Babelon in
his history of
numismatics, by the way, gives a full account of
Mionnet,
his casts, and
his writings, which I have just reread.
Quite remarkable,
his first 8-volume
work on
Greek coins was essentially a
catalogue of the 20,000 casts he
had for sale, to which he then added 8 further volumes, describing coins known from other
collections or literature, apparently also coins in
Paris of which he hadn't made molds.
So he was trying to spread knowledge of coins by providing
cast reproductions of them in the days before photography, while also earning himself a living by
selling the casts! The
price of the casts was 100 for 30 francs, i.e. 30 centimes each; and
Mionnet had a workshop and storeroom in
his own house where he made and stored the casts!
Since a five franc piece was like a silver dollar at that time, a franc will have been about 20 cents and the casts were 7 cents each, the equivalent of perhaps $2-3 today because of inflation.
This commercial and educational venture led him to publish what almost amounts to a corpus of Greek and
Greek imperial coins, which is sometimes
still consulted today.
He intended to publish a similar
work on
Roman coins, but in fact only produced a much smaller summary of
rare rev. types on
Roman coins in one or two volumes. I do not believe this
work also functioned as a list of the casts he
had for sale; I have both editions at
home and will have to reread the preface.