Chapman, S.H. & H. Catalogue of the Large and Valuable Collection of Ancient, Foreign, English and American Coins and Medals of the Late Thomas Cleneay, Esq. December 9-14, 1890. Philadelphia. Very Fine.Quarto. Hardbound in blue one-quarter leather with blue cloth boards. Lettered in gilt on the front cover and spine. Page ends marbled on all sides. Bound with the original white paper covers inside, lettered in gilt. Original 12 tinted photographic plates, each with a tissue guard. Neatly hand priced in black ink throughout. The third of the Chapmans’ plated large format sales, this version offered for sale at $5. Among their most important auctions, more than deserving of their scarcer large-format presentation. Ranked an “A+” sale by John Adams, and one of only five of the partnership’s 83 sales so judged.<p>As given in the preface to the sale, Cleneay’s collection was “one of the earliest and most important formed in this country, and is the result of some forty years’ collecting.” He died in 1887, so this statement places the genesis of the collection in the late 1840s, one of the early ones, indeed! An essential sale for a quality numismatic library. A bit of rub on the spine, but internally bright with a fairly tight binding. Bound in Brooklyn by B.A. Martin, his stamp at the base of the inside back cover. Harry Bass’ bookplate in the inside front cover.From the D. Brent Pogue Library. Earlier ex Abe Kosoff, July 1968; Harry W. Bass, Jr., George Frederick Kolbe, September 1999, lot 82.
