JOHN WALTER SCOTT (1845-1919)

John Walter Scott (1845-1919): He is given the appellation “Father of American Philately,” he was also a prominent coin dealer.

Scott was born in London, England on November 2, 1845. He began to collect stamps in 1860. He immigrated to America in 1863. In America he owned three companies selling stamps and coins; the second one renamed Scott Stamp & Coin Company Limited by the new owners. Consequently a discussion of the Scott Stamp & Coin Company Limited is not included in this biographical sketch since it is a separate entity apart from J. W. Scott. This is emphasized since it is a common error to conflate the two together. Hopefully this differentiation and distinction given here will contribute to clarifying the matter.

He moved to New York in 1863 and immediately opened the firm of J. W. Scott Company, Limited, selling coins and stamps, the first of three coin and stamp businesses he would establish in his career. In 1864 he closed his stamp, coin and curio business and moved to California attempting gold mining.

From June 1867 to August 1868, Scott issued fifteen monthly one-page price lists. Only four of these fifteen issues are known in any collection and no complete set is known anywhere. Of these four only August (3 copies) and September (4 copies) 1867, and February (9 copies) and April (11 copies) 1868 are known. In September 1868, he issued his first catalog, which, logically, he entitled in the Preface ”To Our Customers” as the sixteenth greatly enlarged edition: Descriptive Catalogue of American and Foreign Postage Stamps, Issued from 1840 to Date, Splendidly Illustrated with Colored Engravings And Containing the Current Value of Each Variety.

This was the first "Scott Catalogue", although Scott counted his first fifteen one-page lists and called the September 1868 issue as his "Sixteenth Edition", when his address was at 75 & 77 Nassau Street, New York. In March of 1868, he began publishing the American Journal of Philately (AJP), and helped found the New York Philatelic Society, Tiffany No. 14. He continued publishing the AJP until December 1878. He resumed this publication in 1888. Scott's coin and stamp catalogs became the most important ones in the country.

The Fall 1869 and Fall 1879 Editions of the Scott Coin Catalogue

In 1875 Scott hired Edouard Frossard to edit The Coin Collectors’ Journal, published as a monthly in blue paper wrappers. This periodical was published from December 1875 to December 1888 with the final three years under new ownership. However, Frossard only edited Volume 1 of the first year from December 1875 until December 1876. The bulk of the remaining Volumes 2-12 were edited by David Proskey, except for the final five issues of Volume 12. Lyman Haynes Low merged with J. W. Scott & Coin, in August 1885 four months prior to the December 1885 sale.

The actual number of coin auction catalogs issued under J. W. Scott from October 23-24, 1877 until December 10-12, 1883 is uncertain. Various authors have attempted to assess this area but the results show evidence that they have mixed up the J. W. Scott & Co., and the Scott Stamp and Coin Co., Ltd., as though they were all one property of John W. Scott.

In July 1879 The Coin Collectors’ Journal, published an article on the Confederate half-dollar of 1861. Scott purchased one of the four known specimens including the die pair from Ebenezer Locke Mason, Jr., who bought it from Ed Cogan in the coin auction sale of Michael Moore collection sold at Bangs on May 2nd.

LEFT: Scott & Company, 721 Broadway, New York.
The sign atop the building reads Postage Stamps and Coins.
RIGHT: 1890 A Manual of Valuable Coins

On December 10, 1885, in order to pursue other investments, he sold the business to the Calman brothers and Henry Collin, which they renamed Scott Stamp & Coin Company. Scott retained a small interest in the company stock and continued to work as editor of the catalogs and >The American Journal of Philately until 1889, when he sold off his remaining interest in order to start a new business.

J. W. Scott Company, Limited, was his third and final company. Walter S. Scott, the eldest child of J. W. Scott worked for his father in the family business and is listed in records as a clerk.

In 1889, after nearly five years of financial struggling Scott reorganized the new J. W. Scott Company, Limited and incorporated the company and established his corporate logo. His new company published List of Prices at Which We Sell U. S. & Fractional Currency, Colonial, and Continental Bills, Coins, Stamps, Albums, etc.

In 1895 Augustus Goodyear Heaton published “A Tour Among the Coin Dealers,” in The Numismatist which read :

In 1917 he sold his business to J. E. Handshaw. About two years later, on January 4, 1919, Scott died at his home in New York at age seventy-four. His son Walter L. Scott supplied the biographical information for his obituary. His wife and five children survived him.

To read the complete article, see:
SCOTT, JOHN WALTER (https://sites.google.com/a/numismaticmall.com/www/numismaticmall-com/scott-john-walter)

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web