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About Us The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit association devoted to the study and enjoyment of numismatic literature. For more information please see our web site at coinbooks.org Subscriptions Those wishing to become new E-Sylum subscribers (or wishing to Unsubscribe) can go to the following web page link Membership There is a membership application available on the web site Membership Application To join, print the application and return it with your check to the address printed on the application. Print/Digital membership is $40 to addresses in the U.S., and $60 elsewhere. A digital-only membership is available for $25. For those without web access, write to: Jeff Dickerson, Treasurer Numismatic Bibliomania Society P. O. Box 578, Weatherford, TX 76086 Asylum For Asylum mailing address changes and other membership questions, contact Jeff at this email address: treasurer@coinbooks.org Submissions To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor at this address: whomren@gmail.com BUY THE BOOK BEFORE THE COIN Sale Calendar 1/4/2025 - Workman's Books 1/8/2025 - Numismatic Antiquarian Bookshop Lang 1/25/2025 - Kolbe & Fanning

 

Content presented in The E-Sylum is not necessarily researched or independently fact-checked, and views expressed do not necessarily represent those of the Numismatic Bibliomania Society.

WAYNE'S WORDS: THE E-SYLUM DECEMBER 15, 2024

Thank you for reading The E-Sylum. If you enjoy it, please send me the email addresses of friends you think may enjoy it as well and I'll send them a subscription. Contact me at whomren@gmail.com anytime regarding your subscription, or questions, comments or suggestions about our content.

This week we open with two numismatic literature sales, four new books, a podcast, updates from the Newman Numismatic Portal, and more.

Other topics this week include Tidy House coins, territorial gold, Nehemiah Vreeland, Larry Lee, fixed price and auction previews, and medallic art of the Gilded Age.

To learn more about the coins of Haiti, the paper money of Bermuda, French essays, Korean coins at the U.S. Mint, world banknote denominations, El Dato, 1795 coinage, Fred Mayer, Kerry Wetterstrom, the Thirty Years’ War, "First Shipment" 1959 Lincoln Cents, the first European banknotes, and placks, hardheads and nonsunts, read on. Have a great week, everyone!

Wayne Homren
Editor, The E-Sylum

 

 

WORKMAN'S BOOKS SALE 7 SELECTIONS, PART THREE

Lot 14: Anton, William T. & Bruce Kesse. FORGOTTEN COINS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN COLONIES - A MODERN SURVEY OF EARLY ENGLISH AND IRISH COUNTERFEIT COPPERS CIRCULATING IN THE AMERICAS. Krause Publications, Iola. 1993. 4to. 112 pages. original brown pebbled embossed cloth, gilt. Tables. 10 b&w coin plates. English text.Fine. Lot weight: 1 lbs 11oz. Subject(s): United States Coinage.

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LANG NUMISMATIC LITERATURE AUCTION 5

The year 2025 starts with a special event for us: Our 5th auction will take place on January 8th, 2025 at 4 p.m. (CET) and will also mark our first auction of the new year. We cordially invite you to participate in this fascinating online auction, which will feature a wide selection of outstanding numismatic literary treasures and bibliophile rarities.

What can you expect?

Our 5th auction includes a careful selection of literature that will make collectors' hearts beat faster. Particularly noteworthy are an extensive number of bibliophile works that will delight lovers of historical literature. The works include not only classic numismatic literature, but also rare books that reflect the knowledge and history of numismatics in a unique way. In addition, you will once again find numerous books on ancient numismatics as well as on the Middle Ages and modern times. This time, the auction catalogs section is very well represented, including beautiful bindings and sought-after collections.

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NEW BOOK: LE FRANC - CHARLES X

Laurent writes:

Philippe Théret and Michel Taillard supported by the associations ADF (Friends of the Franc) and ADAN (Friends of Numismatic Authors) have worked to provide collectors and professionals with new tools to approach the fascinating field of French essays of the period 1803 to 1870. That is to say from the creation of the Germinal Franc under Napoleon Bonaparte to the fall of Napoleon III.

The field of essays is wide: coin design contest essays, design trials, splashers, trial strikes, patterns, branch mint trials, political propaganda essay strikes (Napoleon II, Henri V...), presentation strikes for dignitaries, proof strikes, restrikes for collectors, Mint Visit strikes (Paris mint and branch mints)...

A collection of six volumes (one per period) are in preparation since mid 2021.

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NEW BOOK: KOREAN COINS AT THE U.S. MINT

Over this last year I finished an online book —a more comprehensive research effort on South Korea's first circulation coins using primary documents from the U.S. Mint's File on South Korea, now located at the U.S. National Archives at College Park, Maryland. These coins, denominated in South Korea's "Hwan" currency, were produced at the Philadelphia Mint between 1959 and 1962. This book is a much more in-depth and comprehensive exploration of this Korean coining contract with the U.S. Mint than is found in my chapter on these same coins in Chapter 4 of my first book, South Korean Coins in the Era of Development.

This book also features some later proposed coining contracts in the 1960s that South Korea tendered to the U.S. Mint, but later abandoned. These proposed coin projects are the some of the first indications of the direction that South Korea's national coinage was about to take in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This work also reveals the amount of influence that the U.S. Mint's advice (particularly that of Assistant Director Frank Leland Howard) had on the South Korean government's later decisions to produce its own coinage.

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EDWARD VIII RICHARD LOBEL COLLECTION CATALOGUES

Coincraft – Britain’s Coin Shop, has hired two PhD’s to catalogue the Richard Lobel Collection of Edward VIII material. Dr Lucia Scigliano and Dr Aalia Ahmed have agreed to take on the mammoth task, which they hope will be completed in about a year’s time. The project is expected to culminate in a three or four volume set of catalogues of the collection.

The pair previously worked with The Royal Philatelic Society on co-editing the Clash of Empires: The 1879 Anglo-Zulu War Exhibition Catalogue.

Richard Lobel has spent more than 50 years collecting Edward VIII memorabilia and his collection is considered the second finest in the world. The finest is of course, The Royal Family’s. Richard has been a secret buyer at auctions and from specialist dealers in ephemera over the years. In an article in The Antique Trade Gazette Richard Falkiner once questioned the strength of Edward VIII material, because most of two large auctions were bought by only one buyer, that buyer was Richard Lobel.

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NEW BOOK: DENOMINATIONS OF WORLD BANKNOTES

I have just finished compiling my 'Collection of Different Denominations of World Banknotes'.

The smallest denomination is a 1 Cent i.e. 0.01 Dollar and the largest denomination is of 100 Trillion Dollars i.e. 14 zeros on 1.

Many odd denomination banknotes like 7, 22, 45, 90, etc. have been issued by different countries.

You can view it at https://foxly.link/BanknotesDifferentDenominations

I will appreciate any feedback, comments & information related to any missing denominations.

 

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BANKNOTE BOOK CAPE VERDE CHAPTER PUBLISHED

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GREYSHEET LAUNCHES RED BOOK PODCAST

Greysheet is excited to announce the launch of The Red Book Podcast, a new online series hosted by John Feigenbaum, Publisher and President/CEO of Whitman Brands, and Jeff Garrett, Editor and President of Mid-American Rare Coin Galleries. The podcast delves into the rich history, fascinating stories, and exciting updates surrounding the legendary A Guide Book of United States Coins, affectionately known as the "Red Book" for its distinctive cover.

The 2026 edition of the Red Book, set for release in Spring 2025, will mark the 79th edition of this beloved numismatic classic. The upcoming edition features a complete reimagining with a redesigned cover, larger format, more than 12,000 listings, updated pricing by the Greysheet team, and more.

Publisher John Feigenbaum shared his enthusiasm, saying, "The Red Book has an endless number of stories and angles to explore. This podcast gives us a unique opportunity to share those stories and connect with the hobby in a fresh way."

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EL DATO CELEBRATES TENTH ANNIVERSARY

I am writing to inform you that this month marks the 10th anniversary of the launch of the website (or blog) "El Dato" ("The Fact," in English), which was established in 2014 and has become the most significant online resource dedicated exclusively to Mexican currency. Furthermore, I would like to present a summary of the website's principal milestones.

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TEICHMAN DEVELOPS TERRITORIAL GOLD CENSES

Saul Teichman Develops Territorial Gold Censes

Saul Teichman recently contributed to Newman Portal a set of 16 monographs detailing significant pieces in the U.S. territorial gold series. Although not 100% comprehensive, these papers serve to provide census and pedigree data for hundreds of noteworthy examples. Saul is a relentless researcher, pulling information from little-known corners of the Internet and surveying important institutional collections. While auction sites doing a great job of accumulating data on pieces sold publicly, Saul’s work expands this with considerable detail that is not market-based

Image: Mormon $10, PCGS XF40, private collection.

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VIDEO: ASSEMBLING A 1795 YEAR SET

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NOTES FROM E-SYLUM READERS: DECEMBER 15, 2024

Gilt Silver Nobel Nominating Medal
Steve Feller writes:

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
NUMISMAGRAM MEDAL SELECTIONS: DECEMBER 8, 2024 (https://www.coinbooks.org/v27/esylum_v27n49a17.html)

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TIDY HOUSE COINS, PART TWO

Indian Head cents were packaged into specially marked boxes of Dexol bleach in January and February 1965, and again in September and October 1966. Two distinct types of packages were used.

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VOCABULARY TERM: QUANTITY STRUCK

Quantity Struck. Mintage; the number of like specimens struck and available to be issued to the public. This number is important to collectors (to determine value determined by supply). But the quantity struck must be analyzed in many ways: how does it differ from quantity issued and from quantity preserved, both will influence supply, as how many were melted before issuance, were any recalled, were any destroyed in any way. (Destruction ranges from shipwrecks to insurgency, political upheaval to speculation, like the attempted corner of the world's supply of silver in 1980 with vast melting.) Numismatists are at the mercy of mint officials to release quantity struck figures but they must analyze the figures themselves for more meaningful knowledge.

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NEHEMIAH VREELAND (1856-1945)

This week I offer another in my series of articles about people who exhibited their coin collection to the public at a local bank. The subject was suggested by Julia Casey.

Nehemiah Vreeland was a lifelong resident of Paterson, New Jersey, and born there on February 7, 1856. He was the son of John Elias Vreeland (1831-1912) and Ann Louisa Post (1832-1919). He had an unusual name, possibly unique, and was known as Jim.

His maternal line was through the Post family and he wrote a history of the Paterson branch. The Vreeland and Post families settled in America in the 1600’s. His ancestry was Dutch and Nehemiah was an active member of the Holland Society of New York. He was elected vice president in 1921.

He began collecting coins at the age of twelve.

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DR. LAWRENCE LEE INTERVIEW, PART FIVE

GREG BENNICK: You'd mentioned in your answer, of course, being a private curator. I was wondering if you'd talk about - and this is almost more from a philosophical standpoint - tell me about the ethical considerations which arise when combining the roles of collector, dealer, and curator. Could you explain the differences between those three roles?

DR. LAWRENCE LEE: Well, I alluded to it earlier in that I thought genetics causes collectors and all collectors have within them a desire to organize and to care for these objects. So that's what the professional curator does. A collector is someone on the road to becoming a museum curator; he just privately curates his own collection.

A museum curator cares for somebody else's collection. Technically the same ethics that apply to the museum curator, you would want to apply to your own collection. You would want to have a collecting philosophy, for instance. You can't collect every coin out there. You just can't. You have to be focused and you have to decide what do I really want? What am I studying? What is the end goal?

Every single museum in America could potentially have coins in it and also people who give them coins all the time, but they ultimately might not need them. Perhaps they're not specifically a coin museum. It's not their function or in their mission statement. Their function is the history of Washington County or the history of Fort Wayne or whatever.

In that case, it would be more important to have the local trade tokens from your geographic region in there and you should have a much stronger collection of the trade tokens from your city than showcasing random steel pennies simply because somebody thought they were important and gave them to you.

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ATLAS NUMISMATICS SELECTIONS: DECEMBER 15, 2024

1080945 | BOLIVIA. 1837-PTS LM AV 8 Scudos. NGC MS62+. Potosi. Mountains with llama at left, sheaf at right, sun above and stars below / Uniformed bust right. KM 99; Fr.-21.

$9,500

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KUENKER AUCTION SALE 418, PART ONE

Künker, Osnabrück
Auction 418
Berlin, 29 January 2025

Künker to Kick Off the Numismatic Year with a Bang

701 lots with a total estimate of 10 million euros: anyone who can do the math knows what that means. Künker presents its flagship sale, which – as always – will be held in the context of the World Money Fair. The highlights of several collections will be sold at this auction. Look forward to rarities from the time of the Thirty Years’ War and from the world of medals. The spectrum ranges from a portrait denarius of Charlemagne to gold multiples and gnadenpfennigs. No matter what you collect, the catalog is well worth a look – even if you cannot afford to purchase all these treasures. Of course, the estimates reflect the importance of these pieces and are therefore mostly in the four-figure range. Other estimates are in the three-, five-, and six-figure range.

But no matter your budget, if you love coins, you will surely be delighted to see such rare pieces in such perfect quality!

Minted History of the Thirty Years’ War and the Peace of Westphalia

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THE BENDING WILLOW TREE

The Bending Willow Tree

In 1627, Landgrave William V took over the rule of Hesse-Kassel. His father Moritz had cared for books more than for the economy and ended up ruining the country. The new landgrave was faced with a mountain of debt and that at a time when large parts of his territories were occupied by enemy troops. William saw himself confronted with a sheer abundance of problems, which he intended to solve one by one, not with violence but with reason and diplomacy.

And it is precisely this situation that the emblem on the coin’s reverse describes, a willow tree bending with the wind in a storm. This illustration was very important to the landgrave of Hesse. It represents his take on the situation. We are dealing with an emblem here, a popular means of pictorially representing a personal mind-set in the early modern period.

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STACK'S BOWERS NOVEMBER 2024 SELECTIONS

1839 Pattern Half Dollar. Judd-96 Restrike, Pollock-104. Rarity-8. Copper. Reeded Edge. Proof-64 BN (PCGS). CMQ. The Backward Head obverse of Judd-96 was originally used to strike the Judd-93 (silver) and Judd-94 (copper) patterns with the Small Letters reverse. The Judd-95 (silver) and Judd-96 (copper) impressions with the Medium Letters reverse are restrikes prepared expressly for sale to contemporary collectors. The Medium Letters reverse was also used with other 1838- and 1839-dated obverse dies for this purpose. With 152 edge reeds, these restrikes match the count seen on regular issue Liberty Seated half dollars of 1861 to 1871, the uspatterns.com website stating, "We suspect the actual date [of production for the restrikes] is closer to the latter." Significantly, both dies show areas of considerable rust, more so on the reverse.

The Backward Head, Medium Letters restrike half dollar is a landmark numismatic rarity. The uspatterns.com website traces only three examples of Judd-96 in copper.

Its restrike counterpart in silver, Judd-95, is even rarer with only two known: the Garrett-Simpson specimen (PCGS Proof-66) and the 1995 ANA coin (PCGS Proof-65).

This sale represents our first offering for this die pairing since we (Bowers and Merena) sold this same Judd-96 Restrike copper specimen in May 1999 as part of the fabulous Harry W. Bass, Jr. Collection. The style of Liberty's portrait and the Medium Letters reverse link it to the regular issue 1838 and 1839/8 Liberty Head $10 gold eagle and 1839 Reeded Edge, "Small Letters" half dollar issues, respectively, guaranteeing that advance pattern enthusiasts will see strong competition for this piece from other groups of specialized collectors. Bidding will surely be intense before this famous rarity finds its next home in a world class cabinet.

Provenance: Ex Douglas Weaver, January 21, 1974; Harry W. Bass, Jr.; our (Bowers and Merena's) sale of the Harry W. Bass, Jr. Collection, Part I, May 1999, lot 1154.

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2024 ADVENT COIN CALENDAR, PART THREE

13. Crown

Coin collectors like gifts. This is a Silver Wreath Type Crown, 1928. The Wreath Crown design by Kruger Gray was much admired and the type design continued in succeeding years at the request of the Bank of England who liked to stock them at Christmas time to present to good clients, hence why the mintages were always quite small for the normal currency pieces.

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MEDALLIC ART OF THE GILDED AGE

How did America’s Gilded Age leave its most enduring mark? Through its architecture? Its institutions? By the numbers, the age’s most lasting currency has been its coins and medals. Consider the penny. The sculptor Victor David Brenner designed the Lincoln cent in 1909. Since then, the U.S. Mint has produced nearly five hundred billion pennies featuring Brenner’s obverse design. On August 6, 2012, one such coin minted in 1909, a rare variety featuring Brenner’s initials, touched down on the planet Mars as a passenger on the Curiosity mission. Since the lander used the penny as a calibration target, what is surely mankind’s most remote work of bas-relief sculpture became covered in Martian dust. Closer to home, but equally remote and dust-covered, there is probably a Lincoln cent in the pocket or couch cushion of every American. The New York Times Magazine recently saw fit to publish a cover story slamming the penny’s obsolescence, but no consideration was given to the astonishing success of its design. In the history of the world, no other work of sculpture has been as ubiquitous.

The Lincoln cent is one of the last circulating examples of President Theodore Roosevelt’s direct efforts to extend his era’s aesthetic aspirations to the art of American coinage. Brenner’s penny, with its crisply articulated profile of the sixteenth president, based on an 1864 photograph by Mathew Brady, was the first American coin to depict a historical figure. It replaced James Barton Longacre’s comparatively primitive Indian Head design of 1859—of which the numismatist Cornelius Vermeule (the father of the legal scholar Adrian Vermeule) said, "Great art the coin was not."

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EYE MUSEUM EXHIBIT BRINGS IMAGES TO LIFE

The Truhlsen-Marmor Museum of the Eye® today introduced a first for San Francisco, a tactile exhibit to improve accessibility and inclusion for those who are blind and visually impaired. The exhibit features four new displays that use 3D, tactile renderings of images, braille, and sound to deliver visual information. Open now and free to the public, the exhibit honors the legacy of Jay M. Galst, MD, a noted ophthalmologist, ophthalmic historian and avid collector of coins, tokens and medals related to the eye.

"Museums are places where art and objects are mainly experienced by sight. That doesn’t leave a lot of opportunity for those with low vision or blindness to enjoy museums on their own," said Jenny Benjamin, director of the Truhlsen-Marmor Museum of the Eye. "We were looking for ways to bring more sensory stimulation to our museum, so we partnered with Tactile Images, a company that specializes in creating accessible art and photography for the blind. This is also the first time we’ve introduced braille to our museum, something many visitors have said they would be interested in experiencing."

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LOOSE CHANGE: DECEMBER 15, 2024

Nigeria's Fines for Selling New Banknotes

Nigeria’s Central Bank (CBN) has imposed a ?150 million fine on deposit money banks and financial institutions caught selling newly minted banknotes to currency hawkers. The details of the fine, contained in a Friday circular seen by TechCabal, come as Nigeria grapples with a prolonged cash shortage that has left customers struggling to access cash at ATMs and over-the-counter.

The cash crisis began in late 2022 with the CBN’s controversial currency redesign policy, aimed at curbing counterfeit currency and "reducing cash outside of banks." The unintended effect was a cash shortage that led to widespread frustration among citizens who could not access cash in banks and ATMs.

The shortage continued long after the currency redesign was shelved and has led to a surge in demand for cash via alternative channels...

Kavan writes:

To read the complete article and circular, see:
CBN imposes ?150 million fine on banks found selling mint banknotes to currency hawkers (https://techcabal.com/2024/12/13/cbn-imposes-n150m-fine/)
https://www.cbn.gov.ng/Out/2024/CCD/Circular13Dec2024_B.pdf

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ABOUT THIS ISSUE: DECEMBER 15, 2024

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