I think it is fair to say that the decade of the 1930s was the most eventful decade during the era of the classic US commemorative coin series (1892-1954). The decade saw the largest number of issues (especially 1936!), strong direct-from-sponsor sales for many issues, a significant escalation of secondary market selling prices and the eventual near-total collapse of the series and collector interest in it.
One of the most prominent coin dealers/auctioneers active in the 1930s was Wayte Raymond. Raymond was active as a seller/auctioneer of coins from about 1912 until his death in 1956. He worked for the Scott Coin and Stamp Company from 1934 until 1946, at which time he left to join the New Netherlands Coin Company. Raymond was also a numismatic author/editor/publisher. His popular and excellent
Standard Catalogue of United States coins was the forerunner to today's
A Guide Book of United States coins (aka "The
RedBook") - his published works are still collected today.
A lesser known coin story of the 1930s is the introduction of Wayte Raymond's "National Coin Albums" - the forerunner of today's Dansco, Whitman and other similar coin albums. Raymond's coin storage "system" consisted of dozens of cardboard coin pages for the various US coin series and specially-designed binders that could hold five pages each. The pages had holes for individual coins and featured sheets of celluloid that were slid into place - front and back - to protect the coins and allow both the obverse and reverse of each inserted coin to be seen. While Raymond is remembered as the driving force behind popularizing the albums as the state-of-the-art solution for coin storage and preservation, it should be noted that Martin Luther Beistle, an early half-dollar specialist, actually invented the concept - Raymond purchased the rights to it from Beistle in 1930.
Raymond produced a number of different commemorative coin boards within his system. He produced boards for collectors of complete date and mint sets, for type set collectors and even for collectors with interest in specific multi-year issues (e.g., the Texas Centennial issues of 1934 to 1938).
All of the boards mentioned above were specifically for the half-dollars. A separate board was produced, however, for the "other" pieces of the commemorative series. The board included places for the
Isabella Quarter, the Lafayette dollar, the 1932
Washington quarter and the two varieties of the 1925 silver Norse-American Centennial medals (i.e., thick and thin). It's interesting to note that the board was titled "United States Commemoratives and
Tokens" vs. "United States Commemoratives and
Medals" considering the Norse pieces were definitely medals and not tokens.
If you've ever wondered about the unique collector connection between the Norse medals and the classic commemorative coins, you need not look any further than this Wayte Raymond coin page; no other contemporary US Mint commemorative medals were featured in any of Raymond's boards thus giving the Norse medal a unique distinction. Collectors like to fill "holes" - give ‘em a hole and they will seek out a specimen to fill it! These boards maintained interest in the Norse medals and led to them being marketed by many dealers alongside the commemorative coin issues.
Following are a few images of different Wayte Raymond commemorative coin boards.
Enjoy!
Wayte Raymond Commemorative Type Set Board Sample (1 of 5 boards in set)
Wayte Raymond Commemorative Full Set Board Sample (1 of 15 boards in set)
Wayte Raymond Commemorative "Other" Board
Wayte Raymond Commemorative Texas Set Board (1 of 2 boards in set)
Posted 12/01/2012 5:39 pm
