Last week Kavan Ratnatunga asked for more information on the 1980s Carnegie Museum of Natural History coin sales. -Editor

"At the time I was quite heavily involved with this at Spink, who were instructed by the Museum in late 1982 to sell the collection, through its branches, for the benefit of collectors worldwide. At this remove I can't recall any material being offered by their then New York office on 445 Park Avenue, but the Australian operation sold material in their auction 9, Sydney, 9-10 March 1983, and 10, Melbourne, 14-15 July 1983, although very little in either sale was provenanced to Carnegie. There were some Ceylon tokens in Spink Australia 9, lots 878 thru 883, which might have been ex Carnegie.

"The first London sale was of British and World coins, in Spink Auction 30, 3 June 1983, lots 1 thru 549. Islamic coins were sold in Spink Auction 36, 30-31 May 1984, lots 331 thru 350. The US paper and commemorative medals were sold in Spink Auction 38, 10-11 October 1984, lots 830 thru 929. The world tokens, jetons and coin weights, several thousand pieces as I recall and including the best group of US tokens ever to have been offered at a London auction, were sold in Spink Auction 42, 6 March 1985, lots 425 thru 605. British tokens were sold in Spink Auction 43, 19 April 1985, lots 254 thru 328, which was acknowledged as being the final dispersal.

"Much of the material was formerly in the private collection of the late Bill Woodside (1905-78), who was the last full-time curator of the collection (old-timers among your readership may well remember him). Some pieces were acquired by exchange with the British Museum in 1963 and others from a bequest to Carnegie by S.K. Eastwood in 1966. The collection also included many pieces once owned by J. Verner Scaife."

Thank you! Looks like there were more sales that I was aware of - I recalled only the New York, London and Zurich sales. But it takes time to sell such a large collection. Ed Hohertz pointed me to Coin World, and I included a couple illustrations.

Woodside, Eastwood, and Scaife were prominent members of the Western Pennsylvania Numismatic Society but all had passed from the scene by the time I joined the group in 1978. From 1939 through 1948 Eastwood published an occasional numismatic periodicaL called Numisma where articles on many varied topics were published. The Volume 1, No. 3 issue from 1940 includes an article by Eastwood on the "Coffee Tokens of Ceylon." This rare journal is archived on the Newman Numismatic Portal. -Editor