News Archive

2003: A successful year for Books and Publishing

This year has been a busy one for Books and Publishing at Spink. Some twenty two years ago we published Roman Imperial Coinage, Volume 8, dealing with the coinages of the Family of Constantine I (AD 337-364). It had been published at £95, a rather high retail price at the time, and we had printed no less than 3000 copies. By the middle of last year the volume was out of print. The quality of the plates in the original edition had been a disappointment, so we decided to use the original mounted plaster casts and re-photograph them, and digitally enhance them for the new reprint. The plates in the new edition are significantly better than those in the original 1981 edition. The price of the new edition is £125.

April was particularly busy for us, seeing the publication of two important new books. Early in the month we published, on behalf of the British Numismatic Society, Martin Allen’s The Durham Mint (£45).

After many years’ work, Christian Dekesel’s monumental three-volume Bibliography of Seventeenth Century Numismatic Books finally appeared. Comprising upwards of 3200 pages, and including no less than 3000 facsimiles of title pages, it weighs over 7 kilos! Limited to just 400 copies, it is published at £375.

John Sills’ doctoral thesis was on Gaulish Gold coins, and he developed this into a major new work which we published in September: Gaulish and Early British Gold Coinage (£95). John’s work was published in time for the International Numismatic Congress held at Madrid. Over 600 delegates from all over the world attended. Phil Skingley and I attended the Congress and we took orders and sold books and gave away over 300 copies of our 96 page Book Catalogue.

The 2004 Edition of Coins of England and the United Kingdom, the 39th Edition, was published in October to coincide with the annual Coinex convention in London.By the time these words are being written (December 8) we have sold some 6000 copies of the book (£18).

The La Fayette collection of French error stamps was sold at a Spink auction in Paris on November 17, for upwards of Euro 5.5 million, and as a permanent souvenir of this remarkable and famous collection, we published on 18 November a beautifully produced book: La Collection La Fayette: Timbres Mythiques de France by Michele Chauvet (de la Academie de Philatelie) (£50).

David Sear has been working hard on Roman Coins and their Values Volume III (The Transition from Principate to Dominate and the Triumph of Christianity (AD235-491). We expect to announce details soon and publication is hoped to be during the Summer of 2004. In addition, the long awaited 7th edition of British Battles and Medals is now nearing completion, and this will be published early in 2004.

A number of other exciting projects are in the course of preparation and details will be announced in due course.

Douglas Saville, December 2003