NNP ADDS IOWA NUMISMATIC BULLETINS

I take great personal pleasure in learning about the history of American numismatics, the (often quite unusual) people who shaped it, and the organizations which were integral to forming the hobby as we know it today. It was therefore with great curiosity that I examined a recent addition to the Newman Numismatic Portal: the Iowa Numismatic Association newsletters from 1942-1946.

I hoped when first reading through that it might provide some slice of insight into the state of the hobby as it was in the 1940s, and it did. But what I found more exciting were the lessons, of sorts, which modern numismatists might glean from its pages. The following is a list of some such enlightenment I received from these newsletters.

DO:

• Shamelessly promote the most famous numismatists you know. The INA newsletter made every effort to share the organization's notable members, including one instance where it was noted that by the way, do you know that nine of the thirteen members of [the ANA board and staff] are members of the INA? The INA roster was replete in various instances with such names as B. Max Mehl, J. Hewitt Judd, Lee Hewitt, Harry X. Boosel, Morton Stack, Abe Kosoff, R.S. Yeoman, and M. Vernon Sheldon.
• Capitalize upon numismatists' compulsion for competition to benefit the greater good. See one such provoking question in the March 1944 issue: do you know that some other state beat Iowa last year in the number of books borrowed by ANA members from the library?
• Discuss the intersection of agriculture and numismatics extensively. See December 1944: Paul Campbell was there! Guess Paul must have finished husking the corn he was so busy planting that he could not get to Cedar Rapids in the spring. That was the first convention Paul had ever missed, too.

DON'T:

• Share the addresses of every club member. The INA certainly didn't hesitate to detail the home locations of theirs in several different issues. But I guess things might have been more easy-going then. We have Whitepages online now, anyway.
• Accept cigarettes in lieu of membership dues, as INA Secretary Lewis M. Reagan did.
• Publicly blame the bidders for making your own convention auction a disappointment with ridiculously low prices. Whenever auctions are lackluster nowadays, we just blame the catalogers (but never Mark Borckardt).

See the newsletters here:
https://archive.org/details/inanewsbulletin1/page/n3/mode/2up

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