Alfred Szego

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Alfred Szego (April 9, 1914 – September 1, 1991) was an American historian who specialized in coins. He studied coinage from medieval Austria, ancient Rome and Greece, Carthage, Judea, Spain, and 19th‑century Europe.

He was born in New York to Jewish immigrant parents from Budapest and was the oldest of four children. He married Augusta in June 1940, and they had two children, Phillip and Carol.

Szego became interested in coins in 1955 while working as a television repairman. A customer paid a repair bill with a cache of old coins, and after researching their values, Szego and his wife decided to learn more about numismatics and start a small coin business. They built a specialty shop focusing on Ancient Rome, the Holy Roman Empire, and Medieval Austria.

He wrote and illustrated The Coinage of Medieval Austria, completed in October 1970. He also reprinted rare works on central European coinage, including Schlesische Munzenund Medallien by Hugo Freiherrn von Saurma-Jeltsch and collections on Italian coinage from medieval to modern times.

In 1969, Szego and Augusta were involved in a serious two-car crash; Augusta had minor injuries, and a third passenger was killed. The other driver was arrested.

Szego was also an amateur botanist who worked on cross-breeding American Chestnut trees with the Northern Nut Growers Association to fight chestnut blight, helping lay the groundwork for later breeding efforts.