My records indicate he was born 10/8/1942.

Congratulations on the way you manage, print and circulate The Esylum.

It is without doubt the best publication of its kind, published weekly, and embraces all facets of numismatics in a very scholarly way. E-Sylum provides current news, articles in special series, opinion letters, listings of future auctions, both for coins and the literature available to be aware about, and all done scientifically and accurately like no one has ever done successfully before.

Keep up the good work and you will attract many more readers who want to be informed more about our hobby and the tools we use. Here's wishing you many more years of success and admiration of your fellow collectors.

A curator at the American Numismatic Society whose father is in Astana actually sent me a high res image of the coin. I really appreciate you and your fellow collectors' willingness to help.

I can't wait to get that first-edition Taxay book that I won in the Fred Lake auction so I can see the dust jacket.

The graders at BGC with their electron microscopes could probably tell whether a sticker's been removed.

P.S.---BGC is the Bibliographic Guaranty Corp.

I removed labels from two copies and I compromised the underlying print in both. While a person more skilled might be able to leave the printing unscathed, in both copies the area uncovered was slightly different in color. This may be due to exposure to light or to a chemical reaction, likely both. Removal of the label from a copy kept shielded from light and in a cool environment over the years might be incapable of detection, but I doubt it.

The Taxay article was great fun to write and, even beyond the world of us book weenies, has been enthusiastically received.

I collect school award medals and have a bunch of these in my collection. I don’t know the sculptor of the 1950 boys’ medal, however, there was a book published in 2004 by a Peter J. Eisert entitled “The National Convention Badges, Membership Badges, & Award Medals of the American Legion” (ISBN 0-9753865-0-6). While the book does not list the sculptor, there is an extensive set of footnotes and this might help with some further research, if Harry hasn’t already seen it.

“I do have a copy of the Eisert Book. But no joy there in trying to mine the bibliography for artist info. I am not a collector of these medals but have an interest in the artist, R Tait McKenzie who I admire a lot. And as I got into the sequence of the medals I got interested in the double standard they exhibited and how they slowly sorted it out.”

The book may still be of interest to a few E-Sylum readers, but I might emphasize that it is primarily a pictorial listing of several types of American Legion medals, while Harry’s article in The Clarion is a much deeper exploration of the evolution of the extensive American Legion school medal series. He and I continued our e-mail exchange and agree, among other things, that the R. Tait McKenzie medals from the 1920’s are a great introduction to these medals since they are both artistically terrific and readily available on eBay at very reasonable prices.

It is my conviction that the greater enemy of historical accuracy is not in the forgetting of things that happened, but in the remembering of things that never happened. Thanks, therefore, to John Kleeberg for pointing out my error in a recent post regarding the NC designation.

Such an event, though, forces me into primary documents for both confirmation and clarification. Here is what Sheldon wrote on page 53 of Early American Cents:

"Of the Early Cents 327 true varieties or obverse-reverse combinations are known and are here described. However, not all of the 327 are collectible. Seventeen of them are known by only a single example and in all but four instances these unique coins are now in the museum of the American Numismatic Society in New York. About a dozen varieties are known by only two specimens, one or both of which may have been permanently retired from numismatic circulation. In at least two instances three examples of a variety are known but not more than one of these is "out" and in the hands of collectors...By and large...the NC's [sic] remain unobtainable and the collector will in the long run be happier to leave them off his want list."

I have a question for E-Sylum readers. Does anyone have a good image of the Yale University specimen of the Wass, Molitor & Co. Large Head $20? I believe it was from the Dr. George Alfred Lawrence Collection (Thomas Elder, 6/1929), lot 1406, but I don’t think it was plated in the catalog. Thanks for any help you can give me.

The German Kaiser in question would have been Frederick III, who ruled until 1888.