ALFRED SANDHAM'S SCRAPBOOK

One of the more interesting items we've gotten in the ANS Library recently is a scrapbook assembled by pioneering Canadian numismatist Alfred (Alf) Sandham in the 1800s. Filled with clippings, photographs, circulars, sketches, and other fascinating numismatic ephemera, it was donated by ANS fellow David Fanning, who had a special clamshell box made to protect it.

Sandham joined Montreal's numismatic society in 1865, becoming perhaps its most important and active member. Founded in 1862, four years after the ANS, it was among the first handful of such groups in the western hemisphere. Sandham worked to put it on solid footing and was primarily responsible for issuing its first medal, commemorating its incorporation in 1870, which Sandham helped bring about.

 

Sandham joined the ANS in 1867, sending in a picture of himself. That year we also find the first of a handful of letters he would send over the decades. In it he sympathizes with the publishers of the ANS's recently launched American Journal of Numismatics, having learned that "financially" it was already a failure. He said he considered it "editorially a success." At the time, Canada was in a state of flux, its three provinces being united in a self-governing dominion, and the political changes were having an effect on coinage. Sandham noted that "coins which a year or so ago were met with almost every day are now hard to be procured." Anticipating their replacement by a national coinage of a confederated Canada, he offered to send specimens for the ANS cabinet, the subsequent receipt of which were duly logged in the Society's accession book. Of course, he also donated coins to the Montreal society, noting these on a list pasted into the scrapbook.

In 1871 he sent the ANS a copy of his privately printed Medals Commemorative of the Visit of H.R.H. the Prince of Wales to Montreal, one of the first photographically illustrated numismatic books, noting that he printed only 50 of these for his friends and had just four or five left. Sandham continued to send his other publications to the Society over the next few years, but in an 1875 letter he announced that he had "completed [his] labors in the numismatic and literary line" and had decided to "retire" from it, devoting his time to other interests. He sold his coin collections in various sales, the last of which was in 1884. Sandham remained a corresponding member of the ANS throughout his life, but admitted, in the last letter we have from him in 1898, that "I am not a very active student of numismatics." Sandham died at age 72 in 1910.

To read the complete article, see:
Alfred Sandham's Scrapbook (https://numismatics.org/pocketchange/alfred-sandhams-scrapbook/)

 

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