Posted 4 years ago
Militarist
(293 items)
The History of Modern American Numismatic Books
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.
