The Preston-Morley Library of Token Books

Ratcliff 1900, Ratcliff, O., Buckinghamshire XVIIth Century Trade Tokens Collected by Oliver Ratcliff, Olney, nd [1896], 4 plates of engravings + 13 rectos, original blue cover with gilt title, with many extra notes, annotations and pencil rubbings of unpublished tokens by Ratcliff and Edwin Hollis; bound with Williamson, G.C., Trade Tokens issued in the Seventeenth Century in the county of Buckinghamshire, London, nd [1889], 14pp, original blue paper covers; bound with Crouch, W., Bucks XVII Century Trade Tokens, Aylesbury, 1912, 9pp + 2 engraved plates, original cream paper covers [3]. Contemporary decorated maroon boards, spines and extremities worn, but an extremely rare set and the only copy of Ratcliff’s publication seen by the cataloguer in commerce in over 30 years; with a newspaper cutting from the Bucks Herald, dated 29 June 1912, detailing the acquisition of the Ratcliff collection, on first free endpaper (£80-100)

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Preston-Morley Library of Token Books.

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Collection

Provenance:
Ex libris Buckinghamshire Archaeological Society duplicates [de-accessed April 1962];
E.B. Basden;
J.L. Short;
bt Short 1992

Only 16 copies of the Ratcliff volume printed for private circulation.

Oliver Ratcliff, the numismatist from Olney who owned the Cowper Press, put together the finest collection of Buckinghamshire 17th century tokens ever formed. He was particularly active in the late 1890s and the following decade, securing at auction the important Buckinghamshire groupings of R.T. Andrews, Lt-Col B. Lowsley and the Royal United Services Institution through commissions left with Spink. Before leaving the county to retire to Southend, Essex, he sold his collection of 191 tokens to the Buckinghamshire Archaeological Society in April 1912. Today it forms the basis of the collection at the County Museum, Aylesbury

The first reference was published in 1896