COIN WORLD ON INFLUENCE IN NUMISMATICS

A response to the observations on Coin World's Most Influential publication

Ever since Coin World published its The Most Influential People in Numismatics supplement to our May monthly issue, our editors, sales representatives and customer service staff have been bombarded with email and phone calls from readers and advertisers. Many of our customers praised the publication; some wanted additional copies to keep and share; and others were critical of omissions (Why isn't he on the list? and Why am I not on the list?). Most, however, at least recognize the monumental effort required by the Amos Media Company to produce and publish the publication.

The last two issues of The E-Sylum have featured comments from readers, first from Pete Smith, whose wonderful American Numismatic Biographies is a pioneering work, then from others. Except for David T. Alexander (whom I have known for more than 45 years since we both worked together at Coin World), most of responders in The E-Sylum have been critical of our selection of names on the list, decrying a perceived slant toward individuals from the commercial side of the hobby/business and a lack of recognition for researchers and writers.

It is accurate to state that most names on the list come from the commercial side rather than the research side. Since the readers of E-Sylum are researchers, writers, and editors, I can understand their feelings of being neglected (I first started writing about coins for school projects as a teen in the late 1960s; I recall going to my English teacher to tell her that her marking of the word disme as a misspelling on an assignment was incorrect). All of the names suggested by our critics are certainly deserving of being recognized as Influential. However, so do many of the people on our list who are not researchers and writers. To dismiss dealers, graders, authenticators as not Influential, as some critics seem to suggest, is just wrong. The founders of one of the largest auction houses in the world or the founders of the major grading services are just as influential in the hobby as the writers and researchers who spend decades studying early American copper or Seated Liberty coinage or national bank notes. They are just influential in different ways.

To that end, the name of the publication was chosen very carefully. The title is The Most Influential People in Numismatics, not The Most Influential Writers in Numismatics or The Most Influential Researchers in Numismatics. We wanted to recognize all segments of the hobby, not just one. Could we have produced a similar list bearing only the names of researchers and writers? Of course, we could. However, every such list is controversial; every reader of The E-Sylum, if asked to come up with their list of Most Influential People in Numismatics, would come up with a list that differed from every other list. My personal list would have been different. That is the nature of such lists.

To those critics who say that the list is U.S.-centric, I say guilty as charged. We are a U.S.-based publication staffed by editors and writers from the United States, with a subscriber base that mostly lives in the United States. A broader project would have taken many more months to research, write, and edit.

The editors, designers, sales representatives, and members of management at Amos Media who worked on Most Influential put many hours into this project beyond their regular tasks of producing monthly and weekly issues of Coin World, maintaining a website and Facebook page, and producing weekly podcasts. They deserve credit for that. They will deserve credit for future projects. Our Most Influential publication was an experiment, and a successful one. It will not be the last such publication of its kind.

William T. Gibbs, Managing Editor, Coin World

To read the earlier E-Sylum articles, see:
ON INFLUENCE IN NUMISMATICS (https://www.coinbooks.org/v24/esylum_v24n18a11.html)
MORE ON INFLUENCE IN NUMISMATICS (https://www.coinbooks.org/v24/esylum_v24n19a13.html)

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