McLachlan, R.W. [recipient]. CORRESPONDENCE WITH DR. J.W. BASTOW. Mexico (primarily Guadalajara), 1884–1898. Forty-three handwritten letters, generally signed. Lot also includes two letters to R.C. Lyman (Jalisco, March 21 & August 22, 1884). Generally written in black ink on plain sheets of various sizes. A few earlier letters repaired with clear tape; several letters a bit browned. Folded for mailing; generally very good. A Canadian by birth, or as he emphasizes in one of the letters, a “British Canadian,” Bastow apparently was afflicted with wanderlust, spending an amount time in Chicago and traveling throughout Mexico for over twenty years, apparently as a practicing dentist. His articles on the numismatics of Mexico were, as he was keenly aware, pioneering works; from his 1886 effort in the Canadian Antiquarian and Numismatic Journal entitled “Mexico: Its coinage and difficulties attending it, at the period of its conquest by the Spaniards” to the monographs which appeared in the American Journal of Numismatics in the years preceding his death on the Spanish American coinage of Mexico, Proclamation Pieces, the coins of Morelos, etc. In the first letter to McLachlan, dated October 6, 1886, Bastow writes: “your book on C. coins &c. recd last night... I have some varieties of Bank tokens you don’t mention (trifling variations) and probably some Sous, the latter, I have I think over 40, and remember a token with head of Brutus, sold me by Hasseltine (sic) as Canadian... I like the style of publication of your work, it is similar to Marvin’s Masonic Medals, (of which I have a copy beautifully bound). Those Roman numerals may look more tony but the(y) engross considerable space and (are) not so easily called off as Arabic numerals. Your descriptions are certainly all or even more than could have been expected and fills the requirements about as well as the most fastidious could desire... At my first leisure I will give everything I can from my coll. it is certainly not much, as, with the exception of a sou or two, I don’t think I have increased my Can. coll. since leaving Chicago (1875)... As soon as possible I will make out a list of my wants and if you desire Mex. Coins or medals in exchange it would be more convenient for me and probably so for you.” Subsequent letters discuss Canadian and Mexican coins, the article Bastow was writing or hoped to write, McLachlan’s own publications, the financial difficulties of the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Montreal, the content of the Canadian Antiquarian and Numismatic Journal and the American Journal of Numismatics, etc. Extensive quotations from this group of letters was provided when it was sold in 1997 as lot 207 in Kolbe Sale 70 (available on the Newman Portal). Many of the letters comment on the U.S. dealers of the day (Low, Frossard, and Woodward, the last of whom, he says, was nearly blind by August of 1887). A remarkable correspondence file with important content on the numismatics of Mexico, Canada and the United States. It extends up to the very time of Bastow’s unexpected death in 1898. Bastow’s collection was sold by Lyman Low in an October 20, 1902 sale. Ex Joseph Foster Library; ex Richard Cooper Library.