COIN COLUMNIST BARBARA ANN LYON

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V27 2024 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 27, Number 45, November 10, 2024, Article 15

E-Sylum Feature Writer and American Numismatic Biographies author Pete Smith submitted this article on numismatic newspaper columnist Barbara Ann Lyon. Thanks! -Editor

Last week I mentioned coin columnist Barbara Lyon. This week I tried to find out more about her.

Barbara Lyon was born (possibly) on November 28, 1938, the daughter of William R. Lyon (1918-1990) and Sonja Kowha Lyon (1919-2006). William was a self-employed fur buyer. Barbara worked as a secretary.

Her interest in coin collecting began as a child when her grandfather gave her an Indian Head Quarter Eagle. She was a wooden money collector and served on the membership committee for the International Organization of Wooden Money Collectors. She was publicity chairman for The Wooden Nickel Society of America.

Barbara lived in Pleasant Valley, New York. In 1962, she was involved with the formation of the Pleasant Valley Stamp Collectors' Club. This became the Ferrary Society, named after an important European collector. It was later known as the Ferrary Numismatic Society. Barbara Ann Lyon was very active and served as club secretary and president in 1972. She had a specialized collection of stamps featuring Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In 1963, Lyon contributed Numismatically Speaking to The Register Herald of Pine Plains, New York; The News Review of Riverhead, Long Island; The Pleasant Valley News in New York; The News Republican in Millerton, New York, and probably more.

In 1964, Barbara offered her column free to any paper that wished to publish it. She asked only that the paper return a tear sheet with the article.

Barbara Lyon contributed the Realm of Coins column to the Asbury Park Press beginning with the issue of April 3, 1965. That first column appeared with no introduction.

Her column, The Realm of Coins continued until April 26, 1970. At the time, Ed Reiter was a staff writer for the Asbury Park Press. He continued the column with the issue of May 17, 1970. He went on to be one of the most successful coin columnists syndicated through the New York Times.

Barbara Lyon contributed The World of Coins in as many as twenty papers at various times. These are examples:

Although the columns theoretically ran weekly, there were seldom four issues in a month. There is little overlap in the publication date of these papers and few examples of the same column running in two papers.

The Morning Pioneer identified her as an editor with Numismatic Information Service. That name has been connected to several other numismatists, including Don Taxay around the same time.

Last week I mentioned that Barbara was a member of the Amateur Coin Collectors Club and writer for the ACCC Bulletin. She took over as editor of the Bulletin upon the death of founder William Hibbert.

Barbara married Frederic Luis White (1938-2017) of Poughkeepsie, NY, on December 31, 1972.

She retained her interest in stamps. In 1974 she was secretary of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Philatelic Society and in 1973-75 assistant treasurer of the Ferrary Philatelic Society.

In 1975 she began contributing a column to Coin Collectors Digest. About the same time, she wrote a column for Antique and Art Weekly.

In 1977, as Barbara White, she received the NLG Maurice Gould Literary Award as best coin columnist for The World of Coins in The Newtown Bee. I could not find those columns in the newspaper's archives.

She was still living at the time of Frederic's death in 2017. They were living at The Hideout at Lake Ariel, Pennsylvania.

Most of her columns are not available on the Newman Numismatic Portal or the newspapers.com website.

Barbara Lyon's first column in the Asbury Park Press was followed by this brief item:

When Silberman was unsuccessful with this effort, he placed an ad in Coin World promoting a club for collecting old large cents. That was the beginning of the Early American Coppers Club, but that's another story.

Thanks, Pete. It's interesting to see the connections among people in the hobby. Once hooked, it tends to be a lifetime interest, and collectors interact and overlap in time and space. I didn't know Barbara or Herb, but often spoke with Ed Reiter at coin shows. And while I didn't actively collect large cents, I've been a member of EAC and attended a couple of their conventions.

It's also interesting to see the widespread interest in numismatics in the 1960s, reaching into small towns everywhere, not just the big cities. Today's technology enables worldwide publication directly to interested readers everywhere, without the need for other publishers. That's generally a good thing, but the publishing industry is quite different today. -Editor