"It is with deep sadness that I need to inform you of the passing of Dr. John Rainey early this morning. John was the current vice-Chair the Numismatic Society of Ireland (Northern Branch) and an important and enthusiastic member since its founding. He will be very much missed.

"As a mark of respect, the Members' meeting scheduled for the 13th February been cancelled."

Thanks to Darryl Atchison for passing along this news. -Editor

To say that I am shocked by the contents of the above email would be a gross understatement.

In November of 1996, I received a letter from Whyte's Auctioneers in Dublin inviting me to exhibit at their upcoming coin fair at the Gresham Hotel in Dublin in February 1997. Unbeknownst to me, Jerry Remick had sent a letter to Ian Whyte telling him that a coin collector from Canada had recently moved to Cork. I happily accepted Ian's invitation and prepared an exhibit as requested.

I decided to exhibit my "IF Day" propaganda note that was issued during a mock invasion of Winnipeg that was held on February 19, 1942. This event promoted the sale of Canadian War Bonds by showing the citizens of the city what it would be like to live under Nazi occupation.

As I was assembling my exhibit, I started up a conversation with the exhibitor next to me who was displaying extremely rare examples of the emergency money that was issued in Yugoslavia after that county broke-up in 1991. That gentleman turned out to be Neil McCormick who would later volunteer to be the principal proof-reader of the Canadian Numismatic Bibliography.

Somewhat later in the day, a well-dressed gentleman stopped in front of my exhibit (not by choice it turned out) because a crowd of collectors and dealers swarmed him upon his arrival into the hall - each vying for a small portion of his attention. Eventually that crowd drifted away one-by-one, until I was left on my own with him. Believing that I too had something to sell him (most likely), he asked me 'What the H*** do you want". When I replied that I didn't even know who the H*** he was, he laughed and I began to talk him through my display. He showed genuine interest and was quite prepared to listen and ask questions. Within the space of 15 minutes, he then invited me to join him for dinner that evening. And that is how I met John Rainey.

We had a very lovely meal that evening and discussed our interests in numismatics. Of course, my interests lie with Canadian numismatics and John was principally interested in Irish and Isle of Man coinages - and is undoubtedly a highly-regarded expert in both of these fields. I initially thought we wouldn't have much to discuss but it turned out that we shared a common passion for numismatic literature. When I mentioned that we had just started work on a new Canadian Numismatic Bibliography he was genuinely interested and excited. When he invited me to go up and visit him in Belfast, I jumped at the opportunity.

Little did I realize until the next day that Neil and John lived about 10 minutes apart and were very good friends.

I have to laugh when I remember that every single time John invited me to visit him and his wife Sally Ann, I ended up staying at Neil's house instead. Somehow, John was always in the midst of some calamity that prevented me from being able to stay at his place. But Neil and his wife, Margaret, were always very gracious hosts.

The friendships I made with the McCormicks and John Rainey made my move to Ireland much easier. They helped me adapt and understand more about my new homeland and I really couldn't have asked for two finer mentors.

The three of us have enjoyed many meals together and copious amounts of wine and port over the years. I'll never forget on one trip up to Belfast, John invited us to brunch at the Royal Ulster Yacht Club (John was a member even though he didn't own a boat - not even a dinghy!). I think Doug Saville might have joined us as well if memory serves me correctly. The only catch was that you had to be 'dressed' - i.e. jacket and tie. Well, I hadn't brought either a jacket or a tie with me from Cork so I had to borrow both from Neil. Now, I can't blame Neil for giving me a suit jacket that I could have swam in (at the time we had very different physiques) but I'm sure he picked out the ugliest tie that he owned. The jacket was burgundy and tie was brown with splotches of other colours that really looked like someone had just vomited on a brown tie. I promptly removed the jacket as soon as we passed the doors but I had to wear that d*** tie for the rest of the day!

As I mentioned earlier, John and I both shared a passion for numismatic literature and he joined the Numismatic Bibliomania Society sometime later. He published a small bio and at least one other article in The Asylum. We spent many hours discussing both old and new publications and sharing our latest purchases with each other. In a way, John was an ex-official member of the Canadian Numismatic Bibliography project. He allowed me to review many rare numismatic references that I never would have known about otherwise.

Something that many NBS members can relate to - John's library was substantial but highly disorganized! At least that was the way it was the last time I visited him back in the summer of 2018. But he had grand plans to renovate his coach house and move the library from the main house. He even showed me the architects' drawings. But I don't know whether he ever managed to do this or if the Covid years squashed those ambitions.

I looked forward to seeing John again at the upcoming British Association of Numismatic Society's Congress in Dublin in April. My enjoyment of that event will be somewhat dampened as I recall that I've now lost two very dear friends.

My deepest condolences to his wife, Sally Ann and his family as well as the Numismatic Society of Ireland community who will greatly miss John's leadership and friendship.

Darryl provided the above photo of John Rainey and Neil McCormick that was taken at a BANS Congress in Rochester Kent in 2018. -Editor

John passed away yesterday early morning- he had been in hospital for a few weeks - I spoke with him the day before it happened - and I had met him in London just before the holidays. He was probably my closest friend within numismatics, possibly anywhere.

Dr. John Rainey MBE, my friend, passed away during the early hours of February 10, 2026. He was just 75 years of age. I had known John since the early 1980s at least, when he had started to become a customer of mine at Spinks in London. He was a born collector, but his focus at this time appeared to be Irish coins, tokens and medals, and the associated Isle of Man series.

John understood that to fully appreciate coins he needed the relevant reference books and catalogues. I don't think he ever realised to what extent that interest would develop - nor did I have any inkling at that time, of how determined a collector he was or rather, was to become.

At that time John was somewhat inevitably becoming increasingly involved with the family business that his father had started some 20 years or more before. John was to become a key guiding light in the Denroy and Denman businesses, and they were to become highly successful and respected international organisations based in Northern Ireland. Much of that success must be due to him.

I recall visiting John – possibly in the early noughties - when he took me for a tour around the factory. He went up to virtually everyone there, individually, as we walked around, they would stop work, and each one would say: "Good morning, John", and he would call each by their first names. The mutual respect was palpable, and a truly memorable part of my visit. John loved people, was a caring and tremendous leader - and a true humanist.

His passion for learning and for commitment to a subject was reflected in his tremendous collection of coins, medals and tokens, and all manner of associated material. I remember, almost certainly on a later visit, around 2010 perhaps, he showed me around his "library room"- actually, lots of hotch-potch "library space" all over his lovely house in Donaghadee, Co Down. He was slightly shamed-face, perhaps, at the disorganisation of it all…. with books piled everywhere. I recall I had sent him a very large number of books a few years prior to my visit, and he showed me the 15 or so large empty boxes in which the books I had shipped to him, piled high in a corridor, and arranged like a piece of modern art!

On that visit he struggled to find something he wanted to show me. I think it was then that he conceived the idea of building a library - a physical two-story library building in his garden- with facilities for sleeping and a kitchen area, on two floors and with as much as 500 yards (yes!) of shelving. He reckoned that would just about accommodate what he already had around the house……maybe, perhaps, with any luck, he told me. I smiled and told him that I had about 180 yards of shelving in my offices in Caversham – and that basically was about enough for me. I told John that I did just once have to use a warehouse to temporarily house some 8 tons of books I had shipped from the Continent- he said he had more than 8 tons of books- but the 500 yards of shelving he planned in his new library building would be quite enough - John smiled when he said that. He often showed to me his architect's drawings of the proposed library building- and we discussed during many phone conversations before the building had started.

I am incredibly grateful to have known John and so appreciate the trust he has shown in me over the years. Our friendship seems only to have increased in the almost 50 years of knowing one another. He is a huge irreplaceable loss not only to a large number within the global numismatic fraternity, to the Denman and Denroy businesses, and to his wife Sally Ann, and daughters Zoe and Victoria.

In one of his last emails to me, John Rainey was regretting that he'd had to cancel his recently planned trip to the United States. Not because of the missed opportunity to add to his impressive numismatic collection or his incredible library, but because of the "missed opportunity to continue to interact with American collectors again and build up relationships." That says a lot about his priorities, especially given how passionate he was about his collection and library. People were more important.

I didn't know John for as long as I would have liked, having met him (I think) in 2017. His strong interest in British and Irish numismatics had led him to form one of the best libraries ever formed on these subjects, remarkable not only for its breadth but for its depth. John would regularly purchase copies of books already represented on his shelves if there was something distinctive about the newcomer: that it was annotated, or bore an illustrious provenance, was beautifully bound, or was a special edition of some sort. Annotations in books were recognized by him as of profound interest, especially when they were the work of an advanced collector or scholar.

Given my line of work, I spend a lot of time talking to collectors, and it's not unusual for us to bond over shared enthusiasms. John's British and Irish focus began to spread into the American colonies, and this new interest in North American colonials brought me closer to him, given that they are one of my own fields of collecting. I was able to steer him toward books with which he was unfamiliar and advise him more thoroughly. I even managed to bring the occasional coin to his attention, and was happy to have helped him add a special piece or two to his outstanding holdings. In turn, he became a very good customer of ours, and I occasionally let him buy books from my personal library when I thought it was more appropriate that they be part of his. He got to know my wife, Maria, and would talk to me about his family as well.

While numismatics may have brought us together to begin with, a shared love of Irish literature deepened our friendship. After a while, many of our conversations had little or nothing to do with coins. John had been a student of the poet Michael Longley, and collected the works of Seamus Heaney and others. I had a strong background in the works of James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, and John and I discussed Joyce regularly. Indeed, I'll take credit (or responsibility) for John's buying a nice first edition copy of Joyce's Finnegans Wake not all that long ago! John's enthusiasm for collecting knew few bounds.

John had told me of his recent health problems but, while I knew they were troubling and annoying, I did not realize how potentially serious they were. News of his death took me greatly by surprise, and I found myself not knowing how to respond beyond sitting quietly and idly flipping through my copy of William Nicolson's 1724 The Irish Historical Library while reflecting on our friendship. John was an impressive person on a number of different levels, but at the end of the day he was to me simply a friend I enjoyed talking to—and I'm going to miss that.