US Coins

Kolbe and Fanning numismatic literature sale scheduled

“Small but Mighty” might be a good phrase to describe the Jan. 7 Kolbe & Fanning public auction of rare numismatic works to be sold in conjunction with the New York International Numismatic Convention in New York City at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

While the auction offers only 350 lots, total estimates come to nearly $500,000 and, for the first time, Kolbe & Fanning will offer free live Internet bidding. Selected lots will be available for viewing at the Waldorf on Thursday, Friday and the Saturday morning preceding the auction.

Some auction highlights include:

• Morton Stack’s deluxe three-volume set of photographs depicting Colonel E.H.R. Green’s fabled collection of United States gold quarter eagles, half eagles and eagles.

• An example of the first printed numismatic book, Guillaume Budé’s landmark 1514 De asse et partibus eius.

• One of only two known surviving copies of F.C.C. Boyd’s inventory and appraisal of the legendary Col. E.H.R. Green Collection, this being the only copy known that is notarized and signed by Boyd.

• Dr. Jacob Hirsh’s unique annotated set of 164 proof plates depicting the original Pozzi Collection of ancient Greek coins.

• Thomas Jefferson’s 1790 Report on the Weights, Measures and Coins of the United States, a foundational document in American numismatics.

• An archive of more than 100 bank note proofs for the White faction from the Russian Civil War, a number of them unrecorded in the standard reference.

• A Bureau of Engraving and Printing vignette book, in oversize format, with a lavishly deluxe binding and featuring more than 200 steel-plate printed BEP portraits and vignettes.

• A complete set of Ennio Quirino Visconti and Antoine Mongez’s massive 1808 to 1826 Iconographie grecque et romaine.

• More than two dozen original plated Chapman brother auction catalogs, generally in excellent condition, including catalogs for the J.M. Henderson, Matthew Adams Stickney, Stanislaus Siedlecki, Andrew C. Zabriskie, F.D. Taylor and Thomas H. Windle, John S. Jenks and William F. Gable auctions.

• A small selection of rare Russian numismatic works.

• A number of rare and important titles on Renaissance and other medals.

• Classic works on ancient coins, including Ernst Haeberlin’s Aes Grave, sets of Rasche, Pellerin and Eckhel, Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum by Hans Silvius von Aulock, and other key works.

• A 1720 manuscript on coin collecting by David Jennings, apparently the precursor to his work published years later by the Baskervilles.

• Enea Vico’s first numismatic work and a preliminary printer’s mock-up of his 1558 Augustarum imagines.

• A complete set of American Numismatic Society Numismatic Notes and Monographs.

• The unique bid books of the four-part 1926 to 1929 Schulman auction catalogs of the Count Ferrari Collection of modern German coins.

• Rare works on paper money and counterfeit detection including John Ibbetson’s 1850s Eccentric Circular Turning, a run of Hodges’ Bank Note Safeguards, and early bank note reporters.

• Rare works and manuscripts on American Colonial numismatics, several from the library of George C. Perkins.

• Seven original Latin American works by J.T. Medina.

An illustrated version of the catalog is available at the firm’s website, www.numislit.com, or may be obtained by sending $35 to Kolbe & Fanning Numismatic Booksellers LLC, 141 W. Johnstown Road, Gahanna, OH 43230-2700. ¦


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