Collection open to all researchers.
Charles K. Panish papers, 1961-1987, Archives, American Numismatic Society.
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Charles K. Panish (1907-1995) of Westport, Connecticut, was an expert on coins of South Asia. He volunteered his services to the American Numismatic Society (ANS) for over three decades, performing work for years as a virtual acting curator, attributing, rearranging, and relabeling over half of the South Asian coins, particularly in the collection of Indian States coins and those of the Himalayan states: Tibet, Nepal, Assam, and Ladakh. He became a member of ANS in 1951 and in 1960 joined the Committee on Oriental Coins. He was appointed chair of that committee in 1961, the same year he was elected an ANS fellow. He was also a major benefactor, donating 9,682 coins to ANS over the course of several decades, beginning in 1959.
Correspondence, notes, articles, booklets, article reprints, and background information about various regions and coins of the world, but mostly pertaining to Panish’s work researching, publishing, and collecting in the area of South Asian coins. Much of the correspondence has to do with his gathering of information on individual coins and other collectors and researchers seeking his expert advice on coins. There is about one cubic foot of mostly routine correspondence, newsletters, and other materials from various numismatic groups of which he was a member, such as the American Numismatic Society, Indian Institute of Research in Numismatic Studies, Oriental Numismatic Society, Royal Numismatic Society, The Society for Oriental Numismatics, and the Society for International Numismatics. Also includes a history of Westport Woman’s Club written by Panish in 1972, along with two pieces of correspondence relating to it.