Money in Books, Part 2
Dennis: Steve, we recently talked about a Facebook group of collectors and dealers of rare and vintage books. One member posed a question that fired up a lot of conversation: “What is the most interesting thing anyone has found in an old book?”
Some of the answers described interesting, but not unusual, finds, like old letters and clipped advertisements.
Other things used as bookmarks offer a snapshot of contemporary pop culture. One lucky collector found “Five tickets to the White Mahatma magic show, an 1890s traveling act.”
Some were sentimental: “An old love letter from a WWII soldier to his sweetheart.” “A humorous 1870s letter from a father to his daughter explaining why he bought the book for her as a birthday gift.”
Some finds were disturbing, like the text of the Ulster Covenant written in blood. This was a solemn oath sworn by nearly half a million Irish men and women in 1912 to protest and defeat the proposed Home Rule Bill.
Some of the treasures related to authors. One collector found autographed manuscript material from “the dean of science-fiction writers,” Robert A. Heinlen, inside a copy of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Some finds were tangential to authors, like a letter—“not particularly interesting, but genuine”—signed by Alice Liddell, found by Corinna H. in an old copy of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.
Some items traveled across both space and time, like an invitation card to a White House function from President Richard Nixon—“How it got to me in the United Kingdom,” said its finder, “I have no idea.”
Walter H. reminisced: “I used to work at a used and rare book store in Detroit. The manager was looking through a copy of an early Mark Twain biography and a couple unpublished photos of him on vacation in Cuba fell out.”
Some reported finds brought a chuckle: One collector remembered his father buying an old illustrated dictionary for 25 cents at a garage sale. As he browsed through it, he found a cut-out section hiding a baggie of, so to speak, the Devil’s lettuce. “Needless to say,” he recalls, “it didn’t come into the house.”
One fortunate book-buyer, Erik H., recalled a valuable collectible. “I found a 1920s Babe Ruth baseball card used as a marker—one of the cards that used to come in caramels, not gum. It was an ex-library book from a university, for a library that had started in the 1960s, so the bookmark survived 40 years before the library acquired it, then through the acquisition process, 30 to 40 years on the library shelves, and the weeding and withdrawal process. I sold the card on eBay for about $450 and the book for $15.”
Some of the finds were alarmingly unexpected: Shari W. found pressed flowers and bookmarks, but also—concealed in a hollowed-out book inside an old house—a gun.
And in the “Why Doesn’t That Ever Happen to Me?” department, we have books with money hidden inside them.
Some memories were light on details: “I found money. It was good because I was broke, and it bought me dinner.”
Others broke it down with more detail, but not much numismatic meat: One buyer got a book at Goodwill and found “400 dollars . . . ten 20s, and two 100s.”
Ray U. found a German 5,000,000-mark note from 1923 inside a book. “Hyperinflation was so bad,” Ray says, describing the Weimar era, “that it was cheaper to wallpaper your home with money than with wallpaper.”
One enthusiast recalled, “A friend of mine found a really old $100 Silver Certificate in a book. He foolishly spent it without checking its value at a coin shop. Still a nice find.”
Leslie B. recalled dealing in books for thirty years and never finding a penny. She’d rented a garage for storage and then the owner wanted to sell, so she had to clear out. Sorting through her inventory, “the very last book in the very last box was stuffed with money”—£180 in cash. “I’d had it for ten years without knowing.”
[Preston B. found this Greek currency note inside a book. Courtesy Preston Burnett.]
Sometimes the rightful owner of found cash can be tracked down. One collector remembered looking for older fly-fishing books at a used book store. “The owner handed me a stack that a recently widowed woman dropped off. As I was flipping through the pages I started to find money with notes about where the man wanted to go fish. Five of the eight books had money totaling over $400! I showed the owner and we had fun looking through all of them.” When they contacted the grateful widow, she broke down in tears over the phone.
Steve, by definition every numismatic book has money in it—just not the kind described above. I have yet to find an envelope of old cash stuffed into a book. So far I’ve had to be satisfied with fascinating content—text, photographs, information. One of the most interesting books I published at Whitman Publishing is William Bierly’s In God We Trust: The American Civil War, Money, Banking and Religion. It has a surprising amount of history (numismatic and otherwise) that was, to me, fresh and new. Do you have a favorite numismatic history book, or one that surprised you with its unusual content?
Steve: Dennis! A recent read that I’ve loved is Gareth Harney’s A History of Ancient Rome in Twelve Coins. Its press release said, “With his signature blend of erudition and enthusiasm, Harvey invites readers to hold the glory – and infamy – of Rome in the palm of their hands, offering a fresh, accessible take on ancient history.” It delivers, since the author is a collector of Roman coins and his love of the coins as objects shines through.
The author received his first ancient coin from his father and Harvey calls ancient coins, “handheld windows into a world inhabited by the most colorful and entertaining characters, who wielded the power of golds while falling victim to the most human weaknesses.”
The book goes into the minting process a bit and some other articles in mainstream newspapers have showcased research that shows how coins affected Romans. Lead pollution in ancient Rome apparently dropped the population’s IQ by around three points as lead entered water pipes, cooking pots, cosmetics and even food additives. Industrial pollution – the result of the mining and smelting of metal to make money – was also a contributor.
It's a different way to look at how coins shaped ancient life. Researchers estimate that around 3,300 to 4,600 tons of lead were emitted annually by Roman minting operations, largely to extract silver. The resulting coins are tangible and immediate connections to history, and a reminder of the environmental impact of transforming raw earth products into usable consumer items.
Be on the lookout for another installment of Collecting Friends next month or subscribe here and never miss a post! In the meantime, explore beautiful coins from the ANA's Edward C. Rochette Money Museum Virtual Exhibits.
Hello! And welcome to the ANA’s blog series, “Collecting Friends.”
We decided to approach this much like a conversation between friends. One of us starts with a topic, then the other responds. Simple as that. Along those lines, we’ll keep the tone conversational as much as possible.
We both write about coins professionally, and will keep our relative style guides in our writing. For Dennis, former Publisher at Whitman Publishing, that means capitalizing “Proof” and italicizing Red Book and never saying anything bad about Ken Bressett, who’s awesome anyway.
For Steve, who’s written with Coin World for 15 years, it means Winged Liberty Head dime instead of “Mercury” dime, and similar nuances and oddities. And, it means writing A Guide Book of United States Coins (better known as the “Red Book”).
Both of us started collecting when we were little, introduced to coins by a chance encounter with an old coin that sparked our curiosity. One of Steve’s interests is coin valuation, and he gravitates towards the intersection of art and coins. Dennis enjoys medals and world coins, and studying modern U.S. coins in the context of older series, what came before.
We met in 2012 at the American Numismatic Association World’s Fair of Money in Philadelphia at an event hosted by the Austrian Mint where there was both a Ben Franklin and a Betsy Ross impersonator. We’ve become great friends in the past decade. We even were appointed together to sit on the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee starting in 2016, but Steve resigned soon after he was appointed to accept a full-time job at the Treasury Department while Dennis was re-appointed in 2020.
We taught a course together on numismatic publishing and writing a few years ago at the Summer Seminar, and while life has gotten in the way of us teaching another class, we jumped at our friend Caleb’s suggestion that we write a column. We hope you enjoy it!
The American Numismatic Association is a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating and encouraging people to study and collect coins and related items. The Association serves collectors, the general public, and academic communities with an interest in numismatics.
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