THE ALEXANDRE VATTEMARE COLLECTION

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V21 2018 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 21, Number 27, July 8, 2018, Article 10

THE ALEXANDRE VATTEMARE COLLECTION

Bob Kebler writes:

Thank you for the tremendous service you provide each and every week with The E-Sylum. I have two items that may be of interest, one pertaining to the Vattamare Catalog that you profiled last week, the other relating to a Declaration of Independence broadside and Eric Newman.

See the following article in this issue for information on the Declaration of Independence broadside. Here are Bob's notes on an extremely important but little-known collection of American coins housed at the BibliothÃ¨que Nationale in Paris. -Editor

Two months ago (in the 4/22 and 4/29 issues) you noted a couple of submissions about the passing of Bernard Edison (R. Tettenhorst or Tett). During 2014 - 2016 I was privileged and honored to be able to collect and organize the R. Tettenhorst Archival Collection, which was donated to the Newman Numismatic Portal in 2017 and was scanned into the portal in 2018.

In these records is a fascinating group of material in which Tett, who was fluent in French, visited the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris in 1995 to see the coins that were in the Vattamare exhibit. I include a summary of the items from my listing of Tett's material.

Tett learned of an exhibition of half cents, large cents, and other US coins at the Bibliotheque Nationale in 1861. The Alexandre Vattemare Collection was described in the exhibition catalog, and it is one of the earliest half cent collections described in the literature.

bibliothequenationalecollection1995tettcorr_0019

bibliothequenationalecollection1995tettcorr_0020

The material includes:

Tett's correspondence with the proper authorities eventually leading to the discovery that the collection still existed intact at the library

The exhibition catalog (in French)

Tett's planning and subsequent trip to Paris to view and attribute the coins Some material to help Tett refresh his French

Tett's attribution and assessment of the coins in the Bibliotheque Nationale Collection. They include 34 half cents (including several proofs), 78 large cents, and 59 other coins, many pre-1800 and many in excellent condition, from half-dimes to $20 gold. There is also a 1850 Proof Set. Tett describes as many of the coins as he could in the time he had available.

Copies of some of the reference material he took to identify the coins

His follow-up letters in which he sent half cents of seven missing dates to round out the collection, as well reference books by Breen, Cohen, and Sheldon to the Bibliotheque Nationale

As a follow-up to this, I asked Tett why he never wrote an article about this for Penny-Wise, as it is a remarkable and fascinating story. He told me that we wanted to, but the Director of the Library did not want the government to know about the coins because he was afraid they would take them for taxation purposes.

Interested readers can access these records at https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/archivedetail/523464, the specific collection is filed under the year 1995.

To read the earlier E-Sylum articles, see:
BERNARD ALAN EDISON (1928-2018) (http://www.coinbooks.org/v21/esylum_v21n16a07.html)
ROSE M. TETTENHORST (1936-1989) (http://www.coinbooks.org/v21/esylum_v21n16a26.html)
R. TETTENHORST (http://www.coinbooks.org/v21/esylum_v21n17a12.html)
VATTEMARE'S 1861 CATALOGUE (http://www.coinbooks.org/v21/esylum_v21n26a26.html)

Wayne Homren, Editor

The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org.

To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor at this address: whomren@gmail.com

To subscribe go to: https://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/esylum

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