The E-Sylum:  Volume 5, Number 11, March 10, 2002, Article 10

NUMISMATIC BOOK FINDS

  So, readers - have you ever found an interesting or valuable
  item of numismatic literature in an unusual or out-of-the-way
  place?   If so, please share the story with us.

  One incident which comes to mind came after I contacted
  the bank handling the estate of local collector Emerson Smith.
  Smith worked at a Pittsburgh bank and often arranged
  appraisals of coin collections.  He also knew Howard Gibbs,
  the nationally prominent collector of world and odd & curious
  money.

  After Smith's death, I called to inquire about any
  numismatically-related items.  The banker handling the estate
  invited me to meet him at the house and look around.   When
  I arrived I learned that the family had already been through
  the house and removed or consigned for sale furniture and
  other items of interest.

  What remained was considered trash, and he invited me to
  take whatever I wanted.   As it happened, I ended up working
  one room ahead of two burly young men who were hauling
  the remaining contents of the house to a dumpster.

  Why I ever took a minute to look in the tool box under the
  workbench in the garage I'll never know, but it was there that
  I found a small stash of issues of Max Mehl's Numismatic
  Monthly, including several complete years.

  A search of a desk and filing cabinet yielded a number of
  papers relating to Howard Gibbs and his collection, letters
  and papers of dealer Hans Schulman, plus inventories and
  appraisals of the John Beck collection.  Beck was a
  Pittsburgh industrialist whose collection was auctioned by
  Abner Kreisberg in the mid-1970's.   His collection had
  been in bank vaults for fifty years after his death, until Smith
  arranged to sell it after the death of one of Beck's daughters.

  Beck was as much a hoarder and investor as he was a
  collector.  The inventory included several PAGES of listings
  of duplicate large-denomination pioneer gold coins, and
  another several PAGES listing 1856 Flying Eagle cents, the
  largest such hoard ever assembled.

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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