PENNY WHIMSY: A REVISION OF EARLY AMERICAN CENTS, 1793-1814: AN EXERCISE IN DESCRIPTIVE CLASSIFICATION WITH TABLES OF RARITY AND VALUE

New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958. This edition issued for The John J. Ford, Jr. Numisco Series, 1958. 8vo, original tan cloth, gilt; jacket. xii, 340 pages; 51 plates. Annotated throughout in pencil, recording the holdings of an extensive collection. Signed by all three authors in ink on the front flyleaf. Jacket with some tears; very good or better. An American numismatic masterpiece, rarely encountered signed by Sheldon, Paschal and Breen. Tracing the checkered course of numismatic research in America, John J. Ford, Jr., in his introduction to Don Taxay's 1963 Counterfeit, Mis-Struck, and Unofficial Coins, writes: "It was not until the period of WW-II, that ... Dr. W.H. Sheldon, expunging the entire past literature on the large coppers, 1793-1814, wrote his brilliant and original Early American Cents." Far from being a dry, statistical treatise, Penny Whimsy, as it came to be popularly known by the title of the second edition, is written in a most engaging and entertaining style, and its arrangement of the early cents remains the standard even today. Voted No. 5 on the Numismatic Bibliomania Society's "One Hundred Greatest Items of United States Numismatic Literature.".