The E-Sylum:  Volume 7, Number 9, February 29, 2004, Article 8

LITERARY DEPOT LOGO

Pete Smith writes: "I own one 19th Century merchant token
(PA 590) bought long ago. It was issued by M. P. Morse in
Pittsburgh. The obverse includes a lamp sitting on a stack of
books. I suspect Dick Johnson would like to see this adopted
as a logo for the Numismatic Bibliomania Society. If we took
it from an 1845 era token, no one could accuse us of taking it
from another numismatic organization.

The reverse refers to Morse's Literary Depot. My question:
What was a literary depot? For those NBS members who
collect library tokens or bookseller tokens, do you include
this in the scope of your collection?

With its connection to literature and to Pittsburgh, I may try to
use an image of this token to promote our meeting at the 2004
ANA convention."

[As a Pittsburgh bibliophile, I have long had an example of
this store card in my collection. It is not rare. The "Lamp of
Knowledge" theme is of course very similar to the logo recently
forsaken by the American Numismatic Association. Somewhere
in my files, from my early days as an NBS officer, there are
examples of proposed NBS logos that were solicited from
members by President P. Scott Rubin. These were discussed
at one of our board meetings but other matters took precedence
and an official logo was never adopted.

I've not done any research on the token, but imagine a
"Literary Depot" was a bookstore and/or newsstand.
-Editor]

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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