EXOGRAPHICA? Public Deposited
The E-Sylum: Volume 5, Number 31, July 28, 2002, Article 8
EXOGRAPHICA?
Neil Shafer writes: "Your discussion about various terms for
paper money collectors, etc. caught my attention. As you are
probably aware, the Professional Currency Dealers Association
(Pcda) has published a series of introductory booklets starting
about 10 or 11 years ago. One of their earliest was mine titled
'"The Wonderful World of Paper Money." They allowed me
to try to bring into play a new word for the Great Paper
Periphery, so on page 44 of that booklet I introduced a word
I had "coined" to correspond exactly with the "exonumia"
word- it was "exographica" and I explained it this way:"There are literally thousands of paper items of interest
generally to paper money collectors. Many of these pieces
are not money or were never intended to resemble any kind
of currency. Instead, they fill in much of the sidelines and help
tell the fuller story of money through what they depict."A new term is being introduced which encompasses all this
paper periphery, including many issues of paper tokens and
good-fors of all sorts: exographica. This word was chosen
to bring some cohesion to the many and varied aspects of
those pieces of paper which are obliquely related to some
aspect of numismatic collecting. Kinds of items which
generally fit into this exographic category include but are
not limited to: checks and other fiscal documents, stagecoach,
horsecar and trolley tickets, railroad passes and tickets, food
stamp change, receipts of all kinds, most engraved items of
paper, lottery tickets, labels, coupons of all sorts, military
passes, pictorial advertising, letterheads, souvenir cards,
diplomas, announcements, autographs, insurance policy forms,
various awards, and the like."Looking back on it 10 years later, it strikes me that my new
word is too broad in its scope, but that can easily be rectified.
I still think it is as useful as its exonumia brother, can be broken
down into the same kinds of descriptive terms: exographist
(the collector), and the other 2 forms used above for the
collective noun and adjective. Is this idea worth backing at
all from anyone else besides Pcda?"[Non-numismatic bibliophiles would probably call that stuff
"ephemera", but a term specific to numismatic paper could
be useful. What does the E-Sylum readership think?
-Editor]- 2002-07-28
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