QUERY: ECKFELDT-DUBOIS' MANUAL OF GOLD AND SILVER COINS

PREV ARTICLE NEXT ARTICLE FULL ISSUE PREV FULL ISSUE

V15 2012 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 15, Number 16, April 15, 2012, Article 9

QUERY: ECKFELDT-DUBOIS' MANUAL OF GOLD AND SILVER COINS

Ralf W. Böpple of Stuttgart, Germany writes:

Specific issues of the Eckfeldt-DuBois work have been discussed at several occasions. But is there a bibliography of the "Manual of Gold and Silver Coins of All Nations" that list all the editions and varieties? Or has there been a sale of a run of these editions that could serve as such a listing?

As a starting point one needn't look farther than the numismatic bibliography section of the Numismatic Bibliomania Society web site. Tom Wetter has been compiling a trove of information and images. We started with The One Hundred Greatest Items of United States Numismatic Literature as determined by our 2007 survey. The Eckfeldt-DuBois work came it at No. 79. Below is Len Augsburger's descriptive text on the book and a link to the bibliography wiki page, which list three editions starting in 1842. -Editor

"A treatise on coins," write the authors, "which does not present a picture of them, is but half fitted for its purposes." Yet a decade before the numismatic boom of the 1850s, it was obvious that coin books needed to be picture books. The first chapters of this work concentrate on technical specifications of world gold and silver coinage, a subject near and dear to Eckfeldt and DuBois as assayers of the U. S. Mint. But the real fun starts in chapter six, when Joseph Saxton's steam-powered medal ruling machine is put to work on electrotypes produced from Mint cabinet specimens, most notably an 1804 dollar. The results were remarkable for the time, especially as Saxton's contraption automated the entire process.

Sixteen plates are included in all, two with American content. Another prize is the frontispiece, an image of the second United States mint, produced using the daguerreotype, electrotype, and Saxton's medal ruler - a trio of the latest technology. That one of the first American daguerreotypes was executed by Saxton himself, peering out of the same building, in 1839, only heightens the sense of promise of illustrative science that Eckfeldt and DuBois captured for posterity.

To read the complete bibliography page, see: A MANUAL OF GOLD AND SILVER COINS OF ALL NATIONS STRUCK WITHIN THE PAST CENTURY (wiki.coinbooks.org/index.php/A_MANUAL_OF_GOLD_AND
_SILVER_COINS_OF_ALL_NATIONS_STRUCK_WITHIN_THE_PAST_CENTURY)

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

PREV ARTICLE NEXT ARTICLE FULL ISSUE PREV FULL ISSUE

V15 2012 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE