Hirsch, Jacob. I. VERZEICHNISS VON VERKÄUFLICHEN MÜNZEN, MEDAILLEN UND NUMISMATISCHEN WERKEN AUS DER SAMMLUNG DES VERSTORBENEN NUMISMATIKERS HEINRICH HIRSCH, MÜNCHEN. München, 1898. 8vo, contemporary black cloth-backed mottled boards; hand-lettered spine label. (4), 74 pages, interleaved throughout with plain paper; 1853 listings. Two handwritten annotations. Hirsch’s ink stamp, giving his München address at the time the catalogue was issued, on flyleaf. Very good or better. A historically important copy of Hirsch’s first catalogue. Jacob Hirsch (1874–1955) began his career by selling material from the estate of his uncle, Heinrich Hirsch, who had been in the coin business prior to his death in 1886. He quickly earned a reputation for his scholarly cataloguing and extraordinary memory, leading to his assuming at a rather young age a prominent place in the numismatic trade in early 20th-century Europe. The famous series of Ars Classica sales, which began to be issued in 1921 under the Naville et Cie. imprimatur, cemented Hirsch’s reputation for fine cataloguing and rigorous scholarship—a reputation he began to acquire with the present catalogue. All of the early Hirsch sales are scarce, and several—including this one—are rare. Hirsch’s first catalogue is impressive, even if it does not reach the exceptional level of his later emissions. According to Hirsch’s handwritten spine label, it was issued in February of 1898 (the catalogue itself gives only the year). Primarily devoted to post-Renaissance European coins, the catalogue opened with a small selection of 72 ancient Greek coins followed by some 500 Roman Republican, Roman Imperial and Byzantine coins. A small number of numismatic books were also offered. Among those known to have made purchases from this initial offering were Charles Oman, Aug. Delbecke, Franz Merkens, Edmund Rappaport, Virgil Brand, Spink, Armin Egger, Zschiesche & Köder, Rodolfo Ratto and Otto Helbing. In 2010, we had the privilege of offering at auction Hirsch’s annotated copies of his first twelve sale catalogues as part of the Robert J. Myers Library, where they were purchased by Herb Kreindler. In 2014, we sold them again during the Kreindler Library sale. The catalogues in that group were similarly bound, with the copy of Sale 1 being bound identically to the present copy. While this copy was not, unfortunately, used as a sale record, it is of considerable historical importance as being the first sale catalogue issued by the man who would go on to become, arguably, the most accomplished and talented numismatic cataloguer of his era.