HARRY X BOOSEL'S 1873 COINAGE BOOK COVER PRINTING PLATE

In other news, an interesting item popped up at the Chicago Coin Club annual auction held on November 10th. The printing plate used to impress the cover on Harry X Boosel's book on 1873 coinage fetched $80 in spirited bidding. Pictured here is the printing plate itself and the book cover. As can be seen, the printing plate clearly illustrates the closed and open 3 types seen on 1873 coinage.

Relating the correct title of this book in print is something of an enigma. You can call it “1873-1873,” which seems to be the right name, but then you haven't properly conveyed the idea of the closed and open 3s. Boosel would have loved our modern computers, which in theory should be able to implement a font that displays both the open and closed 3s correctly.

(Author's note – we'll leave this as an exercise for the editor and see how he does! [Editor: I tried all the fonts available on this Microsoft Publisher program and here is the best I could do: . Can anyone do better?])

Boosel's other “nit” related to his middle name, which was a single letter X without a period. That one is a little bit easier to type correctly. Ye columnist was the successful bidder on this lot, and the underbidder related to me that he had other delectable Booseliana which I can not relate here, but trust me, it is neat stuff. We will have to get these pieces put back together at some point – it disturbs my sense of order to see this material broken up into multiple parts. Of course that is partly my fault for bidding too much!

For more information on the Liberty Seated Collectors Club, see: www.lsccweb.org

Wayne Homren, Editor

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