Notes from Adams to Guttag on Spanish-American Coins

Adams, Edgar H. NOTES ON SPANISH-AMERICAN COINAGE, WRITTEN FOR JULIUS GUTTAG. Group of 44 typewritten leaves written by Adams for Guttag, with 47 plates reproduced from works on Spanish-American coinage by Heiss and Vidal Quadras y Ramon, interspersed with ruled loose-leaf pages, the whole three-hole punched and measuring 8.5 by 11 inches. Undated (probably mid-1920s). Cover loose-leaf sheet inscribed “Julius Guttag / 16 Exchange Place / New York City / New York / U.S.A.” in Guttag’s handwriting. Cover page chipped; some pages exhibit light singeing at the very top. Very good, overall. An important group of typewritten notes written by Adams to Guttag in the period leading up to the 1929 publication of Adams’s Catalogue of the Collection of Julius Guttag. The commentary by Adams refers by number to each reproduced plate and the coins depicted therein, and was written to Guttag in order to give him advice on the building of his collection. The two works from which the plates are reproduced are unidentified within, but are Aloïss Heiss’s Descripcion general de las monedas Hispano-Cristianas desde la invasion de los Arabes (24 plates) and Manuel Vidal Quadras y Ramon’s Catalogo de la colleccion de monedas y medallas de Manuel Vidal Quadras y Ramon de Barcelona (23 plates). The Vidal Quadras y Ramon work is specifically mentioned as a source in the Adams volume on the Guttag collection. Indeed, there are several references to “your Coin Book” and “the Coin Book” throughout the typewritten pages (which for the first set of plates are typewritten in black ink, and for the second in blue ink), testifying that these pages are notes between Adams and Guttag compiled during the planning stages of the 1929 Adams volume. Guttag’s introduction to the Adams catalogue states that his collection was “started at the suggestion of” Adams, making this group of papers a remarkable record of the building of a collection. An intriguing set of pages, well worth additional research. Ex Jack Collins’s October 1, 1983 auction, lot 155; ex David F. Fanning Numismatic Literature, 2009 at $400.