I read your review of my book Watercraft on World Coins as a reader of The E-Sylum and I want to thank you for writing the review and for your congratulations and compliments. You captured nicely the essence of the book without repeating the earlier presentation of this volume in v18n45a03.

I have much appreciation for the fact that you are compiling   The E-Sylum for almost twenty years and making it a worthwhile read for almost 2,000 numismatists on a weekly basis. I know you stretch the work over an entire week, and most of each issue is written by readers, but even though, sending out drafts, getting comments, dealing with them, it all adds up to a lot of work for each and every issue, besides your family and your work. Really amazing doing that for so long a period!

I was watching television when the E-Sylum arrived on Easter Sunday night, March 27, 2016. I realize that television schedules are different around the country. The show I was watching was called "Killing Spree" on The Justice Network.

I looked up from my computer screen to the television screen. There was a brief picture of Steve Tanenbaum, victim of a spree killer and hit-and-run driver.

It is very unusual to see a friend on a national television show. I wonder if any other E-Sylum readers caught the show.

I'll go ahead and date myself. I was six years old in 1970, had become aware of numbers, and one could still get cents from the 1940s in change. Probably about ten percent of cents were wheaties, My parents had a little bowl of cents, and they'd let me go through them and put them in a blue Whitman folder. I think my oldest find was a 1919 (I don't recall the mint mark). From there it was on to bigger and better things but always on an extreme budget, I doubt I ever had anything worth more than $20. (I beat that 1919 find relatively recently by finding a 1926...yes, it's seven years newer but I found it forty-plus years later.)

I lapsed from the hobby in high school and college, then a couple years after college my collection got stolen. Once I finished moving back to Colorado, I resolved to rebuild the collection, better than it was before. I spotted a 1909 polushka (quarter kopek) on the Hallenbeck bid board sometime in 1990 and that eventually oriented me towards Russian imperial--I became full time on that in 1996. I got into exhibiting in 1998. 2008 marked the official end of Russian Imperial for me as I sold the collection, having won three Howland Wood awards in a row with it. I've done some ancients since then, and some US paper, but my main focus right now is a US type set, 1800-1964 (excluding gold).

The Spring 2013 issue of the Journal of Numismatic Research might be of interest to your readers in relation to the transcription of Franklin Peale's 1835 report.

Having read the complete report during research of this JNR issue on Benjamin Franklin Peale – Inventions and Innovations for the United States Mint, 1835 to 1852, I feel that Peale's report is interesting but contains little to justify the time involved. I suggest that much greater numismatic value can be obtained from transcriptions of other US Mint and related documents.

While I do collect British coins, I have only one Maundy coin set. It is a 1969 four coin set that my father brought home for me from a trip to England in 1986. The coins are held in a blister pack and rest within a small presentation box. I also have an uncirculated 1837 Maundy silver penny that I really wish was part of a complete four coin set!