BOOK REVIEW: COIN COLLECTING ALBUMS VOLUME 2

Dave Lange writes:

Library of Coins as a Collectible
I bought this as a birthday gift for my son. He has a huge collection of library of coins albums. He very much enjoys the book, and says it is a very good, long needed history and reference.

Coin Albums for the Boomer Generation
David Lange continues his magisterial coverage of vintage coin albums with this volume on the albums created by the Coin and Currency Institute from about 1959 to the early 1970s.

Like Mr. Lange, I grew up in the San Francisco area and started collecting coins in the early-mid 1960s. Back around 1964 I discovered that both the big Woolworth's and the Emporium downtown carried coin and stamp supplies and indeed, coins and stamps themselves. While I soon learned that regular coin dealers had rather better prices for coins, the stores were convenient for buying supplies. Woolworth's had the Whitman Bookshelf albums. The rather more intimidating (to a youngster) Stamp and Coin Department at the Emporium featured the Library of Coins line.

Writing about coin albums is more than writing about coin albums. Lange explains how a couple of key entrepreneurs set up the stamp and coin franchises that eventually spread to several dozen department stores around the country, only to be done in by 1980 in the face of changing habits and unsustainable overhead. Just as Lange's first two volumes (on coin boards and the National coin albums) gave us a window into the growth of coin collecting as a more democratic pastime in the 1930s, the present volume takes us to the boom and bust of the 1960s, a time of transition as silver coins disappeared from circulation and a somewhat smaller base of collectors began to focus on older series.

As usual, Lange catalogs the albums thoroughly, including several editions and a number of variants, as well as the short-lived budget "Treasury of Coins" line. The book is profusely illustrated with vintage advertising and color pictures of the albums themselves. My only disappointment was the lack of pricing information. Mr. Lange said that basically there was no record to base pricing on (although he does talk about relative scarcity). However I would think that an analysis of the past few years of eBay listings would yield some useful information. At any given time a couple dozen or more of the albums are offered on the site. There are also a few online dealers in vintage coin supplies.

To summarize, this is a fine book indeed. We'll have to see if Lange's works spur a growth in album collecting as a numismatic sideline.

To read the complete article, see:
COIN-COLLECTING-ALBUMS-VOLUME-2-LIBRARY-OF-COINS-TREASURY-OF-COINS (www.ebay.com/itm/COIN-COLLECTING-ALBUMS-VOLUME-2-LIBRARY-OF-COINS-TREASURY-OF-COINS-/322110632903)

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