215

EARLY AMERICAN CENTS, SIGNED BY SHELDON

Currency:USD Category:Coins & Paper Money Start Price:50.00 USD Estimated At:100.00 USD
EARLY AMERICAN CENTS, SIGNED BY SHELDON
A buyer’s premium of 17.5% will be added to the cost of all lots purchased. See shipping info and full terms.
Sheldon, William H., with the collaboration of H.K. Downing and M.H. Sheldon. EARLY AMERICAN CENTS, 1793–1814. AN EXERCISE IN DESCRIPTIVE CLASSIFICATION WITH TABLES OF RARITY AND VALUE. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949. First edition. 8vo, original tan cloth, gilt; jacket. xvi, 339, (1) pages; 51 plates. Jacket lightly worn; inscribed by Sheldon to Del Bland on the flyleaf. Near fine. A modern numismatic masterpiece. Tracing the checkered course of numismatic research in America, John J. Ford, Jr., in his introduction to Don Taxay’s 1963 Counterfeit, Mis-Struck, and Unofficial Coins, writes: “It was not until the period of WW-II, that … Dr. W.H. Sheldon, expunging the entire past literature on the large coppers, 1793–1814, wrote his brilliant and original Early American Cents.” Far from being a dry, statistical treatise, Penny Whimsy, as it came to be popularly known by the title of the second edition, is written in a most engaging and entertaining style. As Jack Collins once observed, there is a note of “whimsy” even in the formulation of the original title: M.H. Sheldon was the author’s typewriter. Less frequently encountered signed by the author than Penny Whimsy.