Is there a “Father (or Mother) of Classical Numismatics”?

Mrs. C-S was a very interesting person. She occasionally visited our DC club and invited us to the Smithsonian for a behind the scenes look. Today we have some real contributors to the study of coins. You might not consider people like Victor England and Harlan Berk to be Eckhel level greats but their work in the online distribution of knowledge is something to be remembered by future generations. Everything is built on what went before. The future is built on what you do today.

 

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I very much agree. (Pardon my ignorance, but was Victor England the original owner of CNG? Obviously I'm familiar with Berk and have been for many years.) As for the C-S book, Amazon cancelled my order -- presumably someone else got there first! -- but I ordered it for $12 including sales tax and shipping through Abebooks, from a bookstore in Cooperstown, NY. It may not arrive for a few weeks, but I'm looking forward to it. I enjoy reading about coins almost as much as having them. (As long as there are illustrations, I don't even mind that much if they're in black and white. I don't even mind the drawings in Emmett; I only wish that they were more comprehensive.)

The very first coin book I owned was the 1965 4th edition of Ken Bressett's Guide Book of English Coins, which my father bought for me in a shop in the Bahamas called "Coin of the Realm" when I was a young child and we were there on vacation; I had expressed fascination with the circulating English coinage. That vacation, and that book, inspired me to begin collecting British coins, a pastime that I pursued actively for almost the next 50 years. I may have sold the majority of the coins, but I still have all my books. Including the first one; I leafed through it just now.

 

Its a good read, I am glad you got a copy. I believe Mr. England started CNG after he worked for NFA in the 80's.

 

When Victor Failmezger published his book on late Roman coins, I agreed to do the photos if he would include a CDR of the plates which was done for the first rtun but most people saw no need for the things. Today, I believe the best answer is a book with no photos but a link to online photos. If someone wanted to do the work, I believe it would be great to have a website showing coins arranged by Emmett numbers drawn from as many sources as possible. A book with 5000 coin photos would be cost prohibitive but searchable (by number, ruler and reverse), enlargeable photos would be no problem if the coins could be found. The great advantage of that system is it is always possible to add new finds so the plates would never go out of date. Of course such a project would require cooperation of many people and that is never easy.