I was saddened to hear of the passing of Jim King. Jim was truly of the old school. Impeccably dressed (and his wife looking like an agelessfashion model), always courteous, Jim had a keen eye and traveled extensively in Europe. For the better part of 20 years I would always makeJim's one of the first tables I stopped at for any major show - and almost invariably he would have something truly special that lightened mycheckbook after I had barely stepped on the bourse floor!

Jim didn't go in much for slabs (though in the last few years he had a few, as we all seem to nowadays - the plastic version of kudzu, youjust can't escape). He never cared about having the Finest Known of anything. But he always had an eye for quality - and for the unusual. Jimturned up obscure tokens and medals, rare varieties of French Colonies coins, and brought many colonial coins back home from Europe (who knows howthey got there!). Jim really needed to be interested in something to deal in it - and his customers tended to be people who were just as interestedin the same things, meaning that whenever he showed us something we were usually reaching for that checkbook before we even asked the price.

Jim had an amazing memory - this was a man who spent over 60 years in coins, and was going to European (and American) auctions before many of uswere born. What he saw, he remembered - and he was always happy to share. I remember showing him an extremely rare piece I had bought, and he said hehad seen that piece in an auction in the early 1960s and gave me the month and year of the sale. I was going to razz him a bit when I saw him nextbecause he got the year right but he was off on the month - well, at least until I looked closer at the sale dates and realized it started at the endof one month and finished the first day of another and, of course, the coin was in the section that made what he said absolutely correct!

He also used that memory for looking for really special pieces. One example was a Washington colonial coin struck over an exceedingly rare Britishtoken -- he saw it at auction four decades previously, and looked at every Washington piece of that type until he found another. That was one of thecoins that lightened my checkbook considerably, and the coin now resides in one of the finest Washingtonia collections ever formed - and no other hassince been found.

Jim didn't socialize much in the hobby, and the only time I ever remember seeing him go out to dinner with someone from coins was with his oldfriend Bob Vlack. He didn't put out price lists, and he didn't call or write customers with things for sale. He simply showed up consistentlyand people knew to get to him quickly. I hadn't seen him at a show in a couple years, and had heard that he was having health issues - but he wasgoing strong into his early 80s I believe (no one would ever presume to ask him his age - and DEFINITELY not that of his wife!) - traveling the worldand setting up at shows at a time in life when many people can barely move or remember whether they had breakfast or not.

Jim could easily be summed up in one word -- one that isn't often used in numismatics these days. Class.

Bill Rosenblum writes:

To watch the complete video, see: Numismatic Interviewwith James D. King (https://coinweek.com/people-in-the-news/numismatic-interview-with-james-d-king/)

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
NOTES FROM E-SYLUM READERS: FEBRUARY 17, 2019 : Jim King(https://www.coinbooks.org/v22/esylum_v22n07a09.html)