The ad for printing plates reminded me that I recently made a fun purchase. A few weeks ago a seller on eBay had several printing plates that featured illustrations of groups of coins. Most of the subject pieces were of no interest to me, but one quickly caught my eye. The coin images were, of course, mirrored from the way they would appear on the printed page, but I immediately recognized these as the King of Siam proof set. The coin were arrayed just as they appeared in the leather case in which the coins were originally housed before being slabbed; even the gaps for the two missing coins were evident. I must have been the only person who noticed the significance of this one plate, as I bought for the opening bid of just a few dollars, while most of the other plates failed to sell.

The plate measures only 3-3/4" high by 4-1/2" wide and is mounted on a wooden block just slightly larger. The plate is actually oblique, as it shows the coins in a slanted view that would make the right edge of the printed image smaller than the left. I asked the seller if he knew the publication in which this image was used, but he did not. He could tell me only that it was one of many plates retrieved from Whitman Publishing when it vacated its Racine location in 1995.

It would be fun to find a copy of the book or magazine for which this plate was created, and the seller's photo is attached. In the meantime, I'm going to attempt to buy the King of Siam proof set so that I'll have a nice little tie-in item to go with my valuable plate.