The column ran February 15, 1935 to August 1, 1943. It was not in other newspapers.

First NYHT stamp and coin editor: Ralph Andrews Barry (b.1883, OH – d. 1939, NYC)

Barry started work NYHT March 1933. Originally engineer, graduate Princeton 1906.

2nd NYHT stamp and coin editor: Ernest Anthony Kehr (b. 1911-d. 1986)

Kehr worked NYHT 1939 until NYHT closed 1966.

Both Barry and Kehr are associated mainly with stamps; but both are listed as stamp and coin editors NYHT.

The NY Herald-Tribune (for the years 1926 – 1962) can be read online through ProQuest – if one has access through library card. All the “With The Coin Collector” columns are there – but none have an author bi-line.

The coin (and stamp) column was written by Ralph Andrews Barry (1883-1939). He graduated from Princeton in 1906 with a degree in civil engineering, worked for the New York Central Railroad from 1907 until 1914 and then joined the Jobson-Gifford Company of construction engineers, where he rose to the position of chief engineer. As such he was involved in the construction of the BMT subway lines in New York City.

In 1933 he is said to have "retired" from Jobson-Gifford (more likely, he lost his job like so many others when the company failed during the Depression). Unable to find a new job when unemployed at age 50 he tried to turn his hobby, stamp collecting, into a new career. He was hyperactive at this, becoming the coin and stamp editor of the New York Herald Tribune and doing much to promote stamp collecting as a hobby, but it is doubtful that he ever made much money at this and may have been living by gradually selling off his assets.

This discouraging career path probably contributed to his early death, after an illness of six months, on December 10, 1939. He was a member of the New York Numismatic Club from 1935 to 1939 (which is why I know about him).

Journalists often keep personal scrapbooks of their own writings - the scrapbook may come from the Barry family. It would be worthwhile to check the American Numismatic Society archives to see if there is any correspondence that would shed light on this from either Ralph Barry himself or his widow, Claudine Jeanette Paff Barry.

Barry in the Princeton Alumni Weekly:
Princeton Alumni Weekly

American Philatelic Society Hall of Fame:
American Philatelic Society (http://stamps.org/HOF-1941#Barry)

Obituary in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
11 Dec 1939, Page 9 - at Newspapers.com (http://bklyn.newspapers.com/image/52774618/)