Michael Hodder and Q. David Bowers
Another spirited fight took place in the same sale, over the legendary 1802 half dime, Lot 784. The Numismatist reported, "The lot of note on the second day, for price realized, was the 1802 half dime, lot 784. Mr. H.O. Granberg was the purchaser and was closely chased to that price [the editor failed to include the price paid in his review, which was $715]. The previous record for this coin is said to have been $360 paid by Mr. W.E Dunham of Chicago" Unstated was the fact that Bert was the bidder who chased Granberg for the 1802 half dime. His copy of the auction catalogue records his bid of$700 for the coin. After missing this opportunity, Bert never bought this rarity for his collection.
These are the only close references to Bert Holden we have found in published numismatic journals, literature, or correspondence of the time. He appears to have been a very discreet collector, one who may never have attended an auction sale in person, rather, bidding through dealers he trusted. His experiences with collecting mineral specimens may have made him shy of publicity. It will be remembered that shortly after he began collecting minerals, in 1896, he wrote his old teacher at Harvard that all the dealers were after him for specimens. When he began to collect coins in a serious way, toward the middle of 1907, he probably decided to remain an "unannounced buyer;' to avoid the attention of professional numismatists. Additionally, he probably could not spare the time to travel for a few days to auctions, being busy with his business affairs.
The loss of Bert's correspondence files deprives us of the personal, anecdotal highlights about his coin collecting we would like to have. His opinions of dealers and collectors would have made interesting reading, coming from an extremely successful business man, one who was impatient with inefficiency and delay and who expected first-class treatment. Worse still, we will never know what he thought or felt about his collection of coins, the way we know about his collection of minerals. Consequently, Bert's numismatic activities will always be an incomplete story, and as a collector he will only be approachable through an examination of the inventory of his collection. To the best of our knowledge, his daughter Emery May Holden Norweb rarely talked about her father's collecting days, and we have no anecdotes preserved by the family to shed additional light on his importance to numismatics.
The loss of the correspondence files of such early professional numismatists as Henry Chapman, Thomas Elder, and Lyman Low is one of the most serious problems the numismatic researcher faces. Papers destroyed as being too confidential for publication over 70 years ago, if they had been preserved, would have lost the need for secrecy by the deaths of the parties involved. Files discarded long ago as unnecessary for future reference or business would be today's raw materials for researchers. We hope that the present generation of professionals pays more attention to the needs of future writers, who may thereby reconstruct an important part of numismatic history more easily, and with better results, than scholars can do today.
In the absence of the correspondence files of dealers with whom he did business, there are few other sources of information about Bert Holden available. One of these, contemporary named and priced auction catalogues, cannot be fully tapped, for an obvious reason.
It appears that Bert did not attend auction sales and bid in person. His purchases were made through agent bidders, such as Thomas Elder or Lyman Low. As he bid through agents, their names were recorded as buyers in named catalogues of sales we know, from his inventory, in which Bert bought heavily. To complicate matters even more, code names were often used in the place of actual buyer's names in named catalogues. In one named copy of Elder's Wilson Sale (October 1908) we have seen, against lots we know Bert purchased from reading the inventory, we find a code name in place of Bert's own. This was a common practice when anonymity was desired. For example, another noted collector, T. Harrison Garrett, used "South" "Baltimore" "Hotchkiss" and other pseudonyms when buying.
In only one case, so far, have we been told of a named catalogue that actually shows Bert's name as a buyer. This is a copy of Elder's Peter Mougey Sale catalogue (September 1910), which was described for us by John Adams, a noted numismatic researcher. There, Bert's name appears prominently as the buyer of such items as a 1799 Perfect Date large cent (purchase price $86), an Uncirculated 1801 large cent ($25), Proof large cents dated 1841 ($14.50), 1844 ($26.50), 1848 ($11.50), 1849 ($18.00), and 1857 ($8.00); 1861 and 1868 eagles, both graded Very Good ($10.25 each); and a long run of half eagles including 1840-C, 1844-D, 1847 (Uncirculated), 1848, 1849-D, 1852-C, 1857-D, and 1858-S examples ($5.25 each); as well as foreign coins from Mougey's collection.
This catalogue is atypical, in that it bears Bert's name against lots he purchased. We know from his inventory that Thomas Elder was one of his trusted agents. In fact, Bert's earliest recorded purchase was from Elder, on December 17, 1907. The catalogue copy we have referred to which names Bert may have been meant for private circulation inside Elder's office, where Bert would have been known as a collector, without breaching his desire for discretion.
We have attempted to reconstruct the inventory of Bert's collection as it stood at the time of his death; it may be found as an exhibit in this book. The reconstructed inventory will tell the reader more about Bert's collecting specialties, the dealers he patronized, and his interests in and goals for his collection.
A careful reading of the inventory listing can reveal some important facts about his numismatic activities, which might help to fill out our picture of Bert Holden as a coin collector.
Bert rushed into collecting coins in the same way, and with the same enthusiasm, as he did collecting minerals. In each field, he seems to have allocated himself a strict amount of time in which to complete his collection. His mineral collection was 85% complete after two years' work on it, from 1910 to 1912. Likewise, Bert's coin collecting activity was concentrated into a two year span, from 1908 to 1910, during which he amassed 50% of the United States coins in the present Norweb Collection.
His earliest recorded purchase, a New England shilling, Noe III-C, was obtained from Thomas Elder on December 17, 1907. This was the date of Elder's sale of the Charles Steigerwalt Collection and the coin may have come from that sale, but the inventory record is not clear on this. His last recorded auction purchase was dated February 9, 1912, also from Elder, and may have come from Elder's 58th sale, but again, the inventory records are not clear on this point.
Bert seems to have had standing orders with the United States mints at Philadelphia, Denver, and San Francisco from 1908 onward. The last purchase of any kind that is recorded in the Norweb inventory books from Bert's collecting period was a 1911 silver Proof set, obtained directly from the Philadelphia Mint.