When John Henry Nash, the distinguished San Francisco printer, wrote to Bruce Rogers expressing an interest in acquiring the original matrices of Centaur type, he mentioned that their value was no doubt decreased due to their recutting as a Monotype face. Rogers replied, in part, in a letter dated on this day, 1930:

“As to the sale of the original Centaur matrices, I’m afraid, from the paragraph in your letter (in which you say that they are probably less valuable, now that the same name is used for the Monotype series, than they were before) that we can hardly come to any agreement on it. Because my opinion is that since a version of the design is now obtainable by almost any printer, the real original is worth just as much or even more, than before. Not, perhaps, to the ordinary printer. I have never thought it of any value whatever to him—and for him the Monotype face is quite good enough. But the real Centaur, (thanks largely to our mutual friend Henry L. Bullen, who gave it such praise in the beginning and who tried to get the American Type Founders to buy it before they cut the Cloister Roman) might now almost be considered a historical type—whatever its merits as a design might be. I still think it would be better to send out a circular letter—but after consultation with Fred Goudy, who is in London at present, and who has probably had more experience in making and selling type-designs, I have decided to fix the price at $2500. And at that figure I doubt if you will be further interested in it. I suspect that someone like Kittredge, who has a large establishment backing his efforts, would be more likely to consider its purchase—even with the restriction that I mentioned in my earlier letter—i.e. that H.W. Kent should have the privilege of having type cast for his Museum Press, if they ever required any more of it. But that, as I said, is a remote contingency, as he now has it on the Monotype. . . .”