MORE ON THE CHAPMAN BROTHERS

My article on the Chapman Brothers ran in The E-Sylum on the evening of October 17, 2021. The first correction came the next morning.

NBS board member David Hill wrote to mention that I had an incorrect date of death for Henry Chapman III. He died as a child in 1901. I attribute the error to failing eyesight at my advanced age.

On Monday afternoon, Jan Valentine called to correct an error in the number of catalogs produced by the brothers. In United States Numismatic Literature, Vol I, 1982, John Adams wrote that the Chapmans issued 83 catalogs from 1879 to 1906. Subsequently it was determined that catalogs 6 and 17 were not done by the Chapmans.

Valentine also noted the count was wrong for Henry Chapman. Adams said fifty-one. Later, the Emil Cauffman sale of January 18, 1913, was discovered. It is a small sale of only four pages and 53 lots, mostly proof sets. Valentine is aware of four surviving copies.

Jan also reminded me of another Chapman story. I wrote a column for the November 1995 issue of The Numismatist, The Chapman Brothers: Career Dealers. Then Bob Vail wrote an article for the March 1996 issue of Penny-Wise. This was apparently published via a time machine since it describes events of May 6, 1996.

Vail wrote, During the latter part of 1995, I received a phone call from Del Bland telling me he had gotten wind of an article Pete Smith had published in The Numismatist, stating that the Henry Chapman Library remnants had been donated to The Free Library of Philadelphia. Del asked me to check into it as we planned to be at the May 1996 EAC Convention in Philadelphia. Arrangements were made to view the materials on May 6, 1996.

The collection was dusty and grimy from long storage with no activity. The library had no accession records and no inventory of the contents. Among the contents was the discovery of the previously unknown 1913 Emil Cauffman sale.

The visit by Bland and Vail alerted the Free Library of Philadelphia that there were collectors interested in material that had no value to their library. They consigned it to sale by Charles Davis and the Chapman library was returned to the collector community. Apparently, I had a small part in making that happen.

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
THE CHAPMAN BROTHERS (https://www.coinbooks.org/v24/esylum_v24n42a15.html)

 

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