SHANNA SCHMIDT ON NUMISMATIC LIBRARIES

Hello everyone! I hope you all had a nice week. It was pretty quiet around here so I was able to catch up a bit on my own coin inventory and library. Speaking of books, most of you are aware that I am on the quest to achieve a top notch numismatic working library. Unfortunately for my family the books are starting to spill into nearly every room in our small house. Aside from being able to peruse old auction catalogs in searching for pedigrees or research new inventory or possible customer purchases in auctions, the books also provide me an interesting window into the past.

Today I was putting my catalogs in better order making labels of different auction houses. I keep some of the older ones right next to my desk but others just don't fit so they go downstairs on shelves. I was returning a Spink catalog to the shelf when I decided to pull out the Spink Numismatic Circular from 1936/7 to which I have hard bound books. Just from paging through it I was able to see that some great numismatists had passed away in that year (Albert Henry Baldwin, Max von Bahrfeldt, Michael Vlasto and Percy Webb to name just a few).

I also noticed some interesting books that were just published in 1936. One was Les Poulains de Corinthe by Oscar E. Ravel which I use in my own library. Another was Treasure Trove in Law and Practice: From the Earliest Time to the Present Day by Sir George Hill who was the outgoing director of the British Museum. In that same year Mr. Hill left the British Museum after 41 years of service. Some of his accomplishments (in his words): "allowing people to smoke in the quadrangle and planting almond trees on the grass lawns in front of the museum".

There was also a string of articles composing a work on the Portraits of Royal Ladies on Greek Coins. I suppose my favorite discovery was an advertisement for the Coronation medal from May 1937 of H.M. King George VI and his wife Queen Elizabeth (for those not familiar with the Royals, the parents of the current monarch). All this information in one book and the crazy thing is that most of the academics and their works are still very relevant today.

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