TWENTY QUESTIONS INSPIRED BY MICHAEL POWILLS CORRESPONDENCE

Long a popular parlor game in the United States, "Twenty Questions" became a successful radio quiz program in the 1940s and in the early 1950s it became a popular early television game show.

The version of the quiz presented here adheres to none of the original rules and is merely a device to induce E-Sylum readers to locate the answers, all of which are included in the description of lot 482 in the January 8, 2011 Kolbe and Fanning auction sale catalogue, accessible at www.numislit.com or in the mail to those on the Kolbe and Fanning mailing list.

Your compiler, George Kolbe, freely admits to shameful self-promotion, yet a modicum of "altruism" is also involved. The auction lot by its very nature appeals to a limited number of potential buyers, but its content is of interest to most any numismatic researcher or bibliophile. I had great fun writing the four page plus description and I think that many E-Sylum readers will have fun reading about the numismatic career of Chicagoan Michael Powills and his fascinating cast of characters.

Let the game begin.

1) Who was the leading numismatic literature dealer in mid-twentieth century America?

2) In the late 1930s, who handled the sale of duplicates from the Virgil Brand library?

3) Who had a 35 minute audience with King Farouk in Koubbeh palace in 1948, during which His Majesty expressed the desire to write articles for "The Numismatist"?

4) Which numismatist offered to "check into" King Farouk's "extensive collection of erotica" on behalf of the “Curator of the Institute for Sex Research, Inc. Founded by Alfred C. Kinsey”?

5) Who complained in 1947 of Frank Katen that "his britches are a little too tight for him right now"?

6) What was the policy of Frank Stewart that curtailed distribution of his 1924 book on the Philadelphia Mint?

7) Which American coin auctioneer was the exclusive distributor of Carl Würtzbach's "Massachusetts Colonial Silver" album in the late 1930s?

8) How long ago was Dick Johnson working on a "glossary of numismatic terms"?

9) Who took over William Hesslein's business after he absconded in 1932?

10) How much did it cost Ludger Gravel to publish the partial catalogue of his collection of historical medals?

11) Which numismatic bibliography author hoped that the American Numismatic Association would publish his work?

12) In 1946, who claimed to have the largest private collection of coins and money in the world?

13) Is M.H. Bolender's given name Milferd or Milford?

14) Who complained in 1949 about perceived impropriety in awarding the ANA auction contract to Abe Kosoff?

15) What prompted Frank Lapa to declare in 1973 that "I'm ready to take the deep 6…"?

16) Why are so many copies of John Ward's classic 1902 London work "Greek Coins and Their Parent Cities" found in the United States?

17) Which American coin dealer is quoted as having opined in 1929 about Virgil Brand's coin collection that "he would not hesitate to guarantee that he could realize by auction between two and a half and three and a half million dollars, and…he would not live long enough to see the fulfillment of the assignment!”?

18) Which subsequently convicted felon proposed the founding of the Professional International Numismatic Guild at the 1966 ANA Convention?

19) How many copies of Carothers' 1930 "Fractional Currency" were printed and did the author write it from an economic perspective or with coin collectors in mind?

20) Who, in the early 1930s, had “bought over 10,000 copies of ‘Numismatist' within the past year and sold three times as many as Duffield in that time…”?

To visit the Kolbe & Fanning web site, see: www.numislit.com

Wayne Homren, Editor

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