NEWMAN PORTAL REACHES AUCTION MILESTONE

Newman Portal Reaches 90% Coverage of John Adams’ United States Numismatic Literature, Volume One

John Adams’ United States Numismatic Literature, published in 1982, set the starting point for researchers and literature collectors pursuing 19th century numismatic auction catalogs. While a very few already had access to the American Numismatic Society’s Dictionary Catalogue, a massive set reproducing the card catalog in the ANS library, Adams’ work captured the most pertinent information in a single, manageable volume. Collectors could now work toward completion of a given series, checking off each catalog as it entered their library.

The Newman Portal, early on, set a goal of scanning every catalog listed in Adams, and this task is now 90% complete with over 1,000 catalogs scanned to date. The majority of these were scanned at the American Numismatic Society, with Dan Hamelberg also providing important catalogs in the Chapman, Cogan, and other series.

The Newman Portal further acknowledges Martin Gengerke, who provided valuable metadata, in electronic form, derived from his work American Numismatic Auctions. Gengerke’s data considerably simplified the task of entering each catalog into the Newman Portal database. (We were amazed that this information still existed in digital form – originally published in 1985, it has survived several generations in the computer era, reflecting Gengerke’s commitment to preserving the work.)

Auction catalogs on the Newman Portal:
https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/auctioncompanies

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web