Custom Bound Books

I don't know if we have catalogue collectors here, but building a Roman Republican research library has been a parallel hobby of mine to complement my coin addiction.

Some of the old auction catalogues I buy are in pretty sad shape on the outside so I get them rebound if they are key sales. I just picked up 4 custom rebound projects in 3/4 leather with custom paper. All have the original covers bound inside and where available, PRL's tipped in.

My favorite is the Ratto Martini; the blue marbled paper and natural leather is just stunning in hand.



If anyone has some cool catalogues or books to share, please do!

 

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I really do love old auction catalogues. What you have there is wonderful. They look great and must be a treat to leaf through.

 

My wife has been learning the art of bookbinding. I told her there was enough work to keep her in business just in this hobby alone!

 

My wife likes to collect old antique books (man, they are pretty cool)

Wow, those are very cool OP coin books ... they look very sweet with their classy covers (congrats)

Ummm, speakin' of cool old books ... it's been a while since I showed-off a few of my wife's cool examples, eh?

"Click on them"

Her First Edition of The Hobbit



Her First Edition of Through The Looking Glass and an Early Edition of Alice's Adventures In Wonderland (by Lewis Carroll)


Oh, and here is a cool ol' early addition of Nicholas Nickleby (Charles Dickens)


... sure, they're not in perfect condition, but I guess that's why she can afford them, eh? (ooops, sorry to hog the thread, but I always get all fired-up when I see cool old books, my bad)

 

@Carthago your Catalogs are fantastic! Big fun to thumb through, I am sure.

@stevex6 Your wife's books are great! First and Early additions are really fun to have...

 

I also see an advantage to specialization here in not having to explain details like tipping in PR or are differences between PR and and estimate sheet every time another volume is done. There is also the option of adding supporting materials. I doubt that it ads anything to what the hobby now considers worthless old books but my two volumes of Akerman each have a letter from the author bound in at the front. One discusses a rare coin in the possession of the addressee advising under no circumstances he send the coin in the post. Some things never change. He also refers to the coin of Clodius Albinus as being extremely common due to the find '14 years ago in France'. The letters add interest to the books in my opinion.

 

Thanks for the posts everyone.

Steve, very cool books from your wife! The hobbit looks extra special IMO.

The problem with books compared to coins is the space to store them!

 

Nice bindings! I have one book that needs to be rebound. Have not done the research to find a binder here.
I agree, shelf space is a premium in my home office / hobby room. I started with a two shelf case, added a 4 shelf case and now need more room. Maybe I need to purge some auction catalogs with really neat pictures. I may take the approach of removing the RR sections.

 

While I appreciate the hardcopy book, I really wish there was an easy way to digitize all those old catalogs indexing them with keyword or catalog numbers so things could be found more easily. A hundred shelves will fix on a small usb drive and allow a fighting chance of finding the coin you are looking for. After you bind your catalogs in leather and silk will you be able to use them better or will you be afraid to soil them with handling? We have to decide whether we are after the information value or the physical book as primary interest.

 

All of the above, Doug. It's a matter of preservation too. Some of the catalogues above were completely split in 2, usually where the thick plates meet the catalogue portion. Further handling will have them falling completely apart.

They are a joy to look through when they are secure and I'm not worried about soiling them. They are bound for my personal pleasure and they look fabulous in my bookcase. I have a lot of digitized sources for efficient review, but nothing beats the original plates, buyers names, and to a lesser extent the text when running down provenances.

 

There are a few hurdles to digitizing the classic catalogues in a searchable manner. First, many are written in foreign languages - most commonly French and German. Second, most cited to references that are less frequently used today (i.e. BMC and Babelon for the Roman Republic). So, unless you added some ccncordances to the indexing of the old catalogue entries, users would have to search with the old reference citations. Acsearch seems to be adding more prewar catalogues to their searchable site. However, you won't get hits on them with Crawford numbers.

 

Let me know when you get it figured out! I need a solution too!

 

Don't count on me. I'm happy to peruse my old catalogues by hand, particularly after they've been nicely rebound, like yours and like the two I had done recently...

 

My collection is small enough that I'm trying to collect all auction catalogs in which any of my coins appear. I think my favorite is the "Catalogue of Part II of the Celebrated Collection of Coins formed by the late Richard Cyril Lockett, Esq. [1873-1950], Glendining’s, London, October 27, 1955. It's a little worn and no beautiful custom bindings like yours, but this coin from my collection, is Lot 714:

 

Sweet Mother of Zeus, those are some sexy catalogue skins! Very classy!!

Well played C!

 

Ancientnut, that's a great coin with a great provenance! I wouldn't be surprised if you could trace it back further than Lockett. I know Glendining issued post-sale, priced and named versions of their catalogues. Not sure whether they did this for Lockett, but if they did, it would be fun to know who bought your coin and what they paid.

 

The dealer who represented me at Roma auction VIII where the coin was purchased has an extensive collection of catalogs, including the Lockett collection, and told me that lot 714 sold for £290, "the most realized for any Messana in this auction." Unfortunately, he doesn't have the name of the buyer...

 

And you can also use that information to research it forward. For instance, I have a coin that was sold in Cahn-Hess Haeberlin 1933 to Niggeler and I just found a picture of it in a book that references this morning that credits it to Niggeler's collection. It wasn't in the famous sale of his collection though in the 1960's.

 

To have a chance to complete my coin/catalog collection, I need this one: Carl Adolph Gottlob von Schachmann Collection, Catalogue raisonné d'une collection de médailles, Liepzig, 1774.
I found this copy for sale for $1,637 plus shipping!
http://www.biblio.com/book/catalogu...&utm_medium=product&utm_campaign=feed-details
This coin from my collection is illustrated on page 55. It is a woodcut, since it was published before the era of photography arrived, but it is obviously my coin:

 

I agree here but there is also a great opportunity for adding comments to these classic catalogs correcting errors that continue to spread misinformation every time someone references them. My favorite example is a great Alexandria mint denarius of Septimius Severus that was misread in the classic Arnold sale catalog in 1984 (lot 70) that was so nice it had been picked by Seaby to illustrate Roman Silver Coins #262 even though the photo is clear enough to show that it was not that coin (not in 1969, not in 1984 and not today). I do not know where that problem originated. I would really prefer the next books use a coin that really is as it is listed. This is more likely to happen when we start using old references critically rather than faithfully. Being able to add a note to such things, to me, offsets problems that can be lessened by programming tricks that are becoming more amazing every day. Having a search engine respond (preferably as an option) to all permutations of Craw., Syd., BMC and whatever comes next (CRRO?) is a matter of someone telling the thing to. Just as we now recall when calculators did nothing better than adding machines, the search capabilities I will never live to see should be very interesting.