Jack Collins Washingtonia photographs and other material, , approximately 1985-1996
Photographs from the collection
Creator
- Name
- Collins, Jack (1939-1996)
- Abstract
- Jack Collins (1939-1996) was a coin dealer, cataloger, and numismatic photographer born in Detroit, Michigan.
Administrative Information
Access
Collection open to all researchers.
Preferred Citation
Jack Collins Washingtonia photographs and other material, approximately 1985-1996, Archives, American Numismatic Society.
Restrictions
Copyright restrictions may apply. Permission to publish or reproduce must be secured from the American Numismatic Society.
Biographical Note
Jack Collins (1939-1996) was a coin dealer, cataloger, and numismatic photographer born in Detroit, Michigan. His given name was Charles Meredith Brainard. Collins cataloged sales for Pine Tree Auctions and conducted sales under the name Hillcrest Enterprises from 1968 to 1970. He also held two sales of numismatic literature. He was editor, designer, and photographer for Walter Breen’s Encyclopedia of United States Half Cents and co-founder of the Numismatic Bibliomania Society, serving as the first editor of its publication The Asylum. He was president of American Institute of Numismatic Research in 1982. Robert J. Myers (1934-2012), whose photographs are contained in the collection, was a biochemist, medical researcher, and coin dealer. In this latter capacity, he became an internationally recognized and respected dealer and appraiser of ancient coins and antiquities, issuing thirteen catalogs of those materials. Photography being one of his many side interests, Myers was also involved in photographing coins for two books at ANS.
Scope and Content
Contains material on George Washington coins, medals, and tokens produced and gathered for sales and research projects. Includes manuscript, typescript, and printed text descriptions by Jack Collins; photographic prints and negatives by Robert J. Myers; and various invoices and other paperwork. Included in Box 1 are over 1,000 prints in glassine envelopes of hundreds of Washington pieces, varying in size from 13 x 20.5 cm to 20 x16.5 cm and larger for large sized medals; three boxes of 100 x125 mm black and white photographic negatives consisting of 48 negatives taken at 50% size and two boxes of 240 and 258 same-size negatives depicting Washington medals, tokens, coins and affiliated pieces; and over 450 index cards of various sizes, featuring handwritten or typewritten descriptions of Washington pieces, including a number of cards on which lot tickets from various auctions have been affixed. Box 2 contains a diverse group of items including 120 glassine envelopes, each containing several prints of Washington pieces photographed from slightly different settings. Also included are file folders containing papers on Washingtonia from the 1975 Altman-Haffner sale, the Jeff Rock collection of Washingtonia, and 1932 bicentennial medals for a variety monographs, as well as invoices for Collins’s own collection, manuscript notes by Collins on the loan of part of his collection to Richard Buckley, a copy of Glenn Mooney’s Washington Before Boston, a draft of Collins’s typescript on the 1794 dollar book discussing the Getz pieces, and annotated photocopy pages of Collins’s 1991 fixed price list. Additionally, there are five original metal printing dies for the gilt stamping on Collins’s 1991 fixed price list of Washingtonia from the Boyd collection with printing samples.