This note was started several years ago with the finding of some old printing blocks that showed seventeenth century tokens of Buckinghamshire. It is easy to take for granted the progress in technologies for photographing and printing images of coins over the past few decades. The processes used to be much more involved, and incorporating illustrations was the bottleneck and the main cost in the production of a printed work. The source of the 210 blocks was easily identified as Manton & Hollis (1933) and three “extras” were traced to Hollis (1937). The decision to use printing blocks was not obvious as that time, as options for collotype plates, screen printing and half-tones were widely in use in numismatic publishing (e.g. in the BNJ).
BNS Research Blog 
An interesting and detailed review – many thanks to the author whose extensive researches and articles could justify renaming this site the BNS Oddie Blog! I would be really interested to learn more about photographic methods which are so central to modern numismatics.
Glad you liked it. My own photography is of the “happy snappy” variety – 20 year old camera, no faffing, maximum speed, and a file size plenty good enough for most online and printing applications. However, there is a real art to getting good coin photos – some auction houses and dealers have perfected it and it can easily add a grade to the image seen in a quick snap. I would also be interested to see a few Blogs from readers who do “proper” photography – especially tips and tricks for the lighting, camera settings and background etc.
Regarding the disposal of Manton’s tokens, I have a Middlesex token of Edward Lloyd (Williamson Uncertain 50) which I acquired in 1975 from a Mr F E Baker of Henley. It was ex Manton from a group of town and uncertain tokens sold to Baker by Manton’s widow.
Hi Vincent, many thanks for the note. It’s nice to see provenances join up like that. Maybe someone reading this (one day) will find and recognise Manton’s collection of 17th C Bucks tokens. Apparently there were a few unrecordeds in there (at the time) and if they turn up together, they should point to the provenance.