ON FREY'S DICTIONARY OF NUMISMATIC NAMES

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V18 2015 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 18, Number 30, July 25, 2015, Article 20

As part of our work on the Newman Numismatic Portal, Len Augsburger and I have been working to get various useful references into a format usable on the web site. One reference in the public domain is Frey's 1917 Dictionary of Numismatic Names. Wanting to make sure we started with the best edition, I reached out to George Kolbe for advice earlier this week. -Editor

Is any one edition of Frey’s Dictionary of Numismatic Names any better than the others? I see a 1973 Spink version for the Organisation of International Numismatists. Does this have any corrections or additions from the 1917 version? There’s a 1947 version, too. Is that just a word-for-word reprint?

The 1947 edition, or any subsequent reprint of that edition (including the facsimile Spink reprint), which was the first to include Salton’s 94 page glossary. See below description from a recent Kolbe & Fanning catalogue for details.

"Frey, Albert R. DICTIONARY OF NUMISMATIC NAMES. WITH GLOSSARY OF NUMISMATIC TERMS … BY MARK M. SALTON. New York, 1947. 4to, original red cloth, gilt. (2), ix, (1), 311; (6), 94 pages…

"A classic reference; still indispensable, including Salton’s useful glossary listing 2800 numismatic terms in five languages."

George adds that the full title of the 1947 edition, published by Barnes & Noble, Inc. is:

DICTIONARY OF NUMISMATIC NAMES By Albert R. Frey with Glossary of NUMISMATIC TERMS in English, French, German, Italian, Swedish By Mark M. Salton.

I've also been in touch with Gary Beals, who’s working on a Spanish/English numismatic dictionary, and has been starting his project with many of Frey's English entries. For this effort, we just want to make the original Frey work more accessible. Since there are no changes other than the addition of the appendix we're doing a fresh high-resolution scan of a clean 1917 copy as a starting point for OCR and cleanup. We'll add the 1947 appendix another time. Thanks! -Editor