Albert Pick (15 May 1922 – 22 November 2015) was a German

numismatist A numismatist is a specialist, researcher, and/or well-informed collector of numismatics, numismatics/coins ("of coins"; from Late Latin , genitive of ). Numismatists can include collectors, specialist dealers, and scholar-researchers who use coi ...

. An internationally acknowledged authority on the subject of paper

money Money is any item or verifiable record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts, such as taxes, in a particular country or socio-economic context. The primary functions which distinguish money are: m ...

, Pick wrote the first modern catalog of

banknote A banknote or bank notealso called a bill (North American English) or simply a noteis a type of paper money that is made and distributed ("issued") by a bank of issue, payable to the bearer on demand. Banknotes were originally issued by commerc ...

s in 1974, and is widely credited with establishing the modern face of banknote collecting. His '' Standard Catalog of World Paper Money'' is the standard reference work for banknote collectors worldwide.

Career

Pick started a collection of banknotes as a child in 1930. Later, after his war service (including a year in a

POW camp A prisoner-of-war camp (often abbreviated as POW camp) is a site for the containment of enemy fighters captured as prisoners of war by a belligerent power in time of war. There are significant differences among POW camps, internment camps, an ...

in the U.S.), he went on to study philosophy, literature and history. He worked as the manager of a publishing house while amassing his collection of banknotes, at a time when

notaphily Notaphily is the study and collection of paper currency, and banknotes. A notaphilist is a collector of banknotes or paper money, particularly as a hobby. History It is believed that people have been collecting paper money for as long as it has ...

, the collecting and study of paper money, was still in its infancy and a relatively cheap hobby. Over the years Pick became an acknowledged expert in the field of banknotes, and by 1964 his private collection of (at that time) 180,000 notes had become too extensive for a private collector. In that year the collection was received by the Bavarian Mortgages and Exchange Bank (Bayerische Hypotheken- und Wechselbank, now

HypoVereinsbank HypoVereinsbank (HVB), legally registered since late 2008 as UniCredit Bank GmbH, is a significant bank in Germany headquartered in Munich. It has been part of the Milan-based UniCredit group since 2005, and fully owned by it since 2008. As a ...

). Pick was retained as a curator in the service of the bank between 1964 and 1985 and continued to expand the collection. Albert Pick lent his name to the Pick-numbers system, whereby collectors can unambiguously identify and catalogue each banknote. Besides his best known work, the ''Standard Catalog of World Paper Money'',Boca Raton News - Dec 15, 1985
/ref> Pick published numerous books abroad and received several international prizes and honors for his publications. In the last years of his life he lived in retirement in Garmisch, Bavaria, Germany.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pick, Albert German numismatists People from Cologne People from the Rhine Province 1922 births 2015 deaths German military personnel of World War II