Newman Portal Upgrades Cameras to Scan Edward Maris's A Historic Sketch of the Coins of New Jersey with a Plate

Measuring in at a massive 19" x 12", Edward Maris's 1881 analysis of New Jersey copper die varieties is one of the most physically imposing volumes in American numismatic literature. The Newman Portal scanning lab at Washington University in St. Louis recently upgraded to Nikon D810 cameras capable of 36 megapixel resolution, and Maris's elephant folio was the perfect test case.

Loaned from the Eric P. Newman rare book collection, the immediate focus of this work is the two (facing) plate pages that depict the entire set of die marriages. The Newman Portal scans of these plates can be expanded and are easily sufficient for die attribution. Remarkably, none of the usual aggregator sites (Google Books, Internet Archive, HathiTrust) had previously attempted a scan of this book - no doubt due to its unwieldy size.

While a faithful and useful reproduction of the original, this digital representation does not quite duplicate the grandeur of a physical copy. At the recent Baltimore Whitman show, the C4 club displayed a copy of the Maris folio with corresponding examples of New Jersey cents overlaid on the two photographic plates. The Internet is a fine tool for research, but exhibits such as this are a compelling reason to attend coin shows.

Link to A Historic Sketch of the Coins of New Jersey on Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/details/historicsketchof1881edwa