The E-Sylum:  Volume 8, Number 50, November 27, 2005, Article 5

SO WHO'S BUYING ALL THE U.S. NUMISMATIC LITERATURE?

With all the great U.S. literature sales recently, I asked
George Kolbe, "In the bygone days of yore when Armand Champa,
Harry Bass, Dan Hamelberg and others were building their
libraries, the major buyers of top-end U.S. literature were
pretty well known to all.  With the first two libraries
dispersed, and Dan already owning most everything one might
want, who are the big buyers in today's market?   No need
to name names of course, but I'm curious and was hoping you'd
share your thoughts on this for The E-Sylum.  What kinds of
people are assembling the big libraries today?  Or is the
material being more widely dispersed to a lot of specialists
who aren't intent on building a “one of everything” U.S.
library?"

George replied: "The easy, and most accurate, general response
to your various queries is: I don't know, at least with any
certainty. But that will not satisfy, so I'll ramble on a bit.

Harry Bass, Armand Champa, then (and now) Dan Hamelberg,
overlapped each others' acquisitional timeframes. Other
names could be added to this unparalleled period in the
field of American numismatic literature. John Adams, for
one, jumps to mind, as does the original host of the
disease, John Ford; George Fuld and Eric Newman were also
pioneers. Craig Smith, though largely unknown until his
library was dispersed earlier this year, promised to carry
on the tradition. Right now, I cannot provide the name of
a new carrier of the flame, though there are candidates.

Libraries are a reflection of their owners. This is trite
but true. Harry Bass formed his library on a scale commensurate
with the size of his state, though with keen discernment.
He viewed his holdings as a source of information on the
coins he loved to collect, though he was no less enamoured
of his library and treated it as such. The raison d'être
of Armand Champa's library is more complicated, or perhaps
not. Books seemed to be the end, not the means. He loved
to be the big buyer at auctions, traveled the country to
buy libraries or single rare books, and he was a great
popularizer. With the help of Armand and his peers, the
numismatic book market made great forward leaps. Dan
Hamelberg came to the endeavor as a seeker of information
and has become a keen preserver of our heritage. Library
buckram rules no more. Harry Bass limited himself to works
written in English; Armand Champa had nearly all of the
rarities but sometimes lacked more common though essential
reference books; Dan Hamelberg's main emphasis has been on
works concerning American coins, though titles on paper
currency and tokens and medals have in recent years come
under his purview. Bass left his books and catalogues as
is. Champa often "messed" with them via "sophistication"
(combining elements of two or more different copies of a
work to "perfect" one) or by binding or rebinding, frequently
to their detriment, at least in the early years. Hamelberg
has combined the best of both approaches, often housing
delicate items in protective book boxes, thus preserving
them in their original state.

What does the future hold? The market has matured in some
respects yet much remains unknown or little understood.
Opportunity abounds and interest in the field continues
to expand to a new generation of bibliophiles and researchers,
facilitated to some degree by the ubiquity of the internet.
Will material be dispersed to specialists or will general
libraries continue to be formed? My guess is that the day
of the great comprehensive numismatic library is not over."

  Wayne Homren, Editor

	coinbooks.org Web

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