拍品描述： Gear, A.S. [publisher]. THE NATIONAL BANK NOTE DETECTER, AT SIGHT. THE ONLY INFALLIBLE SYSTEM OF DETECTING COUNTERFEIT AND ALTERED BANK NOTES, UNITED STATES BONDS, NATIONAL AND FRACTIONAL CURRENCY.Sixth Edition, Improved. New Haven: A.S. Gear, 1868. 16mo, original dark brown pebbled cloth, both sides bordered in blind; front cover with short-title impressed in gilt within oval; yellow endpapers. 79, (1) pages, including 16 full-page woodcut engravings of a simulated bank note, eight of which depict the appearance of genuine design elements, the other eight illustrating counterfeit design elements. Cloth binding somewhat worn, particularly on upper board and spine; pencil writing on endpapers; contents near fine.<p>Very rare. Not in the Newman, Bass, or Fuld Library sales; the 1866 edition was present in the Ford and the Stack Family Libraries. The Armand Champa Library had this edition, though it was in a later binding. Gears treatise was a predecessor of Laban Heaths ubiquitous publications on the topic, from which, as Eric Newman notes, Heath "adopted many of his concepts and expressions." The illustrations are not finely produced for the reason stated in the introduction: "These engravings are executed in a coarse manner, that the difference between the counterfeit and genuine may be more easily distinguished."From the Heather Hardin-Hudson Collection