing page 160) is probably a snapshot made by Edgar H. Adams, an enthusiastic photographer who also did the plates for Elder's coin auctions.

This 1889 Baseball Currency reads on the front: "National Base Ball League Season of 1889 G.E. Jarvis & Co. Clothiers and Furnishers." Another part of the currency reads "Members of the Chicago Baseball Club." Albert Spalding, president, is pictured on the left. On the back, it reads: "This bill is good for 5 per cent. in payment for all cash purchases made of us. But one bill will be redeemed on any one purchase." 12 players are pictured, including Anson, Williamson, Pettit, Burns, Ryan, among others.

A town in the U.K. is introducing residents and visitors to numismatics in honoring Samuel Johnson (presumably the author/lexicographer). People are being asked to think about how coins of the era were used, whether Johnson himself used any of the coins in the local collection, and what the coins could have purchased. It's a nice approach to get people interested in the hobby, though that is surely not their purpose.

"My sister-in-law," he wrote "a professional storyteller, was in Europe speaking at various libraries. Later, she called her mother and told her that she'd just given a speech for 250 librarians.

"Great," said her mother. "How much is that in American money?"

“The one dollar bill is the most ubiquitous piece of paper in America. Collage asks the question: what might be done to make it something else? It is a ripe material: intaglio printed on sturdy linen stock, covered in decorative filigree, and steeped in symbolism and concept. Blade and glue transform it-reproducing the effects of tapestries, paints, engravings, mosaics, and computers-striving for something bizarre, beautiful, or unbelievable… the foreign in the familiar.”