Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Ogilvie, _Medals and Coins from Bude to Mommsen_, WantItNow

I recently stumbled across Brian W. Ogilvie's “Collection, conviction, and contemplation: or, Picturing coins in early modern books, ca. 1550-1700” [27 page PDF]. Some readers of this blog will find it interesting.

Ogilvie cites some interesting sources, includng a paper collected in Medals and coins from Budé to Mommsen (1990). That book is rare! I have been looking at Internet sources for a year without discovering anyone selling it. I have never actually seen a copy although the ANA has one in their lending library. I will probably give up on getting my own and borrow the ANA's.

The first hit searching Google for the Budé to Mommsen is my request to buy a copy using eBay WantItNow. WantItNow is/was eBay's attempt to create a “reverse eBay”. Buyers enter requests for things they want. Sellers were supposed to look over the listings and respond. All of eBay's usual catagories are available, but the responses in the coin sections are quite poor. For example, in the Ancient Greek WantItNow there is only one request. A man looking for Greek coins to give to teenagers was offered a rosary necklace (for HongKong$ 28.88) and some US silver coins.

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