In 1952, Jim Charlton with the assistance of Fred Bowman and other numismatic students, released the company's first title, the Catalogue of Canadian Coins, Tokens & Fractional Currency, 1st edition.
[7] The growing popularity of numismatics in Canada in the 1950s necessitated Jim Charlton's expansion of his home-based business into a separate retail location.
A few months after opening Front Street, Charlton, his wife, and two employees suffered a botched armed robbery at gunpoint by two Toronto men.
[8] Due to safety concerns, Charlton then relocated Canada Coin Exchange and consolidated the store, office, and warehouse into one location.
Having the facilities, experience and market potential that Jim Charlton lacked, Yeoman and Bressett became responsible for the printing, sales, and distribution of the catalogues through Whitman's Coin Products Division for the next ten years (1960–1969) until the 19th edition.
During the "Whitman Years", the catalogue was modified to a blue hardcover case bound publication, where individual segments were sewn together, before the spine was flattened, and the hard cover attached.
The catalogue itself underwent a formatting modification, with the incorporation of more individual and larger illustrations of coins and tokens, additional information on coins and bills themselves, reassembling of data, mint statistics and prices on one page, the inclusion of grading standards, the inclusion of die varieties never previously catalogued, and an increase in pages to 128 from its previously 34.
When he explored the possibility in 1954, he encountered obstacles given that he had not received permission to publish such a catalogue with illustrations of paper money from the Bank of Canada and the Department of Finance.
At the same time that Charlton was exploring the possibility of incorporating bank note illustrations, James Elliott Jr. was independently working on a paper money catalogue.
'"[15] Nonetheless, fearing seizure of the printed matter, Charlton kept the majority of the publications in the basement of his brother's residence in Mississauga, Ontario.
Charlton and Whitman eventually parted ways in 1970 after their decade-long pairing due to a disagreement over the pricing structure listed in the Canadian catalogue.
With the demands of the coin business taking his free time from his wife Mary and son Jimmy, Jim Charlton left The Star after 13 years of employment in 1961.
After pitching to companies on the marvels of elastomer, Cross would often visit coin shops in the area during his spare time before heading home, particularly in Ottawa.
His passion for the hobby eventually led to Cross founding and becoming acting President of the Canadian Association of Numismatic Dealers (1976–1980), and purchasing Torex (Canada's most popular coin and paper money show) from 1976 to 1984.
Cross was also honorary chair of the Royal Canadian Numismatic Association (RCNA) at the World's Fair of Money in 2014, and recipient of the J. Douglas Ferguson Award in 2002.
In his initial explorations of purchasing the company from Jack Alexander Forbes, Bill Cross insisted that the copyrights to his catalogues be included in the sale.
At the same time in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Cross continued operating the Red Cent Coin Company, with eventual plans to gradually phase out that aspect of the business.
In 1976, a decision was made to publish a more reader-friendly format that would split the coin catalogue by removing the token and paper money content to devote to two separate books, lest collectors be faced with an unnecessarily thick publication.
The former publication was published with an impressive 820 pages due to the fact that The Charlton Press incorporated banknotes from over 152 Chartered Banks in Canada as well as a section on Merchant Scrip.
With prices rapidly fluctuating, The Charlton Press started issuing semi-annual releases (Winter and Summer) of the Standard Catalogue of Canadian Coins to keep up with the ever-fickle market.
Lorimer's suggestion was accepted and on November 8, 1979 it was filed and then officially registered on October 17, 1980, with the title modified to "Half Maple Leaf open book/The Charlton Press".
Listings were expanded and extensively revised for some bank notes, and notices were added reminding readers of valuations as being inextricably linked to Charlton grading standards.
[42] Charlton's papers, an impressive archive of material that he himself had set aside included write-ups from club bulletins, clippings, pamphlets, photographs, and other ephemera.
Over 27 years starting from 1868, Batty sold by subscription parts of his publication, all except the final volume listing Colonial Copper Coinage, due to his death.
What was published, was an updated release featuring an additional 47 pages of new information and over 250 images to Some Die Varieties of the Large Cents of British North America and Canada (2nd Edition), which had an original publication date of 1992.
[9] Bill Cross recalls an historical anecdote involving the sale of Royal Doulton figurines and a murder plot at Charlton Numismatics.
As he explains, a man had walked into Charlton Numismatics with a list of a couple hundred Royal Doulton figurines, which Cross purchased.
As part of the purchase agreement, a helper from Charlton Numismatics picked up the figurines from the man's home, while also agreeing to drop off a trunk that was to be shipped to Vancouver.
[9] A rough estimate by Robert Aaron, a columnist with the Toronto Star "Coins" feature in 1977 puts a figure of 1.25 million Charlton catalogues sales in the first 25 years of its publication.
While a French version was printed for the 50th anniversary, and which the Royal Canadian Mint sold 5000 copies, subsequent attempts to translate the catalogue into Canada's other official language has not proven marketable.