Birth of the "THE Wayte Raymond NATIONAL COIN ALBUM" - M. L. Beistle

1630Boston

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The very first coin album began as a product devised by one individual to house his own collection of half dollars.** M. L. Beistle** is best remembered in numismatics for his 1929 book, A Register of Half Dollar Die Varieties and Sub-Varieties. This was primarily a labor of love, and it proved to be one of his very few endeavors that failed to make a good return on investment.

Published just in time for the Great Depression, sales were sluggish, and many copies remained on hand at the time of his death in 1935. He enjoyed far greater success with a simple tool he devised to assist him in examining his collection.

In his study of these coins to determine all of their varieties, Beistle found it cumbersome to use a coin cabinet or paper envelopes for storage, and this prompted him to devise a quicker method of making side-by-side comparisons of coins having the same date. With his knowledge of paper products, and having his own company to manufacture these to exact specifications, Beistle was in an ideal position to see his vision realized. Thus was created in 1927 the Unique Coin Holder.
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Rather than attempt to describe this product in detail, it will be easier for readers if I simply call it the ancestor of the familiar Wayte Raymond National Coin Album, as most collectors having an interest in vintage coin albums will immediately recognize the basic features of both. Initially there was only one size of Unique Coin Holder, and this conforms to the large size or portrait format National album. It also lacked a binder, instead having separate panels that served as front and back covers with the connecting rings exposed. Beistle also developed a slipcover to hold unbound pages, and these accessories are described more fully below under “The Unique Coin Holder.”

While Beistle initially produced his invention with openings for half dollars alone, he was an astute businessman who quickly realized the commercial possibilities of offering this product with a variety of opening sizes for all USA coins. The hobby was desperately in need of something that was both practical and attractive, as all that existed at the time were expensive and bulky wooden cabinets or simple paper envelopes. (p2)

Beistle was an inventor and manufacturer, but could only do so much to market his product on his own. For that, he needed a partner. The following excerpts from the Lange book explain what happened next:
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M. L. Beistle’s Unique Coin Holder was a sound concept, and by 1930 it was also a proven seller. Beistle marketed his new product to hobbyists through ads in The Numismatist, yet he did not command a major presence in the coin market. Wayte Raymond, however, was an established and well connected dealer, and he had been among the earliest buyers of Unique holders. Raymond thus saw the Unique holder’s broader potential for selling large quantities of coins during the bleak years of the Great Depression. By the fall of 1930 Raymond had struck a deal with Beistle to become the exclusive distributor of Unique holders through the Scott Stamp & Coin Company in New York. Raymond’s connection to this product was not publicized until several years later, though it was clearly known to most of his fellow dealers.

Wayte Raymond set about working with the Beistle Company to upgrade the Unique Coin Holder’s appearance and utility. The separate front and back covers of Beistle’s devising were replaced with a wrap-around cover, to which the binding rings were attached on the inside of the spine. This had the desired effect of making the whole ensemble of binder and pages look more like a book, and Raymond renamed this revised product THE NATIONAL COIN ALBUM. In this form these albums became the mainstay at the upper end of the coin storage market for nearly 30 years, until being supplanted by better albums of competing publishers in the late 1950s. (p58)

Raymond realized that the wooden coin cabinets common in previous centuries were too costly and awkward for the middle class hobbyist he was seeking, and he further understood that the simple paper envelopes then widely used were aesthetically unsatisfying. Therefore, Raymond acquired the rights to Beistle’s Unique Coin Holder and upgraded it to THE NATIONAL COIN ALBUM so familiar to collectors of the 1930s-50s. The Beistle Company remained the exclusive manufacturer of National Coin Albums and the other Raymond coin storage products, but it never again advertised them under its own name. (p59).
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Lange's research indicates that Wayte Raymond entered the coin album business in part to move the hoards of minor coins he had acquired from David Proskey and other dealers of the previous generation. Sets of three-cent pieces were easy and inexpensive to assemble in the 1930s-40s. ""Below"" is an image of the combined Three Cent Nickel / Three Cent Silver holder.

The above relates on a small part of the overall story of The National Coin Album and its impact on the U.S. numismatic hobby. Lange's book carries their story through to the present day..

Found in the NNP
The E-Sylum (1/26/2014)
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lilolme

It can be interesting the events of how things get developed. One persons needs and another persons vision.

On a side note - anybody else ever have some pictures come through as a black square. The first one in this post is that way for me. Don't see it too often but then one pops up. Yes, I refreshed and other stuff but still that way. Oh I downloaded it and can view it that way.

BUFFNIXX

useful even today

Mr_Spud

I’ve managed to find 3 sets of the Beistle Unique Coin Holder album covers and 6 of the original Beistle album pages/boards. You can find them if you search hard enough mixed in with the regular Wayte Raymond albums and boards, most people don’t realize these are the older Beistle Unique Coin Holder album parts. I learned about them in David Lange’s book and then looked for them once I knew how to ID them. Here’s some pictures I took of them along with more of the patent drawings.




Here’s just the 3 sets of covers

This picture below shows the markings on the Beistle boards as they went through the “Patent Applied For”, then “Patent Pending”, then right after the patent was granted the patent number was stamped on the border, later the patent number was printed on the back on the page itself, and then right when Wayte Raymond took over the distribution underneath where the patent number was printed “Designed and Mfg’d exclusively for Wayte Raymond-New York.” was stamped onto the pages.

Mr_Spud

And here is the text of the patent, I downloaded this, and the patent drawings in the above post from the U.S. Patent Office website

Mr_Spud

After Wayte Raymond took over the distribution and replaced Beistle’s album covers with the National Coin Album wrap around binder, the large size binders were made with 7 different variations as described in David Lange’s book. After I read about them in Lange’s book, I looked at the large National Coin Album binders I already had in my collection and made the following collage by taking pictures of the logo’s on the inside front covers of the binders. I put them in chronological order based on Lange’s descriptions and made a key so you can identify which variety is which. This way, people can look at their binder logo’s and get an idea how old they are.

Tom147

So nice to read about the early beginnings of coinage display albums. Thank you for posting this.

BUFFNIXX

Available by the boatloads on ebay now!

Mr_Spud

@BUFFNIXX said:
Available by the boatloads on ebay now!

Yeah, there are typically several Wayte Raymond Albums and pages available on eBay. Right now you can even find a fair amount of unused pages still in their original wrapping paper and those are way less common so grab them if you don’t have those particular ones. Someone let loose a hoard, but they won’t last long. I think I probably have at least one page of over 90% that were ever made of both the large and small sized pages. I have to take inventory some day.

But the original Beistle album covers and the original patent pending Beistle boards aren’t there right now and only rarely ever show up. I check every day for those, just in case. You got to check the large Wayte Raymond albums carefully to try and find the old Beistle’s, the pages can be identified if they either say patent pending or if the page numbers only have 1 or 2 digits instead of 3 digits like on the Wayte pages. They also don’t say Wayte Raymond or Faxon on them either. But you can find them mixed in with later pages in the large albums if you keep looking.

BUFFNIXX

Same goes for first edition Whitman folders. Every once in a while one pops up on flea bay and I am usually ready to snag it.
So far have gotten the Lincoln cent, liberty nickel, buffalo nickel, mercury dime, standing liberty quarter, and washington quarter this way. It was fun!