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Large Group of B. Max Mehl Catalogues

Currency:USD Category:Coins & Paper Money Start Price:500.00 USD Estimated At:800.00 USD
Large Group of B. Max Mehl Catalogues
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Mehl, B. Max. AUCTION CATALOGUES. Fort Worth, 1911-55. Sixty-five auction catalogues, including Adams Nos. 17, 19, 21, 27, 29, 32, 35, 43-45, 51, 59 and 64-116. Lot also includes a copy of Mehl’s 1930 fixed-price catalogue of Dr. French’s large cents that has been annotated with modern attribution numbers and some grades. Varying formats, most in original printed card covers. Sales 65-70 and 72 are bound in one volume. Sale 113 (Golden Jubilee) is Harry W. Bass, Jr.’s hardbound copy. Thirteen with original prices realized lists; three with copies; five hand-priced. Sale 44 is incomplete. Generally very good to fine copies. Adams page 55: “The career of B. Max Mehl was an impossibility. He had at least three strikes against him: 1) he was an immigrant Jew in a then-gentile hobby; 2) he was located in Fort Worth, Texas, at a time when 95 percent of the business was done on the East Coast; and 3) Lilliputian in stature and colorless in terms of personality, he adopted a business plan that relied on creativity and promotion. Quite obviously, Mehl did not realize that he was licked before he started. He just knew that it was a lot more fun to sell coins than to sell shoes. From there, he took it one step at a time.” Mehl solved his problems with a massive advertising program, the likes of which had never been seen before in the numismatic community. His advertising in numismatic publications was fairly routine for a major dealer of the time though his direct mailings to coin collectors were extensive. Mehl’s advertising in the most popular national publications, however, was unparalleled. He became the most famous American coin dealer ever and did more to popularize coin collecting among the masses than any other person, before or since. Of his numismatic publications, Mehl’s ubiquitous Rare Coin Encyclopedia provided a steady source of income, his Numismatic Monthly deservedly brought respectability, and his series of auction sale catalogues spanning fifty years allowed him to handle far more than his share of the great American coin collections of the day. This sizeable group includes many of Mehl’s most important sales: indeed, 26 of the 65 auctions present are rated A+, A or A- overall by Adams. Some of the most important include those of: B.W. Smith (1915); William Forrester Dunham (1941); Belden E. Roach (1944); William C. Atwater (1946); Frederic W. Geiss (1947); Will W. Neil (1947); King Farouk (1948 and 1951) and others. (See mail-bid section for additional Mehl sales.).