CNG 100 Adams Collection Virtual Catalog

The Dr. Lawrence A. Adams Collection Dr. Lawrence (Larry) Alexander Adams was born on May 31, 1935 in Los Angeles, California, the son of Alexander and Lucille (née Spiker) Adams. His father was a salesman in the Wholesale Market and Restaurant business. Dr. Adams died unexpectedly on March 24, 2015, just a couple of months short of what would have been his 80th birthday.

Larry is survived by Meredith (née Nieboer) Adams, his wife of 54 years. A prominent Dermatologist specializing in Dermatologic Surgery (Mohs-Micrographic Surgery), Larry worked his entire professional career for Kaiser Permanente in the Greater Los Angeles area.

Larry received both his undergraduate degree and then his medical education at Loyola University of Chicago, the Stritch School of Medicine, graduating with his M.D. in 1960.

He did his internship through the Veterans Administration Los Angeles Healthcare System in 1960-1; his residency in General Surgery at the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1961-2; and his residency in Dermatology at the McGaw Medical School of Northwestern University from 1964-7. Larry practiced medicine in California from 1965 right up until his death in March of 2015, primarily at the Southern California Permanente Medical Group, Panorama City Medical Center.

Besides medicine and his family, Larry’s third passion in life was numismatics, which he began pursuing in the 1960s. A friend of Larry’s, Don Corrigan (the son of famous aviator Douglas “Wrong-way” Corrigan), advised Larry to purchase only gold coins, and Larry followed this advice throughout his collecting career. He purchased gold coinage from ancient to modern, with an emphasis on the Middle East, the Early Middle Ages, and the Ptolemies of Egypt. He had specialized collections of Kushan, Kushano-Sasanian, Indian (an extensive collection), and Bosporan gold coinage. He liked Dutch gold coinage, as his wife is of Dutch ancestry, and he collected French gold pattern coinage. Over the last few years, he had started to collect gold medals, particularly those from Latin America. In short, if it was gold, and numismatically related, Larry probably collected it! He had a “good eye” for coins, and rarity was more important to Larry than quality, the mark of a “true” collector and numismatist.

Larry belonged to many numismatic clubs and organizations, both locally and nationally, but he was especially proud of his membership in the “Sunday Morning Get Together”, a numismatic breakfast group founded by Richard “Dick” Lissner, Irving “Irv” Goodman, and M. Louis “Mark” Teller. Larry joined the group within the first year of its formation. Composed of serious, committed numismatists, this “club” grew to become a “who’s who” of prominent collectors in the greater Los Angeles area. Members included Dr. Osmund Chan, Dr. Robert Hesselgesser, Dr. Vladimir Golovchinsky and Paul Covey from San Antonio, Texas. Victor England would sometimes join the group when travelling through the area, and wives, children, and grandchildren were always welcomed as guests.

Another organization that Larry was quite active in was the Society of Ancient Numismatics (or SAN). Larry contributed several articles to the SAN Journal, and eventually became the 6