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An Original 1875 Crosby in a Nova Constellatio Binding

Currency:USD Category:Coins & Paper Money Start Price:1,200.00 USD Estimated At:1,800.00 USD
An Original 1875 Crosby in a Nova Constellatio Binding
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Crosby, Sylvester S. THE EARLY COINS OF AMERICA; AND THE LAWS GOVERNING THEIR ISSUE. COMPRISING ALSO DESCRIPTIONS OF THE WASHINGTON PIECES, THE ANGLO-AMERICAN TOKENS, MANY PIECES OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN, OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES, AND THE FIRST PATTERNS OF THE UNITED STATES MINT. Boston: Published by the Author, 1875. 4to, original black half morocco, gilt; pebbled cloth sides with gilt impression of the Nova Contellatio "mark" on front; speckled page edges; marbled endpapers. (2), v, (5), (11)-381, (1) pages; 110 wood engravings in the text; 2 folding heliotype manuscript facsimiles; 10 fine heliotype plates of coins and tokens with original tissue guards. Front board detached, but present; spine neatly reinforced with black cloth strips; inner hinges reinforced. Housed in later slipcase. Very good or so. Arguably the best, and certainly the most enduring, work on American numismatics ever written. Sylvester Sage Crosby began gathering information for his magnum opus in the late 1860s. Nominally the head of a committee of six appointed by the New England Numismatic and Archaeological Society to publish a work on early American coinage, he soon found himself alone in that pursuit. Not only was the research and composition of the work done almost entirely by Crosby, ultimately he also had to publish it. "It is truly the keystone to any library of American coinage." -- Eric P. Newman. Copies encountered with the gilt impression of the Nova Constellatio "mark" on the front cover were specially bound for the author, and it is a fitting binding for such a work. State with overprinted coin numbers on Plate IV; state with photographically reproduced handwritten coin numbers on Plate V (present, according to Newman, only on "a few specimens," though seemingly more common that he thought). Coin 15a on Plate VII hand-numbered in pencil, apparently as always. Without the handwritten correction, occasionally seen, to Miss Eliza Susan Quincy's name in the subscribers' list on page 381. Voted No. 2 on the Numismatic Bibliomania Society's "One Hundred Greatest Items of United States Numismatic Literature." Attinelli 105. Clain-Stefanelli 12115*. Davis 291. Grierson 218. Sigler 603. Ex Kolbe Sale 60, lot 141.