WAYTE RAYMOND'S POPULAR ALBUM SERIES

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V21 2018 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 21, Number 34, August 26, 2018, Article 21

David Lange submitted these notes on the coin albums I discussed in the previous article in this issue - NUMISMATIC NUGGETS. He included several images from his book. Thanks! -Editor

The album shown is part of Wayte Raymond's Popular Album series. These were budget-minded companions to his more expensive National albums, and they offered something a little more sophisticated than the simple folders of Dansco, Oberwise and Whitman. The particular variety illustrated is among several cataloged as RP50cC2 in my book Coin Collecting Albums Volume One, which covers the products of Beistle, Raymond and Meghrig. I can't tell the specific variety without seeing the album's back cover where the publication statement appears.

The Popular line was launched in 1940-41 concurrently with the rise of coin folders, and originally it featured loose leaf pages within a small, landscape format binder. The pages carried no dates, instead just being titled for each denomination. This First Edition was simply a cheaper version of the National Album, and it failed to satisfy either the high end or low end buyer. Examples are extremely rare today, and I have just two of the binders in my own collection, plus a small handful of pages.

Late in 1941 Raymond retooled the Popular Album into the format seen in the auction albums, and these are cataloged in my book as the Second Edition. America's entry into WWII led to paper shortages and aborted this project, with only titles for Indian Head and Lincoln Cents dating from this period. These, too, are exceedingly rare. The earliest albums are easily recognized by their brown printing and binding tape. Production resumed in 1946---briefly with the same color scheme---but quickly converted to the green printing and tape shown in the auction example. The green/green version is not rare for most titles, as it was in production almost continually through the 1950s. The cover artwork was by Dorothy Faxon, sister of Stuart Mosher and husband of Alan Faxon, product manager after Wayte Raymond more or less retired in the mid 1940s.

M. Meghrig & Sons, formerly a distributor of Raymond albums, cloned this product in the late 1940s, calling it alternately the Green Book or G-Line. Marketing their version aggressively in non-numismatic retail outlets, Meghrig soon outsold Raymond, and the Popular Album was gone by 1960. The Green Book line was discontinued shortly afterward, though the company still had NOS examples for sale when I wrote my book.