The history of modern American Numismatic starts with Crosby’s book on United States Coins in the 1870‘s. The next milestone event was Max Mehl’s buying catalog of the 1930’s which he sold to the public much like a reference book. Wyatt Raymond then took the lead with several books on U S coins and foreign copper and silver coins. After WWII Whitman Publishing started publishing the Yeoman Blue and Red books covering the wholesale and retail U S coin markets followed in the 1960’s with the Brown book on World coins 1850-1960’s and then the Craig book on World coins from 1750-1850. The coin collecting market had matured to the point that Krause Publications started publishing the monumental Standard Catalog series of books which eventually covered coins back to the 1500’s, Paper Money back to the Chinese Ming Dynasty and many other numismatic and non-numismatic titles. Krause Publications was the high point of collecting with numismatics at the very top. Coin collectors never knew how good they had it. They had readily available books with all the information they could possibly need at their finger tips. Values in four grades, mintage figures, descriptions, metallic content, historical information it was all there. Compared to other collectibles we had it made. Over the years Krause Publications itself left a large numismatic legacy of medals, tokens, wooden nickels, encased coins, pins, badges etc. And then, seemingly all of a sudden it was gone! Now all that is left to us the metallic legacy. I am told that there is yet another book in the works. Dare I guess that it will be the Standard Catalog of Krause Publications Collectibles? I hope so.
A true pioneer. Thanks for bringing this up to show how far we have come in accessibility to knowledge.
I would have to include Heaton's book on mintmarks in this discussion. That changed in 1893 when Augustus G. Heaton published his landmark monograph, A Treatise on the Coinage of United States Branch Mints, for sale for just a dollar
I think few are aware of just how far back books on coins actually go. For example, would it surprise you to learn that the earliest books on coins are almost as old as coins themselves, and they were all written and illustrated by hand ? Well it's true. It has been said that books on coins existed in the Library of Alexandria. To put things into a bit more modern perspective, I think everybody knows that the first printed book was the Gutenberg Bible in 1453. But I'll bet you didn't know that many of the earliest printed books to follow the Gutenberg Bible were books on coins. In less than 60 years after the invention of the printing press there was a veritable flood of printed books - about coins ! That's how important coins were even back then. The very first of these printed books was written and published in 1511, and I'll bet this will surprise many - it was written by a woman - Margarethe Peutinger, wife of the Humanist Conrad Peutinger. It was a book on the coins of the Roman Emperors. Copies of this book exist to this day. edit - To me this not only illustrates the importance of the study of numismatics itself, but also the important part that women have played in the hobby, and for how long.
That might be an interesting thread here; My oldest coin book. I'd start it here and now but for the fact that my books are still in storage from my last move.
