I just had to say that the double struck Buffalo was one of the most fantastic pieces I’ve ever encountered! Sure, they had to exist, but never have I seen such an item. And the crude Jola coin sure was a treat.

Relative to the recent E-Sylum segment on the Hurd Hatfield character being a numismatist in The Picture of Dorian Gray, I watched Turner Classic Movies' "The Hucksters" (1947) last night , a movie I'd seen perhaps twice before. It starred Clark Gable, Adolphe Menjou and Sydney Greenstreet . Menjou and Gable had appeared in at least six pictures together going back to the silent era when Menjou was a major star and Gable an extra so they were comfortable with each other.

In one of the first movie scenes in Hucksters, Gable is well dressed and sitting for a job interview with ad agency boss Menjou. During this interview Menjou points to Gable's neck tie and says "By the way, I like your tie." to which Gable replies "I thought you would". Gable is wearing a tie with an array of $20 gold pieces on it. It is pretty clear these two veteran actors and longtime friends were engaging in an unscripted banter.

Menjou auctioned his coin collection in 1950 through Beverly Hills Coin Galleries, Kreisberg and Kosoff. He died in 1963 in Beverly Hills.

While many of you are traveling to the ANA convention this week, I will be traveling back home to Frederick, MD. I had a good time here in Europe. I wanted to comment on the Operation Bernhard post. I brought two books on that subject from my library that I read while here. I really enjoyed both of them. One was Krueger's Men by Lawrence Malkin, the other was the English translation of Counterfeiter by Moritz Nachtstern, of which in Malkin wrote a forward.

In Malkin's book the whole wartime counterfeiting plan is laid out. The idea of counterfeiting Germany currency was suggested in both Britain and the USA, but in both countries, treasury and bank officials vetoed it.

In Germany it was the idea of Heinrich Himmler who had a never ending need for money for his SS operations. SS major Bernard Kruger was picked to run this operation, using Jewish prisoners from the many concentration camps. They were successful, making nearly perfect British pound notes that spread throughout Europe causing the Bank of England problems for a long time. Amazingly, Bank of England officials trying to protect their own reputations denied the problem, and then covered it up for many years.

The other book is the story of Moritz Nachtstern, a Norwegian Jew who was half dead in Auschwitz when Krueger picked him because he was a typographer. He then went to the Sachsenhausen camp, Block 19,the place of the counterfeiting. He tells of his experiences of the next two years.

While the Sachsenhausen camp was not a death camp like Auschwitz, it was no country club. The prisoners were subject to brutal beatings, and constant harassment of maliciousness SS guards. They were all marked for death to keep the operation secret, but some good luck and the fast collapse of Germany in the last few weeks of the war saved them.