COIN CATALOGUERS AND COMPANY STYLE SHEETS

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V17 2014 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 17, Number 7, February 16, 2014, Article 17

I checked in this week with Mark Van Winkle of Heritage to confirm that I should continue running their ad for coin cataloguers. Here’s his response, which touches on the traits of good catalogers. -Editor

Yes indeed, please keep running the ad. It has everything to do with the tremendous collections we have been lucky enough to have consigned to us recently. I receive one or two responses each week, although I don’t always know whether it’s from The E-Sylum or our website.

Searching for catalogers is an interesting process. Sometimes it just seems so random. For years I’ve operated under the assumption that there were just two elements needed to make a good cataloger: broad-based knowledge of U.S. coins and the ability to write. What I have recently realized is a third component is necessary: trainability. A cataloger cannot be so entrenched in writing one way that he or she cannot easily adapt to the company Style Sheet. And as I have emphasized to all applicants, the importance of the Style Sheet is not a control mechanism on my part; rather, conformity to it gives the appearance that the catalog was written by one person. Plus, we don’t want goofy things slipping into print, like one cataloger capitalizing Quarter and everyone else writing it as quarter. Neither is right or wrong, it’s just that the lower-case spelling has been adapted as our company’s style. This naturally slows down the new cataloger, but speed increases as the Style Sheet becomes second nature.

It’s a slow process. So far I have been able to hire one new cataloger, John Sculley. John looks like he has the makings of a fine cataloger, and his speed has increased dramatically over the past two months. Next Monday, we have a new prospective cataloger beginning who shows promise. He was an applicant who really underscored the importance of trainability. He is 22 years old, not employed in numismatics, lives in a rural area with no internet access, was home-schooled, and has not attended college. But he knows coins, writes very well, and after reading the Style Sheet, he was able to describe several test coins well enough that I thought he was definitely trainable.

Wayne Homren, Editor