- "Craig" redirects here. For more uses of the name, see Craig (disambiguation).
| William Donal Craig | |
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| Biographical information | |
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| Born |
July 1, 1924 |
| Died | |
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| v · d · e | |
William Donal "Bill" Craig was an American-born Australian numismatist, philatelist, and attorney. He is most notable for authoring the popular Coins of the World 1750–1850 and various philatelic publications.
Biography[]
William D. Craig was born in the United States on July 1, 1924. After graduating from Stanford Law School, Craig became an attorney of the State Bar of California in 1957. He moved to Hobart, Tasmania, in 1966, continuing to practice law until his resignation on March 13, 1991. He died on March 12, 2014, in Gisborne, Victoria, at the age of 89.
At some point, Craig developed an interest in coins, particularly those of Germanic origin. His first work, Germanic coinages (Charlemagne through Wilhelm II), focused on this area of study, and was privately published in 1954. It was followed in 1966 by the first edition of Coins of the World 1750–1850, which was split into two volumes: Coins of the Western World and Coins of Africa and Asia. In 1971 both of these volumes were consolidated into one large second edition, which was followed by a third edition in 1976. The Standard Catalog of World Coins, which has since largely replaced Coins of the World 1750–1850, currently includes some catalog numbers from Craig's work, denoted by a C# prefix. Having also acquired an interest in Australian revenue stamps, Craig published nine catalogs on the subject from 1978 to 1999.
Before his death in 2014, Craig consigned his collection to the Australian auction company Downies. It was sold as part of Downies auction 317, which took place during July 2014.