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First Edition Crosby with 1878 Title Page

Currency:USD Category:Coins & Paper Money Start Price:850.00 USD Estimated At:1,300.00 USD
First Edition Crosby with 1878 Title Page
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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: Estes & Lauriat, 1878. 4to, later green cloth lettered in white. (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 bound in at the end. Ex Cambridge Public Library, with various markings and labels. Very good. An ex-library copy, but one without many of the more alarming library markings often seen. The full story of the publication of this remarkable book is told in the lot description above. After distributing the title for a few years, Crosby sold a number of copies to Boston publishers Estes & Lauriat, who printed a new title page listing them as the publisher. Eric P. Newman has estimated the version with the 1878 title page to have comprised ten percent or less of the entire printing of the first edition (i.e. thirty-five or fewer copies); this figure may be too low, but it's still considerably scarcer than the usually seen 1875 title. State with overprinted coin numbers on Plates IV and V. 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 58 (1994), lot 1164.