SEARCHING FOR NUMISMATIC LITERATURE FIXED PRICE TREASURES

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V12 2009 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 12, Number 29, July 19, 2009, Article 5

SEARCHING FOR NUMISMATIC LITERATURE FIXED PRICE TREASURES

Dennis Tucker writes:

I posted this on the Collector's Universe forum last week. E-Sylumers might have some opinions one way or the other! (The CU poll is evenly split between "It's frustrating" and "It's both frustrating and fun.")

From George Frederick Kolbe's list no. 49:

"After the 2007 move, George Frederick Kolbe / Fine Numismatic Books discovered thousands of excess numismatic publications put aside over the past quarter century. Some are offered for sale here. . . . Items are listed as they were encountered; there is no index." [emphasis added]

What follows is a list of 1,179 numismatic books, catalogs, monographs, etc., starting with Pellicer i Bru and ending with Schweikart --- with everything from A to Z in between, in no particular order!

Or seemingly no particular order.... I've only spent a few minutes scouring the list's excessively abundant riches, and I do see the occasional pattern emerging... a short run of publications relating to Chinese coins here, another short run of German books there.... but even those "patterns" seem random, with no internal logic (alphabetical or thematic). They truly appear random, as the catalog copy notes ("listed as they were encountered").

This makes for a fun, treasure-hunting feeling, like exploring an old book shop in disarray. But it's also a bit frustrating, not being able to scan by author name or by theme.

I think he's forcing us to read the entire catalog. Cleverness, thy name is Kolbe!

To read the original Collector's Universe article, see: Is GFK's list no. 49 frustrating, fun, or both? (http://forums.collectors.com/messageview.cfm?
catid=26&threadid=729228)

THE BOOK BAZARRE

DAVID F. FANNING NUMISMATIC LITERATURE buys and sells rare and out-of-print works on numismatics from all times and places. The next issue of The Bookshelf will mail this week, and will be available shortly thereafter on the firm's Web site at www.fanningbooks.com .

Wayne Homren, Editor

The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org.

To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor at this address: whomren@gmail.com

To subscribe go to: https://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/esylum

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V12 2009 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE