WHERE KRAUSE NUMISMATIC PUBLICATIONS WERE PRINTED

On the way to and from a wedding this weekend, I passed through the town of Shawano, Wisconsin and this brought to mind something I heard about when I worked for Krause Publications in the mid 1970's. Krause never had its own printing presses -- everything they produced was printed somewhere else. The huge Standard Catalog of World Coins and Standard Catalog of World Paper Money were printed by R. R. Donnelley in Chicago. They print the big city telephone directories and had the only presses in the United States large enough to print such books.

If I remember correctly, the signatures were 64 pages -- that is, 64 pages were printed on one sheet, which was then folded and cut. The number of pages in the catalogs should be in multiples of 64. Coins Magazine and Coin Prices were printed in or near St. Louis. World Coin News, Numismatic News and Bank Note Reporter were printed in Shawano, in the plant which printed the local newspaper.

I toured the plant once in 1975, and if I remember correctly, they were still casting lead type for some applications. The Krause papers, however, were printed using a process in which the layout was photographed and then "burned" into large thin sheets of aluminum, from which the actual printing was done. Once the issue was printed, the sheets of aluminum were stored and eventually sold as building materials -- farmers used them as roofing for their barns! I have often wished I had saved one of those aluminum sheets as a souvenir.

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web