DICK JOHNSON AND NUMISMATIC LITERATURE

Twenty-six years ago Fred Lake said he was going to "sign-me-up" to a new and really helpful online publication, and in the January 23, 2000 E-Sylum you announced that I was one of four new subscribers, bringing the total to 275.

You've done a great job, Wayne, with a lot of dedicated time, and with remarkable consistency as well from week-after-week . . . and I also think you're a great dad to take your daughter to Switzerland for a Taylor Swift concert!

My friend and shoreline neighbor Bryce Brown started to sell Dick Johnson's library in January. You also had a related announcement in a recent E-Sylum. Dick was a prolific E-Sylum contributor. When he died a few years ago at age 90 (D. Wayne Johnson, August 27, 1930 – December 29, 2020) there were many kind tributes to him. However, I don't know if anyone included a photo of Dick on the front page of the March 1960 Volume 1, Whole No. 0 "Sample Edition" of the first issue of Coin World, for which Dick served as Coin World's first editor. The newspaper made its debut with the announcement: "The first weekly newspaper devoted entirely to coins and coin collecting, the Coin World will be published and edited by experienced newspaper people."

 

When I was ten years old in 1960, my mother purchased a copy of Coin World for me. It was fascinating. I also was given a copy of a Red Book, which I read multiple times, back and forth.

Fred Lake also advised me, among his many other recommendations, that I should buy the set of "Penny-Wise" journals hardbound by John Ward, Jr., a founding member of Early American Coppers (EAC). Fred described that EAC began with only 76 members, and that in its early years Penny-Wise was mailed simply as groups of loose pages, so that few copies have survived, and that it's rare to find any in bindings. That was 22 years ago, and I'm contributing these volumes to Bryce's auction, in order to entrust them to another generation. Internet access to Penny-Wise for research is very helpful, but it's particularly interesting to hold in-hand and go back in time with the original pages, and to see the evolution of the hobby, such as with the following photos and caption:

 
Authors of the definitive large cent books-in-progress:
Bob Grellman (Late Dates), John Wright (Middle Dates), Walter Breen (Early Dates)

I share my friend Dave Bowers' affinity for books. It's therefore been great to see recent articles in the E-Sylum about the importance of a library that can go hand-in-hand with the advantages of complementary but very different Internet resources.

It seemed like an appropriate time to remember Dick Johnson, particularly for newer readers who might not have known how far back in time and how substantially his numismatic roots extended. Perhaps newer readers also may find some helpful resources as Bryce makes Dick's library available.

Our son worked for Google New York, and I can't recall if I ever saw in a prior E-Sylum the fact that the first issue of the E-Sylum on September 4, 1998 was on the very same day that Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google in a garage in Menlo Park California on September 4, 1998. It's worth noting.

You were at the leading edge of the transformations that were occurring at that time.

eBay had its IPO in Sept. 1998, PayPal (a company that fascinated Fred Lake from its beginnings) began in December 1998, and Amazon branched-out at the start of 1999 to sell items other than the books and CDs which had been its sole business model in the prior three to four years.

Fred specially commented in 2004 that the first three decades of EAC from 1967 to 1997 now were entering a new era from 1998 through 2003, and that the early years of EAC's "Penny-Wise" preserve the way information on early copper had been compiled into groundbreaking numismatic books.

To read Dick Johnson's obituary, see:
Richard Wayne Johnson (https://www.cookfuneralhomect.com/obituaries/richard-johnson)

To read the earlier E-Sylum articles, see:
D. WAYNE JOHNSON (1930-2020) (https://www.coinbooks.org/v24/esylum_v24n01a06.html)
MORE ON D. WAYNE JOHNSON (https://www.coinbooks.org/v24/esylum_v24n02a15.html)
VIDEO: DICK JOHNSON LECTURE ON MEDAL ARTISTS (https://www.coinbooks.org/v24/esylum_v24n02a14.html)
BRYCE BROWN SALE OF DICK JOHNSON LIBRARY (https://www.coinbooks.org/v28/esylum_v28n49a03.html)
BRYCE BROWN DICK JOHNSON LIBRARY SALE, PART II (https://www.coinbooks.org/v28/esylum_v28n52a02.html)
BRYCE BROWN NUMISMATIC PERIODICAL SALE (https://www.coinbooks.org/v29/esylum_v29n05a02.html)

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