We are very pleased to announce the purchase of the Dr. George Hetrich Civil War token collection. Hetrich, who died in 1928, was the co-author of Civil War Tokens and Tradesmen's Store Cards along with Julius Guttag in 1924. Their H&G numbering system was the standard in the hobby until the Fuld books in the 1960's. The entire collection, formed by an Anonymous collector, is just shy of 10,000 pieces. The Hetrich portion was purchased in a single 6,000 pieces lot in a 1954 Pennypacker Auction sale. We believe that this is the correct year though online accounts vary. We have yet to locate a copy of the actual auction catalog and would love to find one and pin down the exact date and lot description.

The collector who purchased that lot already had a collection and added to it in the 1950's, 1960's and through the early 1970's with the last piece being purchased more than 50 years ago. The purchase we made was from that collector's descendants in two separate transactions in late 2024 and early 2025. The family wants to remain anonymous so that part of the collection will be known as the Pennsylvania Civil War Token collection. We have already approved preliminary designs for two special NGC labels to house the collections.

We have been working on purchasing this collection for nearly 20 years, making two unsuccessful attempts in the past. Prior to that Steve Tanenbaum, Rich Rossa and Joe Levine tried and failed to acquire these treasures. It contains roughly 5,500 different Civil War tokens making it one of the most extensive collections ever formed. To put it in perspective, Steve Tanenbaum's collection contained roughly 4,800 different Civil War tokens. Even the duplicates contain many great rarities, gems and popular tokens. The Fuld's used notes about this collection to produce their books in the 1960's and 1970's. Still the collection has dozens of Unlisted and "Not Verified" varieties not to mention over 50 Unique varieties.

As we often mention after a major acquisition, now would be the perfect time to send in a Want or Have List. As the result of hints made over the last month, we have already received a number of lists. We will be proceeding differently with this collection, typically if tokens in a collection were raw, we sold them that way when servicing Want Lists. Because of the importance of this collection, we will be having the best pieces Professionally Graded with the custom labels prior to sale. Because grading many 1,000's of tokens will be multiyear project, we plan to start with the items on the Want Lists.

For more information, see:
https://civilwartokens.com/

To read the earlier E-Sylum articles, see:
PENNYPACKER HETTRICH AUCTION(https://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v04n24a06.html)
ONE THING LEADS TO ANOTHER AND ANOTHER(https://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v07n07a10.html)
GEORGE FULD ON JULIUS GUTTAG's CIVIL WAR TOKEN COLLECTION(https://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v09n49a16.html)
DR. GEORGE HETRICH (1862-1928)(https://www.coinbooks.org/v21/esylum_v21n05a16.html)
NUMISMATIC NUGGETS: DECEMBER 30, 2018 : Deluxe Leather Hettrich-Guttag(https://www.coinbooks.org/v21/esylum_v21n52a24.html)