NEWMAN PORTAL DIGITIZES EARLY DEALER PERIODICALS

Newman Numismatic Portal Digitizes 19th and early 20th Century Dealer Periodicals

The growth of the American coin trade in the mid to late 19th century inexorably led to various marketing vehicles, and today the dealer house organs of this era provide an unvarnished view of the American numismatic business in its early stages. The 1870s and 1880s represented the heyday of the dealer periodical, with Ebenezer Mason, Edouard Frossard, and David Proskey holding forth on a periodic basis under various titles.

Mason and Frossard in particular were quite colorful and held back little in the way of personal opinion. Frossard’s July 1884 Numisma, for example, described a Chapman catalog “with margin sufficiently large for corrections.” Proskey was more circumspect, but his Coin Collector’s Journal remains a substantial record of the time, and contained important research such as Robert Coulton Davis’s pattern listing begun serially in 1885.

Collectors have had access to these periodicals through original copies as well as modern reprints, but with today’s scanning technology the full content is now just a few clicks away. The Newman Portal has digitized many of these - a full list is below. The Newman Portal acknowledges Joel Orosz for supplying one of the missing issues in the Elder Monthly series. We also seek copies (unbound preferred) of Elder’s Numismatic Philistine and Elder Magazine (1909-1911), as well as a full run of Mehl’s Numismatic Monthly.

Mason’s Stamp and Coin Collector’s Magazine (and related publications): https://archive.org/details/newmannumismatic?and[]=mason%27s

Frossard’s Numisma: https://archive.org/details/newmannumismatic?&and[]=numisma

Scott’s Coin Collector’s Journal: https://archive.org/details/newmannumismatic?&and[]=scott%20coin%20collector%27s%20journal

Elder Monthly: https://archive.org/details/newmannumismatic?&and[]=Elder%20Monthly

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web