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D. Wayne Johnson
D. Wayne Johnson (born Richard Wayne Johnson, Kansas City, Missouri August 27, 1930) is an author, editor, museum official in the numismatic field; author, cataloger, medal publisher in the medallic field. He writes under the name D. Wayne Johnson for his in-depth researched articles and books, and under Dick Johnson for articles published online. His is a long-time contributor to E-Sylum, a weekly internet newsletter for numismatic literature devotes). His research and writing covers American medallic art, coin and medal technology, American medallic artists, future coins, medallic objects and biographies of select medallic artists. He is an authority on 20th century American medals and the Medallic Art Company, of which he was staff writer-researcher, 1966-77, and, since May 1, 2010 company historian and senior consultant.

Early Interest in Numismatics
An interest in coin collecting began February 1939 when his father gave him a “penny board.” He began collecting cents from circulation, as so many collectors begin. A high school journalism class spurred interest in news of coin collecting; he subscribed to a newspaper clipping service for coin news items and wrote a class paper on how to establish a news service in the numismatic field. As a teenager he knew what he wanted to do in life – to be an editor of a numismatic publication. He wrote his first published numismatic article in 1949, a news item about plastic mills for collecting sales tax in the state of Missouri.

After three semesters of college he enlisted in the Air Force January 1950, serving four years in National Security Agency in Washington, DC. This was opportunity to attend numismatic events on the East Coast, including his first national coin convention New York City, 1951. At that meeting he helped organize a group of young numismatists, the Rittenhouse Society (after first Mint Director David Rittenhouse).Later helped form a regional coin organization, Middle Atlantic Numismatic Association, and was its first co-editor, with numismatist Walter Breen.

During his service in Washington he spent off-duty hours in the main reading room of the Library of Congress and here developed a passion for numismatic books. He began collecting numismatic literature, an avocation that lasted his entire life. He subscribed to the LC’s card service to obtain a catalog card of every numismatic book ever cataloged.

Discharged from the Air Force 1954 he returned to college, Washington University in St. Louis (received a BS in business administration),1957. He served as president of the St. Louis Numismatic Society while still in college and appointed to the Central States Numismatic Society board of directors. As a class project in advertising he published and promoted a Numismatic Directory, also with Walter Breen.

After a brief stint with a printing firm in Dayton, Ohio following college, he joined the staff of the Kansas City Kansan. In this position he received an offer from the publishers of Linn’s Weekly Stamp News to return to Ohio [Sidney, north of Dayton] to publish a weekly coin newspaper. This was his life’s dream, he readily accepted, creating Coin World in the Spring of 1960.

With aggressive editorial, advertising and circulation effort Coin World grew rapidly, gaining 100,000 readers the first year, becoming the second largest hobby publication in the world. Encouraged by the success, Johnson left Coin World to start his own weekly coin publication, and was enticed to merge his publication with  WHAT IS THE NAME DICK ? The parent firm, which speculated in US Mint coins, faltered when the passage of the Coinage Act of 1965, leading to the elimination of silver in coins and their market collapsed.