MORE ON THE NEW ENGLAND MEDALS BOOK SERIES

While many of the items listed in Bob Heath’s catalogs were from his own collections, we in New England were proud to let him photograph and list items from our own collections. In the late 90s, we formed a club called The New England Exonumia Society (NEES), with most of the meetings at Bob’s house. Members of the club would bring new stuff to show off and catalog. Even after NEES died, several of us would inform Bob of new discoveries and would bring them to a show where Bob would do his magic with them.

He had a specific gravity rig to determine composition if it was ever in doubt. As an industrial photographer, he had created a small portable photo stand with lights and a mount for his camera, originally film, later digital. He was in the process of converting all photographs in his catalogs to digital with razor sharp images when he passed on, a project he had almost completed. He was also gathering information on Massachusetts Bay Tercentenary medals, to update Shepard Pond’s catalog from the 1930s, a project that will probably never get finished.

The New England series is one of the nicest sets of medals in the country, mostly high relief, with excellent artwork. Most of them were executed by either the Robbins Company of Attleboro, MA, or V.H. Blackinton of Attleboro Falls, MA. My own entry into medal collecting was through the New Hampshire series, and I have rarely strayed into the other New England states with a few exceptions.

Missing from Dick’s list of Heath catalogs is the seventh volume in the series – N.E.N.A. Conference & Convention Medals including Transportation Tokens and Related Exonumia. Bob was the Medals Chairman when I was NENA President, and he did wonderful work soliciting designs from association members, working with the manufacturer to produce an outstanding medal year after year, and distributing the medals to members and other collectors.

I am the current editor of the NENA catalog and have just completed an update including the 2013 medal. I will soon be reformatting the whole catalog into a web-based product which will be available through the soon-to-be-opened NENA store at the website www.nenacoin.org. I will make the announcement when it is ready.

Most of the catalogs that were given to new editors were turned over to the Kittredge Numismatic Foundation. The original idea was that each of the editors would update their catalogs and KNF would publish them. That has not yet happened. Catalogs for CT, RI, MA and NENA (no Oxford Comma there) were included in that turnover. NH is still active, I am unsure what happened to VT, and we have never heard from the ME guy. Maybe we can learn some more information as a result of this thread.

To read the earlier E-Sylum articles, see:
ROBERT HEATH'S NEW ENGLAND MEDAL CATALOGS (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v17n01a20.html)
NOTES FROM E-SYLUM READERS: JANUARY 19, 2014 : More on Heath's Medal Catalogs (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v17n03a11.html)

Wayne Homren, Editor

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web