The E-Sylum:  Volume 10, Number 22, June 3, 2007, Article 4

WORLD COIN CATALOGER FRED BORGMAN RETIRES FROM KRAUSE PUBLICATIONS

In his Monday blog Dave Harper of Numismatic News wrote: "Fred Borgmann
retires at the end of next week on June 1. He has been a colleague of
mine on the numismatic staff for my entire career here, now almost
three decades.

"Fred's job was and always has been cataloging new issues from the
world's many mints so that they get listed in the Standard Catalog
of World Coins. It is a precision job in an age of corporate "whatever."

"The world's mints don't beat a path to our door and hand us computer
disks or paper lists of everything they produce. Dealers have regularly
sent packages to Fred to identify coins, assign them Krause-Mishler
numbers and figure out what they are made off. He sometimes resorts
to specific gravity tests to figure it out.

"All of this takes time, patience and encyclopedic knowledge of world
coinage output. There is probably no other individual who has such a
keen sense of what is going on with new issues.

"For nearly 31 years that is what he has been doing to the benefit of
the collectors and dealers of the world who use the Standard Catalog
both in print and in its new incarnation online in NumisMaster."

To read Dave's complete blog entry, see:
Full Story

[Congratulations to Fred on such a long and fruitful career.  His
tireless work provides a clear example of the huge value that authors
and cataloguers provide the numismatic world.  Whenever you find
yourself saying that the price of a new book is too high, consider
how much time and effort would be necessary to replicate the information
by compiling it yourself.  Still think it costs too much?  -Editor]

  Wayne Homren, Editor

	coinbooks.org Web

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