Joel Orosz
2021 Burnett Anderson Memorial Award Recipient

The Burnett Anderson Memorial Award for Excellence in Numismatic Writing is presented annually to a researcher, author or journalist in recognition of their body of work and career contributions to numismatics. First conferred posthumously on its namesake in 1999 at the ANA's 108th Anniversary Convention, the award is intended to celebrate quality and integrity in numismatic wordsmithing of every kind. The recipient is selected in a cooperative process by the ANA, the American Numismatic Society and the Numismatic Literary Guild.

This year's recipient is Joel J. Orosz, a prolific researcher and writer who has been working in the field for four decades. Burnett Anderson's son Mark Anderson accepted the award on Orosz's behalf at the Awards Banquet held August 13 at the World's Fair of ® Money. Orosz found a vocation in philanthropy and an avocation in numismatics. These interests brought balance to his life, for, as he puts it, he dedicated his workdays to giving away large sums of money and spent his leisure hours trying to claw a little bit of it back. Over the years, he has focused on tracing the literary byways of early American numismatics and also on gathering association copies (books inscribed by their authors and notable previous owners).

His numismatic corpus originated in the early 1980s. His research has been published in Rare Coin Review, The Numismatist, The American Journal of Numismatics and several other periodicals, and he is currently a columnist for The Asylum and Coin World. He's authored two numismatic books and coauthored three more. His three most recent works-The Secret History of the First U.S. Mint (2011); Truth Seeker: The Life of Eric P. Newman (2016); and 1792: Birth of a Nation's Coinage (2017)-all received the Numismatic Literary Guild's (NLG) prestigious Book of the Year Award.

The philanthropic numismatist also has been honored with three first-place ANA Heath Literary Awards (2000, 2010 and 2017) and the Wayte and Olga Raymond Memorial Literary Award (2018). In addition to the NLG, Orosz has earned numerous accolades from the Professional Numismatists Guild, the John Reich Collectors Society and the Society of Paper Money Collectors. The Numismatic Bibliomania Society named its annual writer's award after Orosz, who shared the 2020 NLG Clemy Award (the organization's highest honor) with Len Augsburger.

BURNETT ANDERSON MEMORIAL AWARD
for Excellence in Numismatic Writing

Joel J. Orosz is the Distinguished Professor of Philanthropic Studies Emeritus at Grand Valley State University. His second career as a numismatic author has spanned four decades, producing five books and hundreds of columns and articles, with an emphasis on numismatic biographies. Orosz originated "The Numismatic Bookie" column for Coin World, and also serves as a columnist for The Asylum, the quarterly journal of The Numismatic Bibliomania Society. He has authored or co-authored three Numismatic Literary Guild Books of the Year, and three Heath Literary Award-winning articles for The Numismatist, official journal of the American Numismatic Association, as well as sharing the Numismatic Literary Guild's 2020 Clemy Award with his longtime writing collaborator, Len Augsburger. Orosz is a Fellow of the American Numismatic Society; a member of the Rittenhouse Society, and a charter member of the Numismatic Bibliomania Society's Attinelli Fellowship.

Being recognized with the Burnett Anderson Memorial Award is, for a numismatic writer, much like Kansas City for Rodgers and Hammerstein; it means "you've gone about as 'fur' as you can go."

When the American Numismatic Association, the American Numismatic Society, and the Numismatic Literary Guild - the three leading supporters of numismatic scholarship - decide to bestow an award named for Burnett Anderson - the numismatic writer's writer - the recipient can only be humbled by the sheer heft of the honor, and proud of having been chosen for it.

As wonderful as this recognition of past work is, it also presents an obligation to make all future work worthy of the Burnett Anderson standard of numismatic writing. That is a tall order, but one which I gratefully accept. Thank you very much.