GENUINE COIN BOOK REPRINTS

I'm not a collector of wooden nickels, but I had to buy this one as a research project.

I had never heard of Al Schafer or Bill Jacka, but I did find several mentions of both in The Numismatist archives. The March, 1962 issue reported that Michael Kolman, Jr. (a name I did know) was preparing a book on Ohio Civil War tokens and was being assisted in its preparation by Al Schafer of Cleveland. It was added that William Jacka of Bedford, Ohio was acting as an advisor. A board member of the Penn-Ohio Coin Clubs, Jacka was described as "one of the best known specialists in Civil War tokens in the United States." The January, 1965 issue reported that at a meeting of the North East Ohio Coin Club he gave a presentation on Indian wampum, "a subject on which he is one of the country's outstanding authorities."

Jacka was active in the hobby at least as far back as 1949, the time of his first mention in The Numismatist. During the 1954 ANA convention in Cleveland, he gave the invocation at the banquet. I didn't see Jacka or Schafer mentioned in Pete Smith's Numismatic Biographies at the NBS website, but Pete did have one prepared for Jacka. It's reproduced here with his permission:

I wasn't able to find anything of substance regarding Schafer beyond his association with the Kolman book?, and evidently nor was Pete.

I don't know exactly what constitutes "genuine coin book reprints" as opposed to phony reprints, and I have no idea which titles the two reprinted. It's likely, however, that this activity occurred sometime during the 1960s, when many important books were out of print and little new research was being done to replace them.

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web