By
Harvey G. Stack, Senior Numismatic Consultant
Last week I told of how my 85th birthday on June 3, 2013, had made
me nostalgic for my early days as a full time worker at Stack’s. I reminisced about
the influential dealers who I had the honor of knowing and working with in my
first decade as a full time numismatist from 1947 to 1956.
Of course, my knowledge also came from the collectors and
researchers I met during this early period of my professional life. As I think
about them, I am greatly indebted to them for their willingness to share their
great knowledge. All that I learned made me more qualified to do my job and to
pass this knowledge on to others.
Among the many collectors, specialists and researchers I met were
many who went on to form major collections which were later consigned to
Stack’s for auction, bought through private treaty, or brokered through our
firm. All of the following were clients with whom I became friends and who I represented
during my first decade at Stack’s. Many had great rarities and noteworthy
collections, whose items are still considered great heirlooms. Among the names
of individuals and collections that immediately came to mind from my first 10
years were Clifford T. Weihman, J.J. Pittman, James A. Stack, Louis E.
Eliasberg, Gaston DiBello, Anderson Dupont, Davis Graves, Dr. William Sheldon,
C. Douglas Smith, Harold Bareford, Fred Knobloch, Josiah K. Lilly, Vernon
Brown, Oscar Shilke, Jack Bell, Eric Newman, Walter Breen, John J. Ford, Ray
Gallo, Professor Thomas Mabbott, Henry Guttag, and Jules Guttag. I also thought
of Mortimer Hammel, Dr. Charles Green, Cornelius Vermeule, Howard Gibbs, and
the collectors who formed the Dollars of the World Collection and the Gold
Coins of the World Collection. If you read through the pedigrees in auction
catalogs, you can fully understand what good fortune I had to work with these
great people.
I cherish having known them and worked with them and I also
cherish all the things I learned from them. My experience in numismatics over
the past 66 years has been greatly enhanced by all those I met, worked with,
learned from and auctioned for over the years. And my good fortune continues to
this day. As I enter my 67th year in the business, I am still blessed by the
many people I encounter in the “Hobby of Kings.” I am still meeting and
learning from coin people, and I hope that I can pass on my knowledge and love
of numismatics to others, so that our hobby will continue to expand and
flourish in the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment