Copyright 2011-2018 John N. Lupia, III

PRELIMINARY REMARKS

 Stamps, seals, tickets, receipts, checks, scrip, paper money, badges, tokens, medals, and coins are the principle numismatic items that have very strong markets today. For those confused about the definition of numismatics see the link NUMISMATICS DEFINED at the bottom on the left menu. Today, most stamp and coin auction sales realize multimillion dollar closed prices. Both stamps and coins have large markets with tens of millions of collectors, and dozens of organizations, societies, journals, and their respective literature, and hundreds of dealers with tens of billions of dollars spent annually combined. There was a time in numismatic history that enjoyed close intimacy of both numismatic fields of stamps and coins. The markets became more disparate since the end of the 1940's and many collectors became entrenched in one field or the other to the exclusion of the one over the other. To illustrate this point at the 2017 NYINC, the 45th Annual Convention, I was walking about with a copy of The American Philatelist.  Several prominent numismatists looked at it and remarked "I thought stamps died and went out years ago." I was amazed since the stamp market today is bigger than coins. In 2004, the global number of philatelic collectors was estimated at 30 million.In 2007, Linn’s Stamp News, conducted a philatelic market survey measuring the size of the American collectible stamp industry finding it at $1.18 billion. Also, in a 2007, Mike Hall of Stanley Gibbonsestimated that "About $1 billion of rare stamps trade annually in the $10 billion-a-year stamp market."In 2009, Adrian Roose of Stanley Gibbons estimated the philatelic collectors population at 48 million. In 2014, the U. S. numismatic market was estimated at $5 billion per year, half the philatelic global market estimated ten years previous in 2007. Yet, Coin World reported in 2016 the U. S. numismatic market just topped $4 billion, over $900 million less. So, is the stamp market dead? It certainly is larger and stronger than coins. The size and strength of each respective market is not necessarily detectable by the highest price ever paid for a rare stamp or rare coin, since the 1856 1c British Guiana magenta sold in June 2014 by Sotheby for a mere $9.5 million while the Neil/Carter/Contursi 1794 U. S. Flowing Hair Silver Dollar [PCGS SP66] realized $10 million at Stack's Bowers in January 2013, and the stamp market is larger and stronger than coins. 

    Myopia can be seen (pun intended) in the numismatic market from its leading analysts who define tangible assets exclusive as precious metals and their products, i.e., predominantly coins and bullion object d'art including ingots, medals, and proof strike specimens to the exclusion of other rarities in the tangible asset collectibles market, especially rare postage stamps. In 2013, hedge fund manager Kyle Bass reported, “at some point in time I’d much rather own gold than paper, I just don’t know when that time is.” Besides paper exclusively signifying commercial paper or paper money the rarities market of postage stamps seems never to even be considered.

    Another myopic point is that numismatists have as yet to coin a word for numismatic literature, whereas, the philatelists wasted no time with the neologism bibliophilately. Why not biblionumismatic? 

            The root of this myopia between both fields of coins and stamps harks back to that period when Lyman Haynes Low resigned as manager of the coin and medal department of Scott Stamp & Coin Co., Ltd in mid to late May 1896, when he completed the sales of the last coin auction for that corporation. In the ensuing fifty years or so the two fields slowly grew apart and remote to the alienation and estrangement of one from the other. A record of this evolving myopia was published in both Scott's Monthly Journal and The Numismatist in the first quarter of 1930. Below is a quote from the April 1930 issue of The Numismatist page 224.

"In the February issue of the firm's house organ, Scott's Monthly Journal, it makes an announcement, "What About Coins," from which we take the following: "Our publishers have long been of the belief that there is a strong interest in coin collecting. Some twenty-five years ago we discontinued this line of activity because of reasons which at that time seemed to prove the impossibility of the hobby ever becoming popular."

 " . . . it is gratifying to note that this old firm acknowledges that there is now a great interest in coin collecting. Coin collectors discovered ten years ago that there was an awakened interest in coin collecting. This interest has increased as the years have passed, but it is not as great now as it will be ten years hence. 

As evidence of the increased interest during the last ten years we have only to point to the great increase in the number of collectors and in the membership of the A. N. A. , as well as in the amount of advertising carried by The Numismatist in 1919 this magazine carried 98 pages of dealers' announcements, an average of a little more than eight pages a month. In 1929 it carried 297 pages of advertising, or an average of a little more than 24 pages a month.

    From our vantage point today this assessment by the stamp market of the vitality of the coin market is risible. It seems that the philatelists were the first to think and say, "I thought coins died and went out years ago," which I heard echoed by numismatists in January 2017 regarding stamps. However, the coin industry back in 1930 acknowledged that the market wained at one point in the past but recovered and continued to grow steadily strong, healthy and robust. Both stamp and coin markets have experienced continued steady growth since Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929.

            One of the goals of NumismaticMall.com is to reintroduce the two mighty arms of the numismatic market to one another, namely stamps and coins. They really are not two unrelated fields at all, but two sectors of one very large market of numismatic collectibles. In order to properly appreciate and comprehend numismatic history it is essential to integrate both in our historical and biographical studies. Many of the great collectors and dealers of the past were deeply involved in both stamps and coins. One of the first popular numismatic magazines of the past makes this crystal clear even in its title : Mason's Coin and Stamp Collectors Magazine. It is an anachronistic perspective that expresses the notion that preeminent dealers like S. H. & H. Chapman only sold stamps when the coin industry was slow. The Chapman Brothers were both stamp and coin dealers who enjoyed both fields as did others besides W. E. Woodward, Ebenezer Locke Mason, Jr., John Walter Scott, John W. Haseltine, David Proskey, Ed Frossard, William P. Brown, Harlan Page Smith, Robert W. Mercer, Henry Ahlborn, John Hubbard, W. E. Skinner, J. G. Bingham, Lewis T. Brodstone, Hiram E. Deats, D. T. Eaton, Frank E. Ellis, Burdette G. Johnson, John W. Kline, A. C. Roessler, to mention only just a few of the better known dealers, not including dozens of those lesser known. Many of the great collectors of the past also amassed famous collections of both stamps and coins. Perhaps, the most famous is reported by H. L. Lindquist, "Green's Coin Collection," Avocations, February (1938) : 479,  "Colonel Edward H. R. Green, son of Hetty Green, is reported to have had a gross estate of over $40,000,000 when he passed away at Lake Placid in June 1936. For taxation purposes his coin collection was assessed at $1,240,299, his stamp collection at $1,298,448 and his gem collection at $1,346,664."

SCOTT STAMP & COIN COMPANY, LIMITED

The biographical sketch below is of a corporate entity known to both fields of stamps and coins, i.e., Scott Stamp & Coins Company, Ltd. which in the heyday of numismatic growth and development was the hub of unity among collectors and dealers in both sectors of the numismatic market. These two fields have become estranged since the late 1940's and leading exponents  today have a muddled vision of this now defunct corporation. Surprisingly, most people, including well informed numismatists, excepting Lorraine S. Durst, have a blurred vision of just what exactly Scott Stamp & Coin Company, Ltd. was. Typically most numismatic and philatelic researchers conflate the Scott companies by mixing them up and lumping them all together as one continuous blob of corporate catalogues and auctions. In numismatic literature Lorraine S. Durst got it right keeping them separate. In philatelic literature the editors of the Crawford Catalogue, Edward D. Bacon and D. R. Beech, got it right also by keeping them separate