The E-Sylum:  Volume 7, Number 43, October 24, 2004, Article 9

THICKEST NUMISMATIC BOOK

  Bill Spengler of Colorado Springs writes: "Too bad that Pete
  Smith narrowed his "quest to identify the thickest numismatic
  book" with the parenthetical qualifier "by page count" for I
  may have in my library literally the thickest numismatic tome
  by linear measurement.  However, if page count is the basic
  criterion for "thickness", then my book falls well short of many
  cited by others, especially the Krause SCWCs.  But if Pete
  should accept bound manuscripts as a category of numismatic
  books separate from printed ones, mine would certainly rate
  high in both thickness and page count.

  Because my book is so unusual -- in fact unique by definition
  -- I think it merits reporting to Numismatic Bibliomaniacs
  anyway.  It is a manuscript of 890 pages entitled simply
  "ORIENTAL COINS" written in black ink in a very legible,
  even elegant hand, on heavy paper measuring 8"x10"
  watermarked variously "A Pirie & Sons/1905" (sometimes
  1908) or "POLTON/AIR-DRIED/VELLUM".  It is bound
  in red leather and weighs seven pounds.  Its thickness cover-
  to-cover is 4 inches, the pages alone being 3 1/2 inches thick.
  It contains 1683 coin types and sixteen amulets.  In style it
  comprises actual-size photographs of obverse and reverse
  of each type pasted onto the even (lefthand) pages with full
  attributions written on the odd (righthand) pages, from one
  to as many as twenty coins per pair of pages.  A few pages
  are blank, apparently to allow insertion of additional coin types.

  In content the manuscript covers, in a more or less West-to-
  East geographical orientation, "Oriental" coins of the Umayyad
  ("Amawi" per Lane-Poole) and Abbasid Arabs, Samanids/
  Ghaznavids/Seljuqs, various Turkish dynasties through the
  Ottomans, Ilkhans ("Mongols of Persia"), ancient and Islamic
  dynasties of India and Afghanistan, then Indo-Greeks, Indo-
  Scythians, Sassanians, Ceylon, Siam, Burmah. Tibet and
  Japan, ending with 230 pages on China.  It manages to
  present in passing quite a few unusual and well-preserved
  coin types.

  Unfortunately, the author/scribe is not identified and the
  manuscript offers little evidence as to whom he might have
  been.  It does bear an attractive bookplate of the FREDERICK
  TOWNSEND WARD MEMORIAL FUND of the famous
  ESSEX INSTITUTE of Massachusetts with a facing portrait,
  presumably of Mr. Ward, above a Chinese-style building
  flanked by five Chinese characters meaning "Ever Victorious
  Army of China"..  This bookplate also contains a minuscule
  notation "S.L.S. Feb. 1910" which probably indicates the
  book's acquisition and possibly even the donor.  There is
  also a letter from the Department of Coins and Medals,
  British Museum, to Messrs. Spink & Son Ltd., dated 24/7/11,
  signed by the famed British Museum keeper J(ohn) Allan,
  attributing an Arabic coin in the book, bound into the
  pertinent page!

  As for its provenance after the Essex Institute (which I believe
  disposed of its numismatic holdings some years ago), it was
  sold in Kolbe Auction No. 9 at the 1981 COIN convention in
  California, bringing a reported $2,600; and again in the second
  Kolbe-Spink USA sale at the NYINC in December 1983 --
  where I acquired it surprisingly for a mere fraction of the
  earlier PR.  I loaned it to the ANA Library for study for a few
  years after 1984.

  Can anyone top this for a bound manuscript in thickness, weight
  and rarity?  And if anyone can shed further light on the possible
  author of this manuscript, on "S.L.S." or on the manuscript itself,
  I would be grateful."

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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