VALE MERRILL GIBSON (1952-2024)

The Ancient Coin Club of Los Angeles announced the passing of former President Merrill Gibson. Thanks to Mike Markowitz for sending this along. -Editor

With great sadness, we report that long time Ancient Coin Club of Los Angeles member Merrill Gibson passed away from cancer on December 21, 2024 - just two months shy of his 72nd birthday.

Merrill was born in Los Alamos, New Mexico (his father worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory) and was raised there with his sister Dianna. Merrill went on to gain an engineering degree from Cal Tech. He worked in a variety of employments including working as a mortgage broker and designing web pages prior to settling down with Apollo Numismatics.

Merrill joined the Club at the February 11, 2004 meeting and remained active until the end. He served for 16 years on the ACCLA Board of Directors (2006-2021). For two of those years (2013 and 2014) he served as Club President.

In May 2005, Merrill opened "Apollo Numismatics" on Vcoins; a store specializing in high grade Greek, Roman, and Celtic coins. Merrill was a serious photographer and aimed for all his coins to be well photographed. He worked tirelessly to present large, sharply focused, well-lit photographs of his coins. He happily shared some of his tips on coin photography at our September 2016 coin photography seminar.

Merrill described himself as "completely captivated by the many attractions of ancient coins." He wrote, "Ancient coins were the creations of people who in many ways thought very differently than we do today, yet who nonetheless beat the path that our civilization now treads. People today share with the ancients of the classical world a basic humanity, often expressed with brutal honesty in ancient coin designs. ... Ancient coins were monetary vehicles, but they were also communication devices, and they serve that function still, informing and educating us about the world they were a part of, the people who touched them daily, and their creators - certainly one of the appeals of ancient coinage is the amazement evoked by an understanding of the technical skill and artistic insight of the ancient celators."

As one of his many Club activities, in 2015 Merrill organized and participated in a four-part introductory ancient coin seminar. This seminar was held June 4, 2015 at the Long Beach Coin Expo. Videos of the talks, including his talk Ancient Coin Collecting v. U.S. and World Collecting - Differences and Similarities, are available on the Club website.

Merrill will be sorely missed. Our sympathy and condolences go out to his sister Dianna and to his many friends in the Club and elsewhere.

For more information on the Ancient Coin Club of Los Angeles, see:
https://www.accla.org/