NUMISMATIC LIBRARIES AND ESTATE PLANNING

It was good to read about the shelves of Gordon Frost references at the ANS Library in last week's issue.

Many years ago, Gordon walked up to my club table for IBNS, NI, NBS, etc., at an ANA Convention and looked at the stacks of references on the table behind me that I was giving away. He asked me how I determined who would receive them and we finished talking several hours later. Later, he introduced me to his close friend, John Huffman, and the three of us had many lunches and dinners together at ANA Conventions.

Not long before Gordon passed away, he came up to my club table with a couple of boxes of about 50 references on a small cart. He told me these references needed to find a good home and he was tasking me to find those homes. OK. I must say he was not the only person to give me references but several of his were scarce to rare! I divided the references into many stacks; Asian, Roman, Greek, etc. When I went to a show or event, I would think about collectors who would likely attend it. I would email them and bring one or more stacks with me.

All of the books found a good home except about the last five or six. Then I remembered the youngest member of our monthly Northern Virginia Nummis Nova Dinner group was building his library. So a couple of months ago, I bagged up the last of Gordon's references, plus some extras from my library, and gave them to the young man. I know Gordon is looking down on me and telling me I did the right thing with his donation.

John Huffman and Gordon were very close friends. So close that they could almost finish each other's sentences. After Gordon passed away, John was tasked to sell, donate, etc. Gordon's vast holdings. At the last Nummis Dinner John attended, he was having trouble swallowing his food. A couple of weeks later, I invited him to attend a lunch with on old collector in Washington, DC. He ate very little, but I did not notice at the time because he was having an excellent conversation with my friend. Awhile later, I flew over to my home in Viet Nam. John then sent me an email that he had advanced cancer and he started to disperse his library and coin collections. He completed his task and settled his estate with his family, but he passed away before I returned to the USA to see him one more time.

Both of the above bibliomaniacs had a strong influence on me and what I should do with my personal library. So I started dispersing mine. Most of my non-numismatic books for Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines have gone to the Dalley Book Service, except everything Philippines is going to the CookieJar. The CookieJar owner is Ray Czahor and he has frequent auctions of Philippines-only lots, and George Dalley is an old Laos hand who loves books about Southeast Asia. There are no references in my library that are wanted by the ANA and ANS libraries but I do donate my new books to them.

It was difficult to change from being an accumulator, but I have started the process of lessening my holdings so my executor does not have too big of a job selling and donating it. In a related matter, I try to end all of my talks around the country with a plea to the attendees to please draw up a will and include all of their numismatic holdings in it with the name of a person they trust to dispose of it for them. Too many personal libraries end up in junk book stores or even dumpsters.

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see: THE FROST SHIPS AND SHIPWRECKS SHELVES AT THE ANS LIBRARY (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v16n42a06.html)

Wayne Homren, Editor

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