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ERASED WURTZBACH INSCRIPTION: ARTHUR L. GRAY?Last week Wayne Myers asked for our help in deciphering the erased name in a reinscribed copy of Carl Wurtzbach's Massachusetts Silver book. "Frank J. Kelly" was overwritten on Wayne's copy #20. All I could read was an "L" for the middle initial. -Editor  Ron Haller-Williams writes: "Definitely "L" as middle initial, with first letter of surname being "G" or "P". I think "Gray" or just possibly "Grady". "Arthur L Gray" is a distinct possibility, but I don't have that much confidence ... "My method: Create an "underlayer" the same tone as average background. Then delete the bits of the new name, so they don't continue to scream at you. Now see what's left. I then played around with brightness and contrast, then "posterised" it." I thought of "Arthur" as well, but was too unsure to pose it. Great idea! Here's what Ron found. -Editor  I now think "Arthur L. Gray" is much more likely. I looked for the name on the Newman Portal and found an Arthur L. Gray buying coins in 1943 and 1944. The Wurtzbach book was published in 1937, but Ron found a sale of the Arthur L. Gray coin collection in a 1939 Morgenthau sale and wondered if this was the same person. As it turns out, Arthur Gray continued buying coins after the sale of his collection, so it does seem to be the same numismatist. Ron found this passage in the 2017 Pogue V sale of a 1793 Sheldon-13 Large Cent (lot 5090). -Editor In 1943, this coin turned up among the remnants of Virgil Brand's remarkable hoard. The fertile Burdette G. Johnson archives provide the first documentary appearance of this coin since it was published in the American Journal of Numismatics in 1869. Arthur L. Gray, a druggist from Saginaw who continued to collect even after he consigned a superb collection to the February 1939 J.C. Morgenthau & Co. sale, was sent this coin on August 23, 1943. To read the sale catalogs on the Newman Portal, see:
Ron adds: I really don't think Carl would have struck somebody like Gray off the list -- maybe not put him on the list, but I can't see a striking-off (unless something really bad happened between them during a fairly-narrowly-defined space of time). Even the 1939 sale hadn't happened by the time Frank acquired it. what if Carl Wurtzbach accidentally inscribed two copies to Arthur Gray, and altered the second one? - e.g. broke for a meal etc in between, without having ticked off Arthur Gray on the list he (Carl) was working from. Wayne Myers writes: "Thank you! Do any of our readers have a copy dedicated to Arthur Gray? I guess we will never know why this was erased." Great mysteries always raise new questions. Thanks, everyone! -Editor To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
 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 All Rights Reserved. NBS Home Page Contact the NBS webmaster 
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