WAYNE'S NUMISMATIC DIARY: APRIL 13, 2014

PREV ARTICLE NEXT ARTICLE FULL ISSUE PREV FULL ISSUE

V17 2014 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 17, Number 16, April 13, 2014, Article 18

On the afternoon of Tuesday April 8 I became aware that David Lisot's video interview with me at the March Baltimore coin show had been published. I watched it before leaving my office, and forwarded it to members of Nummis Nova, my northern Virginia numismatic social group. I would be meeting them for dinner in an hour or so.

Roger Burdette responded quickly, joking "Who was the handsome guy being interviewed?" I was very pleased with how it turned out. David asked me about The E-Sylum and how it came about. At the dinner that evening Chris Neuzil told me he'd learned a number of things from the interview. As the one who lived through it all I guess I do take certain things for granted. Have a look yourselves at the link below. Thanks, David!

I arrived at Legal Sea Foods in the Tyson's Galleria about 6:30 and soon found everyone in a private room in the back of the restaurant. Our host was Eric Schena. Regulars Tom Kays and Julian Leidman were unable to attend, but already present were Eric, Chris, Roger, Aaron Packard, Mike Packard (no relation), Gene Brandenburg, Ron Abler, Wayne Herndon, Jon Radel, Joe Levine, Steve Bishop, and Dave Schenkman.

I grabbed an empty seat to the right of Jon, and soon Lenny Goldberg filled in the seat to my right. Across from us were Eric and Joe. Holding court at the far end of the table was Roger. I passed around a few items of numismatic ephemera that I'd picked up recently. Other show-n-tell items for the evening included a slabbed 1795 dollar.

I got up and visited folks at other parts of the table before and after dinner, chatting with Wayne, Dave, Eric and others. Gene was his usual generous self, offering me a glass from his bottles of wine, which I eagerly accepted. I took the red, my usual, even though Gene had properly schooled me last month in what a good white wine tastes like (very good!).

Aaron had emailed me previously about some interesting Civil War-era cardboard scrip notes, and he showed me the images on his tablet computer. Aaron wrote:

I picked up several pieces recently, and was only able to attribute them via Ezekiel's article in The Numismatist 1912, pg. 218.

Coincidentally, while looking around to see if any catalogs exist, I came across an archived article from The E-Sylum, Volume 9, Number 26, June 25, 2006, Article 11, entitled "CIVIL WAR CARDBOARD SCRIP." It looks like you were the author and you were also aware of Ezekiel's 1912 write-up.

Aside from the scant list in Rulau's token book, as per your E-Sylum article, is there indeed no catalog for Civil War Cardboard scrip? The pieces that I picked up possess provenance from a Bowers & Merena sale that occurred in 1985.

I was sorry to say I wasn't aware of any such catalog. Fred Reed's recent book on U.S. Civil War Stamp Envelopes is a close cousin (and another collecting favorite of mine), but there's a big gap for cardboard scrip. Some is covered under various state obsolete currency books, but other than some scattered articles, there is no book on the subject.

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see: CIVIL WAR CARDBOARD SCRIP (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v09n26a11.html)

Jon Radel had some recent catalogs of world telephone tokens on display, He also had a nice pair of medals, recent purchases from eBay. They were French Civil Service medals for the PTT (Postes et Télécommunications).

For more information, Jon recommends thie Wikipedia entry: Médaille d'honneur des PTT (fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A9daille_d%27honneur_des_PTT)

One of the discussion topics was my recent trip to Pittsburgh to work on numismatic literature from the John Burns estate. It's a huge chore. There was only time to do the most basic triage; as much as I would have loved to, organizing the books by subject just wasn't in the cards. But Pat McBride and his crew are still working on it, and we should be ready for the auction at the PAN show in May.

It was another great evening of numismatic fellowship. The next morning before heading to work I watched another of the videos David Lisot filmed at the March Baltimore show. He had interviewed me, Allen Berman, Charlie Davis, John Kraljevich and Del Parker about John Burns. The end result is a superb tribute to our old friend. Follow the link below to watch it on the CoinWeek site.