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Early American Cents

Currency:USD Category:Coins & Paper Money Start Price:35.00 USD Estimated At:50.00 USD
Early American Cents
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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 above average but with light wear; Linn's Stamp News stamps to endpapers. 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. Voted as one of the Numismatic Bibliomania Society's "One Hundred Greatest Items of United States Numismatic Literature."