The E-Sylum:  Volume 7, Number 7, February 15, 2004, Article 11

FIRST COIN COLLECTOR?

  On Friday the 13th John M. Kleeberg published the following
  item on the Colonial Coinage email list, in response to the
  question, "Who was the FIRST documented coin collector????"

  Kleeberg writes: "Petrarch, in the fourteenth Century, is generally
  considered to have been the first coin collector in modern times.
  He was very excited by the fact that by examining Roman
  sestertii, he could see what emperors really looked like.

  I once researched the earliest printings of coin illustrations.
  They  begin in the late fifteenth century, when the Netherlands
  was using Rhenish gold gulden, and counterfeiters produced
  many false ones.  In order to warn people about the the false
  ones, Philip the Fair issued placards with woodcuts depicting
  them. It is thanks to those worthy counterfeiters that the
  modern study of numismatics began.  A pity that the
  contribution of counterfeiting to civilization is not more widely
  recognized.

  Early printed numismatic literature can be divided into two
  types: a scholarly group devoted to ancient coins, and a very
  practical, modern group for moneychangers and bankers,
  designed to warn them about counterfeits and inform them
  about coins that were no longer current but only traded at the
  value of the metal in them.  Since rulers were constantly
  changing coin types (and a change in type usually indicates a
  debasement), people brought their non-current coins to the
  moneychangers, and an Antwerp moneychanger wanted to
  know what to pay for, say, a Carlos and Juana piece struck
  in Mexico."

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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