Coins, Tokens, Historical Medals, Cabinets & Books

Swan, E.W., The Swan Papers: a large collection of invoices and correspondence from the dealers Baldwin, Forrer, Spink, Téterger, Weight and Willan to Ernest Swan, 1910-31, and other correspondence for coins and medals dated 1913-48, including from Geoffrey Callander (Director, National Maritime Museum), L. McCormick-Goodhart, John Allan (British Museum), C. Marshall Spink, and others; contemporary press cuttings relating to German and other satirical medals exhibited in England during World War I, including illustrations of making the next-of-kin plaque; Anon, A Guide to the Exhibition of French Medals…held at Spink…London, May 5th to 9th 1930, 12pp, plus price list, tipped-in. Neatly bound in chronological sequence in two blue half-leather volumes, ribbed and gilt spines; an important and unique reference, much of the information unavailable anywhere else [weight 6.3 kg] £300-400

Provenance: SNC June 2005 (S 3849); ex libris Jeffrey Gardiner.

Ernest William Swan (1883-1948), of Pele Tower, Corbridge, and later Newbrough Park, Hexham, a member of the shipbuilding Swan family on Tyneside. Swan served his apprenticeship on the Southern Railway at Eastleigh and subsequently worked for Armstrong Whitworth’s (which became Vickers Shipbuilding) in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. A significant collector of coins and naval medals from at least 1910, in later life he specialised in railway medals and a group of correspondence relating to this material, including the original invoice for Swan’s purchase of the Dendy Marshall collection of railway medals from Baldwin in December 1945 for £200, was sold by DNW in April 2014 and is now held in a private UK library. After Swan’s death the railway medal collection was continued by his son David (†January 1984), but was ultimately auctioned by Glendining’s on 17 April 1986