SNOWDEN, James Ross. A Description of Ancient and Modern Coins.

...in the Cabinet Collection at the Mint of the United States.

Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1860.

8vo.; green cloth stamped in gilt and blind.

First edition, with folding table and twenty-seven embossed plates of coins in metallic tints; frontpiece medallion portrait of Snowden engraved by Anthony C. Paquet. Sabin 85581.

Snowden (1809-1878) was a Pennsylvania lawyer appointed treasurer of the United States Mint and assistant treasurer of the United States in Philadelphia in 1848. From 1854 to 1861 he was director of the United States Mint and this 1860 work was the first of a series of treatises he wrote on numismatics: A Descriptions of the Medals of Washington (1861), The Medallic Memorials of Washington in the Mint of the United States (1861) and The Coins of the Bible (1864). He also wrote an article in Lippincott’s Magazine in 1870 urging all nations to adopt the dollar as their monetary unit, based on the gold standard. A fitting philosophy for a hard money man.