Welcome to The E-Sylum: Volume 11, Number 07, February 17, 2008: an electronic publication of the Numismatic Bibliomania Society. Copyright (c) 2008, The Numismatic Bibliomania Society. WAYNE'S WORDS: THE E-SYLUM FEBRUARY 17, 2008 Among our recent subscribers are Rick Gross, courtesy of Alan Weinberg, Jim Bevill, Brenda Costner and Stephen Mihm. Welcome aboard! We now have 1,113 subscribers, who are being treated to a whopper of an issue this week. While not every issue is quite this lengthy, the mix of topics is quite typical - numismatic research queries and answers, first-hand reports from witnesses to numismatic history, some interesting items culled from news reports, and the first-time publication of some interesting information related to numismatics. This week we open with sad news of the death of Sam Pennington, who was a regular correspondent on the topic of medals. He will be missed. We have a number of book announcements and reviews this week including Testimonia Numaria (volume II), Berk's "100 Greatest Ancient Coins", Bowers-Sundman's "100 Greatest American Currency Notes", and Ambio's "Collecting and Investing Strategies for U.S. Gold Coins". Also, Fred Reed provides an update on his upcoming work titled 'ABRAHAM LINCOLN, the Image of His Greatness: Ideal, Idol & Icon'. Responses to earlier items include George Kolbe on things found in books, plus other topics such as coins struck to commemorate the reign of Queen Liliuokalani of Hawaii and the answer to our quiz question. One new query involves coins and medals at the Library of Congress; another relates to Columbia University's Lombat Prize for numismatics. The top item in the news this week is welcome word of the safe return of New Zealand's stolen medals. Next comes word of storm damage to a fascinating 1850's "Counterfeit House" in Ohio, and a great article on the making of "The Counterfeiters", a film based on the true story of Operation Bernhard, the Nazi concentration camp counterfeiting operation during WWII. In the "just for fun" department is a discussion and link to the 1951 Amos and Andy television episode about a rare coin. Be sure to watch it! Other interesting topics include Alan Weinberg's coverage of Heritage's sale of the Walter Husak collection of early large cents, and a great account of a heated altercation between prominent former Philadelphia Mint personnel in 1895. To learn which numismatic personalities whacked one another with a cane and an umbrella, read on. Have a great week, everyone. Wayne Homren Numismatic Bibliomania Society MEDAL MAVEN SAM PENNINGTON OF THE MAINE ANTIQUE DIGEST 1928-2007 Dave Bowers writes: "I was distressed to read in ANTIQUE WEEK that Sam Pennington, founder of Maine Antique Digest passed away on February 2nd at the age of 79. "A few years ago Sam discovered numismatics, and jumped into medals with both feet, starting a medals column in M.A.D. Meanwhile he formed a collection on the 'because I like it' basis--perhaps the best way to collect. "About 20 years ago Sam was thinking of getting involved in coins one way or another, journalism-wise, and called me about his publishing a guide to auction records in the field. This never happened. He was 'numismatically aware' and kept his finger on the coin hobby, even before he went into medals. "He was a great man, a great asset to the collecting fraternity." Dick Johnson writes: "I am devastated to learn of Sam Pennington's death. We were planning to do so much together for the future. He was a customer of mine for items of medallic art 25 years ago, but his interest in medals really blossomed in recent years. We formed a mutual friendship based on a strong similar interest. "He observed the specialized interest of the readers to his monthly Maine Antique Digest, particularly after introducing a column on jewelry. He wanted a similar column on medallic art that he would likewise publish every month. In November 2006 he asked me to write that column. I refused, citing my desire to finish several books underway, but instead offered to furnish him as much background information as he wanted. "He started that monthly Medals Column in the June 2007 issue of M.A.D. He wrote about medallic art that interested him -- the medallic ashtrays of Paul Manship and other artists. He had been acquiring these for a number of years. He obtained photos of those he did not own and photographed those with his Olympic camera he did. Since most had been made by Medallic Art Company, I was able to furnish him some of that promised background data. "As predicted, his readers responded with medals they had in their possession. The inevitable questions, "Can you tell me anything about my ..." and, of course, "what is it worth?" Sam attempted to answer all. He published their photos and added comments. When I gave him so much background data it nearly filled a column, Sam paid me as if I were the author, despite the fact he wrote the entire piece. "In his most recent column (number 8) he answered just such a reader's inquiry for an IBM medal made just before World War II. Sam often told me readers want to know the value, always. So I should always give my opinion of its worth. I mentioned its most recent auction sale was $397 in one of Joe Levine's auctions. I noted the extensive damage to the edge and rims and commented on its deteriorated condition. I suggested its value at $40 to $50. "On the phone Sam commented 'I'd pay $400 for that medal.' After quoting my comments, Sam appended in print: 'Author Sam Pennington disagrees on the estimated value. He suggests the medal in its present state should be worth at least its 1988 auction price of $397.' "I smiled after reading that, but blushed at the brief data on me under that article. "Sam was like that. Always kind, giving, understanding, cooperative. He encouraged and supported me in my research on medallic artists. He wanted to see my databank on coin and medal artists published and had requested a copy before then -- a number of times. His persistence and encouragement reached a peak after the FIDEM Congress, I gave in and sent him a disc of that artists databank. "One of the projects we had discussed for the future was to reestablish the Society of Medalists. That may not happen soon without the support of Sam Pennington." AMERICAN NUMISMATIC SOCIETY SEEKS LIBRARIAN [The ANS is seeking candidates to fill the position of retiring librarian Frank Campbell. You wouldn't be reading The E-Sylum if you didn't have a love and respect for numismatic literature. Most of us are hobbyists and may lack the background required for such a position, but one of you just might be the person ANS is looking for to fill some very big shoes. If you're up for a challenge in return for spending your days knee-deep in numismatic literature at one of the best such libraries in the world, please contact the Society. Similarly, if you know someone in the library or information management fields, please encourage them to apply. -Editor] The American Numismatic Society seeks to appoint a Librarian with effective date as soon as possible. The American Numismatic Society maintains a museum and research institution dedicated to numismatics of all periods and countries. For more information visit www.numismatics.org The ANS Library is the leading numismatic library in North America and one of the strongest in the world. The Librarian's position is endowed. It serves the Society’s curatorial staff, the annual Eric P. Newman Summer Seminar in numismatics, scholars, and collectors with collections of books, articles, catalogues, and primary documents covering the full range of subjects relevant to the history of the world’s currencies and medallic art. The Librarian’s duties include the continued development of this distinctive collection and a range of services to users. The Librarian will lead the move of the collections to new quarters in the summer of 2008 and the migration of its collection and catalog to conform to modern standards. The Librarian reports to the Executive Director. The Society seeks candidates with training in academic disciplines relevant to its missions, a knowledge of languages important for the library, an ability to work collegially with the ANS curatorial staff and librarians in the metropolitan region concerned with cognate subjects, and a commitment to a high level of customized service to the library’s users. A degree in library and/or information science is preferred. For more information about the ANS Librarian position, see: ANS Librarian position LAKE BOOKS NUMISMATIC LITERATURE SALE CATALOG #92 AVAILABLE Fred Lake writes: "Lake Books' mail-bid sale of numismatic literature #92 is now available for viewing at: akebooks.com/current.html "The 386-lot sale features the library of John M. Griffee who was a specialist in Early American coppers and, in particular, the coinage of New Jersey and the St. Patrick farthings. "Other consignors round out the sale with material relating to U.S. coinage, world coins, medals, tokens, paper money, etc. "The sale has a closing date of Tuesday, March 11, 2008 at 5:00 PM (EST) and bids may be mailed, emailed, faxed or telephoned until that date." TESTIMONIA NUMARIA, VOLUME II BY JOHN MELVILLE-JONES PUBLISHED BY SPINK John Melville-Jones of the Classics and Ancient History department of The University of Western Australia writes: "The second volume of my book Testimonia Numaria was published at the end of 2007 by Spink in London at £40 (same price as Volume I, which is now out of print). The ISBN is 978-1-902040-81-3. Pp. vii + 419. It contains a number of addenda to the texts which were published in Volume I, and a commentary on all texts." [Thanks for David Yoon for forwarding John's message. More information on the Testimonia Numaria project follows, taken from the project's web page. If any of our readers are familiar with the books, consider writing up a short review for The E-Sylum. -Editor] "The Testimonia Numaria project aims to collect and evaluate ancient Greek and Roman texts relating to ancient Greek and Roman coinage. Two volumes have been published, Testimonia Numaria Volume I (1993) which contains 928 Greek and Latin texts together with translations into English, and Testimonia Numaria Volume II (2007), which contains forty-nine additional texts, commentaries on all the texts, a bibliography and an index. A third volume, Testimonia Numaria Romana, is in preparation. This will present and comment on texts relating to Roman coinage up to the fifth century A.D." For more information on the Testimonia Numaria project, see: Full Story NEW BOOK: WHITMAN'S "100 GREATEST ANCIENT COINS" BY HARLAN BERK [Dennis Tucker forwarded the following press release announcing the latest title in Whitman's "100 greatest" series. -Editor] Whitman Publishing announces the release of 100 Greatest Ancient Coins, by Harlan J. Berk, available in April 2008. In this beautifully illustrated book, one of America’s best-known ancient-coin dealers takes the reader on a personal guided tour of the numismatic antiquities of Greece, Rome, the Byzantine Empire, and other parts of the ancient world. 100 Greatest Ancient Coins is the fifth entry in Whitman Publishing’s 100 Greatest library. It follows books that showcase coins, currency notes, medals and tokens, and stamps of the United States—in fact, it is the first title of the 100 Greatest family to focus on non–U.S. collectibles. This reflects Whitman’s solid background in world-coin and ancient-coin numismatics. 100 Greatest Ancient Coins joins such works as Coins of the Bible (Friedberg), the Handbook of Ancient Greek and Roman Coins (Klawans), and the award- winning Money of the Bible (Bressett). It also heralds forthcoming books in the field, such as Collecting Ancient Greek Coins (Rynearson) for beginning and intermediate collectors, and the Guide Book of Overstruck Greek Coins: Studies in Greek Chronology and Monetary Theory (MacDonald) for more advanced students. “Each of the 100 Greatest was voted into place by leading coin dealers, researchers, and historians,” says Whitman publisher Dennis Tucker. Inside the reader will find prized and seldom-seen rarities—the unique and high-valued pieces that collectors dream about. The book also explores more readily available and widely popular ancient coins: pieces so beautiful or with such strange and fascinating stories that everybody wants one. In the introduction, which includes a historical narrative, the author describes how to collect and enjoy ancient coins, aspects of the marketplace, grading, conservation, and smart buying. A two-page spread is devoted to each of coins No. 1 through No. 10, with Nos. 11 through 100 enjoying a full page. In the banner at the top of each page is the coin’s rank; a descriptive title; the city, state, or region from which it hails; and its date of striking (or an approximation). Beneath is an enlarged illustration of the coin; a notation of its actual size in millimeters; a summary of market trends and values; and, ghosted in the background, the numerals of its 1–100 rank. This is followed by an essay that sets the coin in its historical foundation and describes the virtues of its numismatic greatness. At the bottom of the page, a timeline charts the coin’s position in time, with the birth of Christ noted for context. The book is rounded out by a gallery of relative sizes, showing each coin in its actual diameter; a biography of author Harlan J. Berk; credits and acknowledgments; and a selected bibliography for further reading. “100 Greatest Ancient Coins is not just a price guide or a fancy picture book,” says Tucker. “It’s a time machine that takes the reader to a hundred different points in world history. And it’s a fascinating introduction to the hobby of collecting these important coins.” Emperors and charlatans, owls and turtles, gods and goddesses, military heroes and villainous rogues—all of these and more await the reader in 100 Greatest Ancient Coins. The book is coffee-table-size, 144 pages, full color, with photographs and stories for every coin. Retail price is $29.95. 100 Greatest Ancient Coins will be available April 2008 at hobby shops and bookstores nationwide. REVIEW: 'A CATALOG OF MODERN WORLD COINS, 1850–1964', 14TH EDITION [James Higby submitted the following review of the new edition of the classic "Brown book", Modern World Coins by Richard Yeoman. It was also published Monday on the rec.collecting.coins newsgroup. -Editor] The latest (14th) edition of Yeoman's classic Modern World Coins is visibly thicker and larger in size than the 13th, which appeared a quarter of a century ago. I first got wind of its coming while sitting in a coin shop almost two years ago. Since I keep my collection of world coins by Craig and Yeoman numbers, I always carry with me professionally rebound copies of those books to serve as ready references and checklists. The proprietor, seeing this, informed me that he had been solicited to place an ad in a new edition of the Yeoman. My reaction was, "No way." The fact is, as much as I cut my teeth on the Yeoman "Brown Book" and learned to love it as a teenager, it is an anachronism that, surely, no one would try to resurrect today, I thought. Further inquiries to the Whitman reps at several coin shows, including the 2007 ANA Convention in Milwaukee, yielded know-nothing shoulder shrugs. So I, too, was astonished to see this latest edition advertised in the numismatic press. The cover serves notice that it is part of "The Official Red Book" series of coin books launched by Whitman some years back. There is an attractive grouping of world coins pictured on the cover as well. The book has considerable visual appeal, all told. The foreword includes much of the original Yeoman introductory text, and the preface consists of an updated "Appreciation of R.S. Yeoman" by David Ganz. A short blurb about editor Arthur Friedberg follows that. I have always appreciated the inclusion in the introductory matter of a chart of various numeral systems, as well as an explanation of some of the more common coin dating systems. My favorite quote by Yeoman, from his discussion of determining the origins of strange-looking coins, is preserved as well: "That is the romance of collecting world coins. The quest is the thing." It should be noted that Whitman produced the first twelve editions of this title, then many years went by before Friedberg's Coin and Currency Institute took over for the 13th edition, and now this newest edition is again from Whitman Publishing. I find the content to be excellent overall in terms of its mission. Of course, those of us who are used to the Krause telephone book series find it hard to believe that a book calling itself A Catalog of Modern World Coins could ever take their place. The fact is, it can't and it doesn't. Instead, it catalogs world coins from roughly 1850 to 1964 by type, with a very few notes indicating the rare dates. Representing an era of very conservative issue of non-circulating legal tender and commemorative pieces, the editor has continued the practice of including in this latest work, for example, the three 1930 pieces honoring the 1000th anniversary of the Althing, Iceland's parliament, a set now missing from the mainstream Krause stack. As promised, prices are normally given for three states of preservation: VF, EF, and Uncirculated. I find it quaint that this edition persists in giving prices only for VF examples in areas such as the Indian States, a practice that originated with the very first edition by Yeoman. Without doing intensive market research, but relying on my own familiarity with the realities of the 2008 world coin market, I propose that this edition of MWC does a good job of capturing the current state of that market. There are several areas, Danzig for example, that seem to me to be priced more in sync with today's market than other world price guides I have seen. A quick check of prices listed for certain other key coin types reinforces my notion. Price guides are just that, guides, and the market has a life and mind of its own. The photographs are its weakest point. They range from excellent to just adequate, and there are a few klinkers as well, photos that are dark and poorly contrasted. They appear to me to be the same photos used in the previous edition, with a touchup here, a Photoshopping there. But then, that is true of most illustrated coin books that are offered at popular prices. Appendices include an extensive listing of precious metal content of the coin types, an index to coin denominations, and a list of mints, central banks, and agencies, complete with URLs. Yeoman's layout scheme was designed, as he said, to reduce the use of the index. The present index, nevertheless, is helpful and adequate to the task of locating the listings for the countries in the book. Eight full-page ads round out this volume. If you are looking for a research-quality reference work, this book is not for you. But if you are looking for something interesting to browse while slung back in your recliner, its 522 6" x 9" pages are well worth the price of $19.95 (Canada $20.25). Still, questions nag: Except for the appeal of nostalgia to aging baby boomers who read this title in our youth, why did Whitman choose to resurrect this title after a hiatus of a quarter of a century? Who is going to buy it, and why? MWC is most useful, it seems to me, as the centerpiece of the original trilogy of which it was a part. First, William Craig, in his groundbreaking Coins of the World, last published in 1976, catalogued coins from the century immediately preceding MWC (and using its own, separate numbering system), while Yeoman's Current Coins of the World (I lovingly call it MWC, vol. 2) was made necessary by the proliferation of new coin types, which would have made too unwieldy a book out of MWC, had the title been expanded to include them. It should be noted that Current Coins last saw press in 1988; a new edition of that title would necessarily be at least twice, possible three times, as massive. As a collector of both coins and books, I would love to see new editions of both Craig and Current Coins, and now wonder if Whitman has a mind to produce them as well. I doubt very much that they would tell me, even if they did. [Roger dewardt Lane adds: "It's very interesting to see a new edition. I started my Modern Dimes of the World type set checking off the types from these books. I have the whole set of Brown Books, including one issued in Japan with Japanese text." Now that's a book I'd never heard of - a Japanese edition of the Brown book. This could be an interesting E-Sylum topic for our next issue - numismatic books translated from English to other languages. -Editor] NEW BOOK: 'A CATALOG OF MODERN WORLD COINS, 1850–1964', 14TH EDITION esylum_v11n06a03.html BOOK REVIEW: COLLECTING AND INVESTING STRATEGIES FOR U.S. GOLD COINS [I was invited to write a book review for the February issue of The Numismatist. Now that the issue has been published I'm reprinting that review here with permission. Many thanks to Uriah Cho of Zyrus Press and Associate Editor Jerri C. Raitz of the American Numismatic Association. -Editor] So what’s a “history and research” guy doing reviewing a “collecting and investing” publication? Well, I rarely come across a numismatic book that doesn’t offer something new. And as much as I love collecting and researching my numismatic items, I usually do so with investing in mind. This discipline has proven profitable over the years: proceeds from recent numismatic sales enabled the purchase of my home and the cozy office where I’m writing this review. There have been many coin-investing guides over the years, although I own only a few and have read even fewer cover to cover. If my experience is any indication, learning just one useful tip from a coin investing book can repay its purchase price many times. The beginning investor should find a few good take-aways from auction cataloger and numismatic expert Jeff Ambio’s new book, Collecting and Investing Strategies for United States Gold Coins (Zyrus Press, Inc., www.zyruspress.com). Ambio’s book is devoted to the regular-issue gold series of 1795-1933, although I also expected to see gold commemoratives, bullion pieces and patterns. The author makes good points as he explains his decisions on the book’s scope. He writes, “The commemorative gold coins struck from 1903-1926 have been excluded because the factors that determine their absolute and high-grade rarity are different from those that rule the fate of issues struck for use in circulation or, in the case of proof gold, yearly sale to a select group of advanced numismatists. The same can be said for modern gold commemoratives struck beginning in 1984.” Ambio makes another interesting point in the book’s introduction that I hadn’t considered as a collector, but one that is obvious to someone in his position as a dealer and auctioneer: given the fact that consignments of gold coins constitute the majority of value embodied within an auction, a sale’s financial success often depends on the number of gold coins consigned and their performance on auction day. He adds, “If at all possible, the auctioneer will schedule gold coin lots to sell on a Friday and/or Saturday evening to guarantee maximum exposure among dealers, collectors, investors and, yes, future consignors.” The opening chapter addresses “Popular Collecting and Investing Strategies.” These really are just descriptions of the different types of sets one might assemble, such as short type sets, complete type sets and what Ambio calls “advanced type sets.” The section on “complete type sets” seems redundant, since it’s basically a recitation of the book’s chapters. Chapter 1 includes the book’s first genuine investing tip: “The San Francisco Mint, in particular, offers considerable opportunities. Many early S-mint gold coins are similar in rarity to Charlotte, Dahlonega and Carson City Mint issues, yet they often sell for considerably less.” Chapter 2, “Considerations for Buying Rare U.S. Gold Coins,” stresses another important tip for investors—studying a large number of coins at numismatic auction-lot viewing sessions. There is no substitute for seeing as many coins as possible with your own eyes. Ambio states, “There are many possible ways to find a reputable United States coin dealer.” Suggested starting places are the ANA and Professional Numismatists Guild websites, but many, many dealers are listed there with no way to rank them or winnow down the list. A cynic might say that all such a listing could indicate about a given dealer is “that the bum hasn’t been caught and thrown out yet.” The real advice comes next, and it’s hardly a revelation: “One of the most underutilized methods of finding a reputable numismatic dealer is simply to ask other collectors and investors for recommendations. Word-of-mouth can be a powerful tool. Honest, knowledgeable dealers will enjoy a good reputation among veteran buyers.” The meat of the book is in the subsequent chapters, which are nicely illustrated with examples of each major coin type, courtesy of Steve Contursi and Rare Coin Wholesalers. This book is part of what Zyrus Press calls its “Strategy Guide Series.” In keeping with Chapter 2’s theme, each subsequent chapter covers strategies and key insights for assembling the various types of coin sets. Ambio lists the “Most Desirable Issue(s)” of each type, “Most Desirable Grade(s)” and “Estimated Cost” for circulated and uncirculated coins. These recommendations are neatly highlighted in shaded “strategy boxes,” a nice feature for ready reference and readability. Other nice features are the price charts showing recent selling prices for each coin type. Specific advice and Ambio’s reasoning behind it is sprinkled throughout the book, such as this note regarding the $1 denomination: “I believe that high-grade, attractive New Orleans Mint gold coins are among the more underrated pieces in numismatics. If you also subscribe to this theory, I suggest waiting until a premium quality example becomes available.” “Words of caution” also are highlighted and warn readers about certain issues that often are found particularly weakly or strongly struck, impaired by jewelry mounts, etc. At 343 pages, the 7 x 10-inch book is not to be devoured in one sitting. However, with its short, but interesting, illustrated summaries of the history and design of each coin, the book is very readable. Ambio comes across as quite authoritative and genuinely helpful. I would recommend this book to any collector or investor considering assembling sets of U.S. gold, but suggest it in conjunction with reading a book about grading or taking a class on grading, which is not covered in detail here. Collecting and Investing Strategies for United States Gold Coins is available from the ANA MoneyMarket for $30.95 (member price) and $34.95 (nonmember) at www.money.org, or phone toll-free, 800-467-5725. REVIEW: 100 GREATEST AMERICAN CURRENCY NOTES BY BOWERS AND SUNDMAN We've had a lot of discussion about the recent '100 Greatest American Medals and Tokens' book by Katherine Jaeger and Q. David Bowers. This week I take a look at an earlier title in the Whitman Publishing series, '100 Greatest American Currency Notes' by Q. David Bowers and David Sundman. Like the other books in the series, this title, published in 2006, is a large coffee-table size hardbound with a glossy printed dust jacket. The notes are arranged in order starting with #1, the $1,000 "Grand Watermelon" note of 1890. The first ten notes are given a two-page spread; the remaining 90 are shown one per page. The preface and introduction section packs two decades of U.S. currency history into a readable and authoritative twenty-page package. Topics include early American paper currency, obsolete bank notes, bank note engravers and companies, the evolution of bank note design, classes of Federal notes, Confederate notes, collecting and enjoying paper money, grades of paper money, cleaning, preservation and conservation, and forming a collection. Although brief, this section is clearly a work of scholarship. I've read a number of numismatic books written by dealers and collectors who were enthusiasts of their topic, but not scholars, and this showed in their writing. Only true scholars of the topic could have written such an all-encompassing introduction to the topic, and my hat is off to the authors. I'm hard pressed to think of a better overview of the paper money hobby. Before diving into the meat of the book, I thought I'd discuss my expectations. As a collector and student of U.S. currency, my personal interests lean toward private issues. Yet that field is so vast I wondered if the quantity of available candidates would dilute the voting. Perhaps that's what happened. The book's subtitle ("The stories behind the most fascinating colonial, Confederate, federal, obsolete, and private American notes") gave me hope that the book would cover much more than federal U.S. issues like the Watermelon note on the cover. But I was disappointed - only seven of the top 50 and eleven of the top 100 notes were non-Federal issues. These felt like token inclusions, and I thought the book would have been more satisfying if it had kept to a single theme of Federal issues. Still, I did enjoy the few token non-Federal inclusions and hope they give the casual reader a taste of what lies beyond. If I were to pick my own favorites I'd start with a tried-and-true choice - #7, the $1 Educational Note of 1896. The "History Instructing Youth" vignette by Will H. Low is a breathtaking classical design. #11, the $2 Educational Note is another exceptional classic design, this time by Edwin Blashfield. For historical importance as well as beauty of design I'd choose #38, the $5 Demand Note of 1861. The first "Greenback" of the Federal Government, these notes were intended to be hand-signed by the Treasurer and Secretary of the Treasury. Along with this note I'd have to choose the companion $10 Demand Note of 1861 with its portrait of President Abraham Lincoln (#60). In keeping with the Civil War theme another favorite note is #53, the $500 Confederate Montgomery note of 1861. I choose this one for historical importance as well as a nice vignette and pleasant design. The last note, #100, is one of my favorites as well - a fifty cent "bond" issued by The Imperial Government of Norton I. Joshua Norton was a denizen of 19th century San Francisco who declared himself to be "Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico." Always ready for a good joke, the local newspaper published Norton's various declarations and he became a celebrity known worldwide in his day. But so much for my favorites - what are yours? That's the fun of a book like this - people being people there is certain to be controversy over which notes were included and which were left out, as well as the rankings chosen by the participating experts. One typo I discovered appeared in the credits where the authors thanked the "American Numismatic Library" rather than the American Numismatic Association library. I have few other nits to pick on the author's text, although I wish they had devoted some space to the back design of the 1914 $100 Federal Reserve Note (#34). The allegorical image is stunning in its apparent simplicity, looking at first glance like a simple outline sketch, yet revealing great detail on closer examination. The figures look like white marble statues, and I've always found this design fascinating. In all this is a very satisfying book, although I'll admit to enjoying it less than the token and medal volume. This is partly due to my own collecting interests, but also due to the fact that the Federal notes have all been pictured and described before. Reading the token and medal book I found myself excited to discover items I'd never seen before every ten pages or so; I did not have the same feeling with this book, but that's not the fault of the authors (or the material). It's a great book to have handy and quite useful for introducing friends to the hobby of paper money collecting. The book is available from the publisher at $29.95. whitmanbooks.com NEW BOOK: '100 GREATEST AMERICAN MEDALS AND TOKENS' esylum_v10n40a08.html BOOK REVIEWS: 100 GREATEST AMERICAN MEDALS AND TOKENS BY JAEGER AND BOWERS esylum_v10n47a05.html BOOK IN PROGRESS: ABRAHAM LINCOLN, THE IMAGE OF HIS GREATNESS BY FRED REED [Tom Kays' submission (which immediately follows) prompted me to check with Fred Reed on the status of his upcoming book - here's his report. -Editor] Fred Reed writes: "My book 'ABRAHAM LINCOLN, the Image of His Greatness: Ideal, Idol & Icon' for Whitman Publishing is right on track. I have been working on this subject for about 40 years, and by now own a rather large collection of this material, numbering thousands of items. I also have hundreds of additional illustrations borrowed from colleagues and archives, which supplement my personal holdings. "The goal is one of Whitman's spectacular books: a full-color, 300-page opus with approximately 600-800 illustrations, and an interesting text which will appeal to numismatists, historians, educators, students, and the general public, too. My deadline is July 1st, with publication later this year just in time to catch the upswing of public interest in Abraham Lincoln's birth bicentennial in 2009. "As most readers of The E-Sylum know, numismatics will be in the forefront of the public observance of this significant event in our country's history. A series of commemorative cents and a commemorative silver dollar will mark this occasion. I expect a raft of books on Lincoln will also appear, but mine will probably be the only one which focuses in a very significant way on numismatics. All the Lincoln federal currency, non-federal currency, and a great deal of exonumia, as well as many stamps, badges, checks, stocks, bonds, engraved and printed images will appear. I also describe and illustrate statues, motion pictures, magazine covers and other commemorations of Lincoln which have appeared in the last century and a half. "I will be eager to see the response from hobbyists to this book, as well as Lincoln scholars. Many E-Sylum readers have assisted me over the years, and the book would be much, much less without their insights and help." LINCOLN IN NUMISMATICS Tom Kays writes: "Abraham Lincoln would have been 199 years old last Tuesday, February 12th. On this Presidents Day how ready are you for Lincoln's bicentennial? Do you have enough Lincolniana to suit? Now might be a good time to review your holdings and fill your holes regarding Lincoln before the rush. To what heights will Lincoln "Centennial Cents" of 1909 be elevated by the public next year as new cent designs debut? "Extensive references to new Lincoln scholarship and trivia are periodically gathered by the Abraham Lincoln Association (ALA). Readers are invited to try their luck digging for Lincoln numismatic, token and medal content with salient search words. See the ALA keyword searchable website (year 2000) at Full Story " [In my library I have a copy of the 1966 TAMS reprint of articles on 'Lincoln in Numismatics' by Robert P. King, originally published in The Numismatist between 1924 and 1933. I'll look forward to Fred Reed's new book in Lincoln images. -Editor] MORE ON THE CATALOG OF NEW ENGLAND NUMISMATIC ASSOCIATION MEDALS Regarding our earlier discussions, Bob Fritsch writes: "I, too, have the 1972 Thomas B. Ross NENA Medal Catalog, plus the loose-leaf catalog compiled by Bob Heath. Originally issued in 1994, Bob did several updates to the content of the catalog as new medals were issued by NENA and new information came to light. His most recent update was in 2005, distributed at the 2005 NENA Conference in Bedford, NH in October of that year and included everything up to and including that year's medal. "Bob used a half-page format (5.5x8.5) which kept the catalog compact but it was hard to find binders that would accommodate the format. His Massachusetts catalog, for example, runs to four volumes of 1-inch binders. All six State catalogs and the NENA catalog were in this format. "Alas, Mr. Heath died unexpectedly in December 2005. His family, acting on his instructions, has parceled out the six New England State Catalogs plus the NENA catalog to numismatists throughout the region. Some have already issued new catalogs under their names while others have not. I was the recipient of the NENA catalog, due to my status as Past President of the organization and having one of the better collections of NENA material in existence. As I have the original pages on the computer, I can and will issue reprints for a nominal fee to those who request them. However, since NENA does only one medal per year and since there is not a lot of new information forthcoming on these medals, I do not plan to update the catalog until the 2010 medal has been issued. "My email is bobfritsch@earthlink.net for those who wish further information. Please use 'NENA Catalog' in the subject line so I don't toss out the good emails with the spam." A CATALOG OF NEW ENGLAND NUMISMATIC ASSOCIATION MEDALS esylum_v11n06a10.html MORE ON THE BROWN & DUNN COIN GRADING GUIDE ILLUSTRATIONS Regarding the line drawings for grading coins in the Brown and Dunn book, Ken Bressett writes: "These were created by Arthur Mueller, a Racine, Wisconsin artist, at the request of Whitman Publishing for use in the fourth edition of the B&D book that was published in 1964. I worked with the artist on this project, supplying him with pictures of the coins and creating the "worn" versions by whiting out portions that would go missing from circulation. "It is likely that some books other than Brown and Dunn used these drawings without permission from the publisher. I am not familiar with the 1953 publication mentioned in this question, but am certain that the drawings were not created any earlier than 1963. Possibly they were inserted in a later printing of a 1953 publication without changing the copyright date (for obvious reasons)" QUERY: BROWN & DUNN GRADING GUIDE ILLUSTRATIONS esylum_v11n06a09.html GEORGE KOLBE ON THINGS FOUND IN BOOKS George Kolbe writes: "Over the years I have discovered many unusual objects within numismatic books, among them ancient-looking ferns, locks of hair, fall leaves, small coins, paper money, various clippings, unrelated correspondence, documents, and much more. We never found a pair of eyeglasses, though the story goes that John Selden, a seventeenth century scholar and numismatic author, used his spectacles as bookmarks. When Selden bequeathed his books to the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, literally dozens of pairs of spectacles were found when the books were examined by the librarians. But I digress. Where possible, we have returned unrelated items of consequence to their owners. One we did not return." "In the late 1970s, my young son and I drove to a remote Southern California desert community to buy a library. The gentleman involved, a numismatist of some renown, lived there alone in what seemed to me to be a rather bleak, solitary existence. Nonetheless, he seemed to be cheerful, took a likin to my son George, and gave him a number of modern production U. S. Mint medals. After friendly negotiations, I purchased the library and brought it back to my offices, then in the Santora Building in Santa Ana, California. Several days later, while arranging the books on shelves, a letter was discovered in one. In it, the prior owner of the library complained to his spouse at the time, at some length and in intimate detail, about a paucity of marital relations. Needless to say, that missive quickly found its way into the circular file and was never mentioned to the gentleman in question! "A cautionary note - I have learned not to inhale when first opening a book. Once or twice I have become ill after breathing in mold, mildew, or who knows what other noxious airborne pollutants, some perhaps lurking in old books for ages." ON THINGS FOUND IN BOOKS esylum_v11n06a14.html ALAN WEINBERG ON THE HERITAGE WALT HUSAK EARLY LARGE CENT SALE [Two weeks ago Alan V. Weinberg reviewed the catalog of Heritage's sale of the Walter Husak collection of early large cents. This week he attended the sale in Long Beach and files the following report. Many thanks to Alan for recording his observations and sharing them with our readers and numismatic posterity. -Editor] I've collected for over 50 years & have attended most of the major numismatic auctions in that time. Only occasionally is there an impending sale that creates so much anticipation and "buzz". The Walt Husak large cent sale of early dates 1793-1814 was one of those. I went to the auction room at the Long Beach coin show 45 minutes early to get a good seat - one that faced the audience at the end of a front table so that I could observe who was bidding and watch the "action" unimpeded. I kept a heavily annotated catalogue, as is my longtime practice, of starting/closing bids, buyers and underbidders and their bid numbers. The room filled quickly easily 1/2 hour before the sale started at 5 PM while the bourse floor downstairs was still open. It was like a college reunion of "copper weenies" - almost everyone was there. There was electricity in the air - it was palpable. I thought: "You don't see this very often". Every seat was taken as Sam Foose, Heritage auction director, explained the rules, introduced Walt and his wife, with Walt's charming daughter and Walt's business partner Terry Brenner and his wife in attendance. That was nice. Walt took an embarrassed bow, all red in the face. Sam then thanked Mark Borckardt & Denis Loring for their work cataloguing, without which the sale would not have been a numismatic highlight. Everyone was there. Doug Bird, Jack Robinson, Wes Rasmussen, John Manley, Tony Terranova, John Gervasoni, Jim McGuigan, Tom Reynolds, Dan Holmes, Chris McCawley & Bob Grellman, Steve Contursi (bidding by phone thru Heritage representatives), Gene Sherman, John Agre, March Wells, Chris Napolitano, Stu Levine, John Dannreuther, John Kraljevich, Al Boka, Steve Ellsworth, Laurie Sperber, Dan Trollan, Dave McCarthy for Kagin's, Denis Loring & wife Donna Levine, Dan Demeo, Paul Gerrie, Bill Nagle, Phil Moore, Rich Burdick, Bill Noyes, and so many others. Every seat was filled and a half dozen people bidding stood on the sidelines. Some of the highlights included: 1793 S-3 AU (all are EAC grading) at $220,000 to Gervasoni (all prices are hammer, not including the 15% buyers fee); 1793 S-13 AU at $550,000 to Heritage's standing Paul Minshull representing a key client on the phone from the sidelines; '93 S-14 cracked obverse die VF at $110K to bidder 419 (1 of the few I didn't ID), 94 head of 93 S18b AU at $220K to the same Minshull phone bidder, apparently a very discerning collector. A moment of audience levity was reached when a S33 1794 "wheel spoke" , one of the 1794 classics, opened up at $8,000 and Tony Terranova immediately yelled out $40,000. The auctioneer Foose, startled by the sudden & perhaps unnecessary bid jump by Tony, asked if Tony was "in a hurry?" Tony replied in his NYC accent "Yeah, I'm hungry!" alluding to the promised Heritage sponsored Husak-hosted "champagne buffet" following the auction which obviously still had two hours to go. Everyone roared - a break in the auction room tension. Notwithstanding TT's bidding boldness, the rarity closed at $90K to Chris McCawley representing advanced collector Dan Holmes. Other highlights: 94 S37 at $140K to Steve Ellsworth; the first of SIX Lord St Oswald 94's in the Husak collection the S45 part mint red MS63 at $130K to McCawley with 3 bidding numbers; the eyebrow-raising Finest Known EF40 S48 Starred Reverse at $300K open / $550K hammer, more than half a million dollars, to John Gervasoni outlasting underbidders (in this order) Laurie Sperber on the phone w/a client, Tony T at $475K and Dave McCarthy for Kagins. The St Oswald S57 MS64 at $32.5K / $ 90K to the same phone bidder number 7550 previously mentioned on the 1794 18b and others And then clearly the finest condition large cent in the Husak collection and the finest condition Lord St Oswald large cent, the S67 MS65 (slabbed 67), 50% original mint red, opening $120K and closing at a mind-numbing $425,000 hammer to phone bidder 7508 - likely Steve Contursi from his phone rep - all three top bidders were phone bidders. The St Oswald S69 MS64 part red to phone bidder 7510 (again possibly Contursi from the Heritage phone rep) at $35K / $95K with John Manley, who does not collect large cents per se, the immediate underbidder; the 2nd finest condition 1794 St Oswald coin S71 MS65 with 50% original mint red $26K / $220,000 to phone bidder 7550 mentioned above on the 18b and other rarities; the 1795 S74 MS65 some mint red at $45K/ $180K to Laurie Sperber with a phone client vs Gervasoni and Manley. The '96 Lib Cap S84 AU55 at $35K/$100K to bidder 608 whose ID escaped me; the famously pedigreed (back to 1845) 1799 S189 VF25 at $42.5K / $140K to Steve Ellsworth (audience applause); and finally the famous Finest Known 1807/6 small overdate AU50 at $65K / $140K to a beaming Doug Bird vs Gervasoni - "Doug, is this for resale or a 'keeper' ?" Prices were just plain silly. Jim McGuigan, much respected early copper collector & dealer told me afterward: "Usually, in a sale like this, there are some lots that slip through the cracks, sell reasonably and can be resold at a profit. That didn't happen. Everything went for top dollar." The sale total was announced at the conclusion of the Husak large cents: $10,703,000 including the buyer's fee of 15%. Heritage surprised everyone in the audience with a complimentary copy of Al Boka's 1794 large cent book , thanks to Al's generosity and friendship with Walt Husak. Then everyone, including the by-then ravenous Tony T., adjourned to another room for drinks and a lavish buffet (oh, those Chinese vegetable rolls!) and camaraderie that lasted another hour plus approaching 10 PM. Walt looked like a beaming brand new father in the new-born ward, smiling ear to ear with twinkling eyes. This was numismatics at its best. Is Walt getting out of numismatics? Not on your life! Like Robbie Brown of large cent and Brown Forman Distillery fame, he's already forming a 2nd set of early date varieties! What? No more French vineyards? CATALOGUE REVIEW: HERITAGE WALT HUSAK EARLY LARGE CENT SALE esylum_v11n05a06.html USA TODAY: HUSAK CENT SALE REALIZES $10.7 MILLION [Dick Johnson forwarded this article from USA Today about the Husak large cent collection sale at Long Beach this week. -Editor] A penny saved is not necessarily just a penny earned. One man's collection of rare American cents has turned into a $10.7 million auction windfall. The collection of 301 cents featured some of the rarest and earliest examples of the American penny, including a cent that was minted for two weeks in 1793 but was abandoned because Congress thought Lady Liberty looked frightened. Heritage Auction president Greg Rohan said the auction was the biggest ever for a penny collection, with hundreds of bidders vying for the coins. Presale estimates valued the collection at about $7 million. The coins came from the collection of Burbank resident Walter J. Husak, the owner of an aerospace-part manufacturing company. Husak became interested in collecting at age 13, while visiting his grandparents who paid him in old coins for helping with chores. To read the complete article, see: Full Story MORE ON 60 MINUTES AND THE FRANKLIN MINT In response to the submission on last Sunday's 60 Minutes episode, Fred Reed writes: "Morley Safer used to have fangs, not just false teeth. Dick Johnson referred to the slam he took against the Franklin Mint in "1983." For my friend, Dick, and others who may be too young to remember, the 60 Minutes episode actually aired in 1978 and it savaged FM, and collectibles in general, but the hobby survived. They filmed at the Houston American Numismatic Association show that summer, and managed to miss the real story at the show. "The night of the Numismatic Literary Guild bash, we revelers came out of Grover Criswell's hotel suite pretty happy only to find police all over the place. Real thugs had stolen an unspecified amount in rare coins from one of the attendees during the evening's festivities. "For a brief resume of the 60 Minutes piece on FM: "The Franklin Mint was the subject of a controversial segment on the CBS News television program 60 Minutes that first aired Nov. 12, 1978. The segment, which examined coin collecting in general, private mint issues specifically and the issues of the Franklin Mint in detail, featured interviews with collectors of Franklin Mint issues who, upon trying to sell their collections, reportedly were offered only a fraction of what they paid for them. Franklin Mint officials, in turn, accused CBS News of bias and noted that Columbia House, a CBS company, sold similar products." This comes from the Coin World archives quoted from a Jan. 4, 2002 posting on the end of FM minting activities." Tom DeLorey also noted the correct air date of 1978. He adds: "On the subject of 'rounding,' it was implied that the shelf price of every item currently priced in a number ending in 9 would automatically be rounded up to a number ending in zero. However, if pricing remains the same and you simply add up the prices on 20 or 30 items in your shopping cart and then figure the sales tax, only the final number need be rounded up or down, not every individual item. With the average trip to the supermarket possibly costing more than $50, the rounding of the final number by two cents either way is insignificant." ON THE DANGERS OF TALKING TO REPORTERS The item on the '60 Minutes" episode prompted Gar Travis to write: "One fine July afternoon in 2001 I had just cast my fishing line into one of the numerous creeks that dot the coastal North Carolina countryside, when my mobile phone rang. I was greeted by a gentleman who asked if I had a few moments to speak about a recent comment by Representative Jim Kolbe (R-Arz.) in regard to his "Legal Tender Modernization Act" and the Lincoln Cent. The caller was Larry Copeland, a reporter from USA TODAY. "Needless to say most of what I said was paraphrased throughout the article and then finished with a slightly skewed quote - not exactly what I said, but then you know it happens." Full Story QUIZ ANSWER: JOHN HICKCOX'S OTHER NUMISMATIC PUBLICATION Jim Duncan (who had an incorrect guess last week writes: "Okay, so no cigar! But where is the Astor Library for which Hickcox developed a card index filing system? Not exactly numismatic I agree, but some of the books must have been numismatic books!" I wasn't aware of Hickcox's connection with the Astor library, but did remember correctly that it formed part of the New York Public Library. "Astor Library at Lafayette Place, New York City: This early library, created by funds provided in the will of John Jacob Astor, held about 200,000 books, but was not a lending library. In 1895 it merged with the Lennox Library and the Tilden Trust to form the New York Public Library." Full Story Joel Orosz was the first to respond to my second question about Hickcox regarding the name of his other numismatic book. He writes: "The answer to the quiz in this week's issue of the E-Sylum would be: 'A History of the Bills of Credit or Paper Money Issued by New York, From 1709 to 1789: With a Description of the Bills, and Catalogue of the Various Issues', published in Albany in 1866 by J. H. Hickcox & Co." Marc Charles Ricard writes: "Thanks for another great E-Sylum! As an answer to the quick quiz, I believe that John Howard Hickcox authored a book titled "A History of the Bills of Credit or Paper Money Issued by New York, From 1709 to 1789", originally published in 1866. "Two copies were sold in Part 1 of the Kolbe/Stack's John J. Ford Jr. Library Sale of June 2004. The University of Michigan Library's Scholarly Publishing Office has a reprint in soft cover from 2006, which is published on demand, and is readily available." Thanks also to Mike Paradis for his correct answer. THE PATTERN COINAGE OF QUEEN LILLIUOCALANI OF HAWAII Regarding my query from last week, Ken Bressett writes: "Four different very attractive designs were produced as patterns for the Hawaiian coins. These are dated 1891 and 1893. Some were made in gold, silver, copper iron and tin in quantities of one to 50 of each. It is estimated that fewer than two dozen of any are in collections as most were given to Huth's friends. All are 37mm in diameter. These are listed, described and pictured in Hawaiian Coins, Tokens and Paper Money by Maurice Gould and Kenneth Bressett. Whitman Publishing. 1961. The pieces were made to commemorate the reign of Queen Liliuokalani, sister of King Kalakaua. Reginald Huth of England, a well known London collector of coins and medals, issued a number of other private pattern coins and medallic portraits. The Hawaiian pieces were struck by Messrs. Pinches and Co., London die sinkers and medallists under the direction of Mr. Huth. The pattern silver dollar piece dedicated to the queen is dated 1891. 50 proofs were struck in silver. There is also a pattern $20 gold piece with the same portrait dated 1893. Only four specimens of this piece were struck. Both of these pieces show a date and denomination. In 1895, Mr. Huth issued a pattern silver dollar-size medal in honor of Princess Kaiulani, former heir apparent to the Throne of Hawaii. This piece gives no value, and the date is in tiny numbers at either side of the design. In larger letters in the legend are roman numerals showing the date of Kauilanis' 18th birthday, the day she could have ascended to the throne. Two varieties of this piece were made. Both are extremely rare. [It looks like my library has a hole in it - it's embarrassing, but somehow I'm missing the 1961 Whitman Hawaii book. Time to look for a copy. Thanks, Ken! -Editor] Tom Michael writes: "For information on the 1893 pattern coinage of Queen Lilliuocalani of Hawaii, see Unusual World Coins." [OK, I need TWO more books for my library. -Editor] THE 1893 PATTERN COINAGE OF QUEEN LILLIUOCALANI OF HAWAII esylum_v11n06a08.html MORE ON THE AMOS AND ANDY RARE COIN EPISODE Nick Graver writes: "I clearly recall the Amos & Andy TV broadcast about the Rare Coin. At a key moment I recall him reaching into his pocket and accidentally using THE RARE NICKEL to make a crucial phone call, and that ended his chances of cashing in on the premium value. I hope others recall more of the details." Many thanks to Gar Travis for locating an online video of the episode from 1951! Full Video Story The rare coin? An 1877 nickel, which a coin dealer offered $250 for. John Dannreuther was the only respondent to know the date of the nickel. He also recalled what I agreed was the funniest line in the episode: "Henry, I think I's about to pre-form a nickelectomy." The Amos & Andy show was before my time, but it's interesting to see the show from today's perspective half a century later. Early television had its roots in radio, which in turn evolved from vaudeville and travelling minstrel shows. Amos & Andy spanned all of these genres and media. My parents came of age in the radio era, where families gathered around the radio and listened together. Some adults would read, knit, do puzzles, or play parlor games. Children often played on the floor. With radio, all the visuals were in the mind of each listener, and your vision of the Lone Ranger might look entirely different from your brother's, just like with books. Nick adds: "Then, TV came in, and things changed. Everyone had the identical character to watch. It never was the same again." Coming from the minstrel tradition and operating in a segregated America, Amos and Andy are as far removed from today's world as the coin-operated telephones that play a key role in the episode. But 1877 nickels are still scarce and valuable, and probably always will be. COINS AND MEDALS AT THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS Regarding John Adams' discussion on the Drake Map medal, Alan V. Weinberg writes: "So my memory of a Drake Mercator silver engraved map medal selling for $50 grand 40-45 years ago was accurate. John Adams reports Sotheby's sold one for that amount in 1971. It was donated to the Library of Congress which now has two! "John's record of auction sales from 1905 to present is a total of 4 medals in over a century. That's says something of the Drake map medal's rarity. And John implies one is in private hands yet! "It is very interesting that the Library of Congress owns two Drake medals. I recently learned that the long "lost" and believed-melted (by a widowed, financially desperate Mary Todd Lincoln) 1865 Franky Magniadas-designed Swiss- struck Abraham Lincoln medal , approx 13 troy ozs of . finer gold, is also in the Library of Congress. It is aesthetically the most impressive of the many Lincoln medals and tokens. This raises the question of just how extensive are the numismatic holdings of the Library of Congress in Washington, DC? Several years ago I visited and could not get into even the library as you have to have a pass and references and be a legitimate researcher. "Perhaps member Chris Neuzil, who lives nearby and has been successful in his research of the fabulous gold Truxton medal at the Smithsonian, can get a look into this most secret of historical institutions - the Library of Congress ? Or member Doug Mudd, now at the ANA in Colorado, knows of the Library's numismatic holdings? If I know of three exquisite medals in the Library's collection, rest assured there are other similar treasures to be found there. Remember the closing scene in the first Indiana Jones movie with the boxed-up Ark being wheeled into a cavernous Federal Government warehouse ? Nuf Sed." REFERENCES ON THE DRAKE MAP MEDAL esylum_v11n06a16.html 1898 DENTIST PORTRAIT PLAQUE ANSWER: THERON HITCHCOCK? Regarding Dick Johnson's query last week, John Schreiner writes: "Most of my research involves the tokens and medals of druggists, pharmacists, and patent medicine makers. I have a lot of directories on druggists but only one on dentists and the one I have just happened to have the info that was needed. "The book is "Medical Directory for New York and Connecticut -1895. Under the dental section for Oswego it lists 'Hitchcock,T.S'. So the correct initials are T.S." [John offered to provide Dick with a copy of the listing, and I put the two in touch. Thanks! Other E-Sylum readers chimed in as well. -Editor] Karl S. Kabelac of Rochester NY writes: "Using my subscription to ancestry.com, I quickly found Theron Hitchcock, an Oswego dentist in the 1900 federal census. With that as a beginning, I searched fultonhistory.com and found several articles about him (Theron S. Hitchcock) and his wife. They mention his skills as a woodcarver. His obituary said he was 88 at the time of his death on November 10, 1918." [Karl printed off most of the articles, and offered to send them to Dick for his research. I put the two in touch. Thanks, Karl! Thanks also to Patrick McMahon of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts who also believes the dentist in question may be Theron Hitchcock. His note appears below. -Editor] Patrick McMahon writes: "I have a name that might help Dick Johnson with his question about the artist/dentist from Oswego, New York. I found nothing in our usual artist biographical resources so I did a quick search of the 1900 US census. As luck would have it there is a dentist living in Oswego in 1900 whose name is Theron Hitchcock. So the proper initials may be TS rather than GS or JS. The census record lists him as born on July 22, 1833, in Massachusetts, and that his parents were both from Massachusetts. His wife is Helen H. Hitchcock who seems to be from New York. He is still listed in the 1910, but neither 1900 or 1910 give a middle initial. He does not appear in 1920 or 1880. The 1890 Census was largely destroyed. I didn’t look any further. "The source information for the Theron Hitchock entry would be: Ancestry.com. 1900 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 2004. Original Data: Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administrations, 1900. Oswego Ward 6, Oswego, New York. Roll T623 1143, p. 1A, enumerated district: 131. "I hope this helps and maybe even turns out to be his guy. The dentist, Oswego, and Massachusetts connections are all there. Census records are a great resource and I recently caved in and paid for full access to Ancestry.com. I have been using it quite a bit lately. You can find the record with a free search but you cannot see the scan of the original page which is where the “dentist” information appears. "There are lots of on-line genealogical databases and they can be both a good starting point for identifying someone and a good last resort when all else fails. You can also sometimes access census and genealogical information on-line for free through public library pages. "I know that the Boston Public Library has a large number of electronic databases that you can access as a library user online with only your library card number. These include HeritageQuest Online and the Historical newspapers database. However, the New England Historic Genealogical Society offers in-library access only. Here’s a link for people in the Boston area. Many public libraries are doing this. Some databases are only available at the library. But those are the exceptions. I use these quite a bit too. Boston Public Library Electronic Access " Nick Graver adds: "Was I the only reader whose mind jumped at the "plaque' in the Dental Portrait heading? It just was such a strange mental quirk, upon first reading." [I don't know about our readers, but I thought it amusing as well - I was just too lazy or tired to crack wise about it. -Editor] QUERY: 1898 DENTIST PORTRAIT PLAQUE RESEARCH esylum_v11n06a22.html U.S. MINT'S PHILADELPHIA FISTFIGHT: A. LOUDON SNOWDEN VS. WILLIAM RUNKEL [Pete Smith has been doing research on William Runkle, a former U.S. Mint employee and author of an 1870 publication titled "The United States Mint". He forwarded a great New York Times article, originally published June 12, 1895, about an altercation in Philadelphia between Runkle and former U.S. Mint Superintendent A. Loudon Snowden. -Editor] There was a lively set-to last night at Fifteenth and Market Street between Col. A. Loudon Snowden, ex-Minister to Greece and Roumania, and Col. William M. Runkel, in which an umbrella and a cane played prominent parts, to the detriment of the personal appearance of the two men. The fight grew out of an old grievance of Col. Runkel against Col. Snowden. Some years ago Col. Snowden was Chief Coiner at the mint here. Col. Runkel was employed in the mint at the same time. Col. Runkel alleges that Col. Snowden had him discharged without cause. The memory of this dismissal has rankled in Runkel's mind ever since. There are conflicting versions of last night's contest. Col. Runkel says he unexpectedly net Col. Snowden at Fifteenth and Market Street. He says he remarked: "I would like to have a few words with you," but that Col. Snowden passed him without replying. This alleged insult was the culmination Col. Runkel could not brook. He admits that he lost control of himself and struck Col. Snowden with his cane. Col. Snowden vigorously replied to the assault with an umbrella, and the men battered each other about the head until the cane and umbrella had become useless. A policeman put a stop to further hostilities by arresting Col. Runkel. He had a hearing to-day on the charge of assault and battery. Col. Snowden testified that he had not seen Col. Runkel for years, and added that he had "always looked on him as a dog and unfit for a gentleman to associate with." Col. Snowden testified that he paid no attention to Col. Runkel when he met him last evening. The first intimation that he had of any trouble was a violent blow upon a head from a cane. He turned, and as he did so, he said Col. Runkel cried with an oath: "I'll kill you now." Col. Snowden then struck at him with his umbrella. At the conclusion of the hearing Col. Runkel was bound over in $800 bail for trial. Col. Snowden has a bruise on his forehead and a cut across his ear. Col. Runkel also has a battered ear and a black eye. Pete adds: "Runkle was sentenced to three months in the county prison for his assault on Colonel Snowden." QUERY: NUMISMATICS AND COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY'S LOMBAT PRIZE David Lange writes: "I was reading the February issue of Naval History Magazine when I came across an interesting reference. In an article about historian Charles Oscar Paullin, it was mentioned that he was a recipient of the $1000 Lombat Prize. This is (or was) awarded every five years by Columbia University for "the best work published in the English language on the history, geography, ethnology, philology or numismatics of North America." Of course, it was the reference to numismatics which caught my attention. "Paullin won the award not for numismatics, but for his authorship of the Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States, published in 1932. This book is evidently long out of print, and I found one copy for sale at $275. "I attempted to locate a reference to the Lombat Prize on the internet, but I couldn't find anything in a Google search or at the Columbia website. Perhaps this award no longer exists, but I would still expect to find some reference to it beyond that already cited. "Do any readers know of this prize, and has it ever been awarded for a numismatic work?" NEW ZEALAND HAS ITS MEDALS BACK! Jim Duncan reports: "The New Zealand Police announced on Saturday 16/2 that a "third party" had returned 96 stolen medals "in mint condition". These included 9 Victoria Crosses, two George Crosses and an Albert medal, all of which had been stolen in a smash-and-grab raid on the NZ Army Museum at Waiouru on 2 December. "A reward of NZ$300,000 had been offered for 'information leading to the safe return' of these incredibly valuable tokens of heroism and sacrifice, and it was said on Saturday that "a sum on money" would be transferred on Monday to the third party - who was not involved with the theft. A lawyer has been negotiating for their return since mid January when he was handed one set of them. "The reward figure - the greatest ever offered in New Zealand - was made up of $200,000 from Lord Michael Ashcroft (a VC collector himself), and a Nelson businessman, Tom Sturgess. But what part of this figure was to be passed on has not been stated, although the lawyer said he was not getting any part of it. "This happy event confirms the NZ Police view that the medals never left the country." [This is wonderful news. Below are links to some New Zealand newspaper reports of the recovery. -Editor] "Military medals stolen in a museum heist in December have been recovered and the net is closing on those who stole them, police announced today. "The priceless collection of 96 medals, awarded to 12 of New Zealand's most highly decorated war heroes, was stolen from the Waiouru Army Museum in the early hours of December 2." To read the complete article, see: Full Story " 'Groovy' was how Nelson businessman Tom Sturgess felt when police told him the reward he offered had led to the recovery of precious military medals stolen in December's museum heist." To read the complete article, see: Full Story Auckland lawyer Chris Comeskey, who negotiated the return of the medals, said he thought those who took them had underestimated the strength of public feeling about their loss. He believed the medals would have been returned even without the $300,000 reward, part of which would now be paid, and those involved had asked him to pass on their apologies to New Zealanders. He said since he began the negotiations in January he "never doubted for a moment" that the medals would be returned although "they could have hung on to them for another 50 years". He revealed the first of the medals the Sergeant MHudson set including a George Cross was handed over to him in mid-January as a sign of good faith. The rest of the set of 96 medals including nine Victoria Crosses, two George Crosses and one Albert Medal stolen from the Waiouru Army Museum in a raid on December 2 was returned on Friday afternoon when a contact of Comeskey's walked into his Auckland city office at 1.30 and laid them on his desk. "I said, 'What took you so long?"' Comeskey said he was almost overcome when he saw the medals and felt like weeping. "I was speechless, gobsmacked. It was just a most incredible feeling of achievement. I was aware that King George had handled the Upham set." To read the complete article, see: Full Story STORM DAMAGE HITS LANDMARK OHIO 'COUNTERFEIT HOUSE' [The People's Defender of Adams County, Ohio published an article this week about storm damage to the landmark "Counterfeit House". -Editor] Even the spirits of those who died there and are said to inhabit the notorious Counterfeit House were no match for the winds that blew through Adams County on Feb. 6. Roofing was ripped open, and one of the relic's seven chimneys blew apart and crumbled to the ground with the blast. "It's the first time the Counterfeit House has sustained that much damage," owner Jo Lynn Spires said Monday. The structure has stood on a ridge overlooking the Ohio River for almost 16 decades. Pieces of roofing which covered three bedrooms on the east side of the house were pulled up, exposing insulation, ceilings and antique furnishings to the storm's rains. About 10 trees came down in the yard, along with the chimney. In an effort to minimize the damage, Spires; her son-in-law, Jamie Wilson; and friends Steve Conover, Don Nesbit and Joe Grooms spent that morning wiping everything down and moving furnishings out of harm's way. Part of the ceilings had fallen in, according to Spires, and they drilled holes in what was still up to let the water out. A tarp was placed over the openings until the mangled tin can be replaced. "It has a standing seam roof," Spires said. "I want to put the same back on it. I try to keep everything as much like the original as possible." "I can't put the chimney back," she continued. "We can try to replace it with one that looks like it this summer, to keep the esthetics of the house. We're still waiting for an appraiser to come in for the insurance before we can do anything." Legend has it that Oliver Ezra Thompkins purchased 118 acres in 1850 on Gift Ridge Road in Monroe Township and built the house for his counterfeit trade. His accomplice appeared to be Ann E. Lovejoy. Spires has recently acquired information that indicates Thompkins and Lovejoy may have originated in New York from political families. "Most of the story of the Counterfeit House is legend, but supported by fact," said Stephen Kelley, historian. The house itself holds evidence of a secret purpose, according to Kelley. For instance, there is a trick lock on the front door that would seem to be locked to the average observer, yet when the knob is lifted in a certain way, it will open. Of the seven chimneys on the house, only two are functional chimneys. Ductwork would send smoke from the two real chimneys to the other chimneys, making them appear to be real. Within the false chimneys are apparently secret compartments. In the front of the house, a small gable window may have been used for a signal light. A special hidden slot built behind an interior door is believed to be the place where the counterfeit money was exchanged for the purchase price. As the legend goes, according to Kelley and Spires, Lovejoy was in Cincinnati using some of the counterfeit money and was noticed by authorities. She was followed back to the Counterfeit House by a Pinkerton agent, who managed to operate the trick lock and gain entrance to the house through the front door. It was in a 10-foot by 45-foot hallway that Thompkins allegedly bludgeoned the agent to death. The floor and a wall are reportedly still stained with blood. "I saw the blood stain with my own eyes when I visited the house," Kelley said. "That would have been in 1973." The agent was believed to have been buried "over the hillside." With the heat up, the legend says that Thompkins escaped capture through a tunnel leading away from the house, big enough for a man and a horse. He then destroyed the tunnel with some sort of explosive. Although the story of the tunnel seems far-fetched because it would have been excavated through bedrock, Kelley said there is evidence of a past explosion nearby. A middle of the night funeral was later held for Thompkins. His entire estate was willed to Lovejoy, who was unable to keep up with a debt on the property and relocated to Georgetown. A portion of the farm was purchased by a great-great uncle of Spires in 1896. Her grandparents, John and Elizabeth Johnson, purchased the house in the 1930s. Spires, an only child, grew up in the house with her parents, John and Alberta Johnson, and her grandfather. "I enjoyed growing up there," Spires said. "I knew every Saturday in warm weather that we had to get up and really clean, because someone would always come to see the house. But I loved it." Since 1986, Spires has lived in a trailer behind the house and opens it to visitors on the first weekend in May. "Over 1,000 people came to see it last year," she said. "We've had 400 students come. We dressed up in period clothes and did a reenactment of the murder. They loved it." Unfortunately, with recent illnesses, Spires finds herself falling behind in keeping up with the house. Last year she bought paint for the exterior of the house, but was only able to get the primer on the front. "I think the house is what keeps me going, but anyone who would like to donate assistance in any way, please contact me," she said. "All help will be greatly appreciated." [The article lists a phone number for Spires. Readers are encouraged to offer assistance in any way possible. This house holds a unique place in numismatic history. -Editor] To read the complete article, see: Full Story [I recalled learning about this house (or perhaps one like it) but couldn't for the life of me recall where. I tried searching the E-Sylum archives, but came up empty. I remembered a discussion of a television special about counterfeiting, and after poking around the web I found a reference to the 2001 documentary "Making A Buck" which includes the story of "a mysterious couple traveled to Ohio and built the only house in the USA designed from the ground up for the purpose of creating fake money--the Counterfeit House overlooking the Ohio River in Adams County, Ohio, which still stands today." Full Story Web searches turned up the following related links: everymuseum.com/museum610.html treckusa.com/myalbum1+photo.cid+21+lid+548.htm Google Books But the goldmine of information came from a most unlikely source - a book written by a runner about his trip across the U.S. See the next item for a lengthy excerpt about The Counterfeit House. -Editor] EXCERPT: THE COUNTERFEIT HOUSE FROM BRIAN STARK'S 'GETTING TO THE POINT' [While trolling the web for more information on the Counterfeit House I stumbled upon a marvelous account from the book 'Getting to the Point.: In a dozen pairs of shoes' by runner Brian R. Stark, who chronicled his 8-month trek across America. -Editor] Arriving at the Counterfeit House a few miles later I noticed that the house itself looked in disrepair. There was no “open” sign or other evidence that visitors were welcome. I approached a trailer in the side yard of the house and knocked on the door. An older woman came to the door but upon seeing someone she didn’t recognize, locked the storm door and waited to hear what I wanted. I explained that I was running across the country and had been looking forward to touring the Counterfeit House for 500 miles. Unimpressed, she simply said, “Well, it’s closed. The roof leaks and it’s not open to the public.” I was heartbroken. What mysterious things were inside that home just a few yards away? Perhaps this woman was getting back into action and used her, “Sorry, closed” speech to cover the printing operation going on in the shadows of the old home. When I pressed her for a few stories about the old days she finally sized me up through the screen and gave in to storytelling as she unlatched the door and came outside. As we sat down on the porch swing she slowly warmed up to me and told me about this amazing site and her connection to it. Oliver Tompkins built the “Counterfeit House” in 1840. Mr. Tompkins designed the home for the purpose of making counterfeit 50-cent pieces and $500 bills. Just why he chose to make only those two denominations is unclear. The doors to the home had special locks designed so that even when locked, “authorized” people could enter by turning the knob a certain way. Several slots were carved away above interior doors. These slots were where the counterfeit money was stored in bags and then replaced with real money when an exchange took place. In the attic, there is a small window in which Mr. Tompkins placed two lights. One was green and the other red. From the advantageous position of the home on a high bluff, the building can be seen from the Ohio River over one and a half miles away. Boat captains who knew of Mr. Tompkins’ business could look up the hillside and if the green light was on, it meant that the coast was clear and that they could come up to buy money. If the red light was on, however, it meant trouble and to stay away. For additional security, seven chimneys were erected in the home. Of the seven, only two were actually used as such. The other five were false double chimneys that had stairways built inside them. Through an elaborate system of ducts, the two real chimneys sent flumes of smoke out the five fake chimneys. >From inside the fake chimney, and hidden behind a plume of smoke, Mr. Tompkins could see who was coming up the hill. In the back of the home was the actual counterfeiting room. It was built with no doors or windows. The only access to the room was through a trap door in the ceiling and a trap door in the floor. The floor trap led to an escape tunnel that went over one hundred yards underground “big enough for a man and a horse,” to a nearby cliff, as a grainy photocopied brochure stated. As legend has it, Mr. Tompkins’ sister, Ann, tried to pass one of his phony $500 bills in Cincinnati and that exchange led police to follow her to her brother’s home. When the police were closing in, it is believed Mr. Tompkins and his daughter escaped through the tunnel and blew it up on their way out. To end the police chase that lasted for several years, Ann returned to the Counterfeit House with a coffin that she said contained the remains of her deceased father. A mock funeral was held in the home. It is rumored that Mr. Tompkins watched the funeral from one of his chimney lookouts. Though I never got to go inside, my new friend made the history of the house come alive with her stories. I did notice, however, that she seemed tired of her connection with the home. She had lived in it for a number of years with her husband who is now in a nursing home. She obviously felt pain and loneliness but said that she just got to the point where she couldn’t take care of him any longer. She said that later in the day she was going to mow the yard. I couldn’t imagine that she still took care of the daily chores and I offered to do it for her but she declined. When I asked why she was no longer giving tours of the home, she explained that over the years the Counterfeit House has suffered neglect and the roof needs to be replaced. With such an unusual home like this and its historical significance, I asked whether she had spoken to the local historical society or the chamber of commerce to get help with the building’s restoration. That was apparently the wrong thing to say as she replied, “Oh, those people don’t want to help me. They don’t want to give me anything for the house.” She went on to say that the roof is leaking so badly it needs to be replaced before the entire inside is ruined. That would cost $5,000 alone. I thought surely there was some kind of grant or foundation nearby that would be willing to fix the roof until the rest of the funds for restoration could be raised. By this point in her story, she was much friendlier and even offered me food. Grabbing my arm she asked,” Can I get you a cheese sandwich?” and went inside towards the kitchen before I could answer. “How would you like a can of Turkey Franks? I’ve got Ice Cream! A Coke?” Each time she would say something, she would turn around, go inside and get it, and each time that she got something, she reminded herself of something else to offer me. “Here’s a Hi-C Juice Box, that will be good. Oh, and here’s a Reese’s Cup bar, you’ll need that!” We traded addresses and I was exceedingly pleased with my visit to the Counterfeit House, even though I never saw the inside. It rained on and off during the day but I didn’t care. As I ate my home-made lunch out of the rain under the steel beams of a one-lane bridge, I began to fanaticize about moving to Manchester, Ohio after my run and completely renovating the Counterfeit House, giving tours, and telling people how I came to know its history. That dream occupied my thoughts until I arrived in Bentonville, at which point I had decided that I was going to excavate the original tunnel by hand, replace the roof by myself, and mow my new friend’s yard twice a week for free for the rest of my life. To read the complete article, see: Full Story [This is a great yarn, but stories based on word of mouth and grainy tourist attraction flyers aren't the most reliable historical sources. I checked the index of Stephen Mihm's new book 'A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and the Making of the United States' (Harvard University Press, 2007), but I came up empty. Can anyone refer us to an authoritative publication about the house? I contacted Stephen Mihm, and he wasn't aware of the Tompkins house, although his book did discuss the James Brown house outside Akron, Ohio (which was the home of another famous counterfeiter and is also still standing). He writes: "I think the counterfeiter is one who was active in the post Civil War era, judging from the Pinkerton's reference. It's a great story." Mihm was familiar with The E-Sylum because Dick Doty had sent him our earlier items relating to his book. Now Mihm's a subscriber - welcome! -Editor] FILM REVIEW: THE COUNTERFEITERS [The Hollywood Reporter published a wonderful article this week about the making of "The Counterfeiters", a film based on the true story of Operation Bernhard, the concentration camp based Nazi counterfeiting operation during WWII. Here are some excerpts. -Editor] With so many movies having already been made about the Holocaust you'd think filmmakers would have exhausted all possible storylines a long time ago. That's not the case, however, as Stefan Ruzowitzky's "The Counterfeiters" makes clear. Opening Feb. 22 in New York and Los Angeles via Sony Pictures Classics, "Counterfeiters" is Austria's official selection in the 2007 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar race. The film, shown last fall at the Telluride and Toronto film festivals, provides a fresh approach to the Holocaust as movie material with its true story of one death camp inmate whose professional abilities as an expert forger made him a particularly valuable prisoner. Based on the book "The Devil's Workshop" by Adolf Burger, the film is the true story of Salomon Smolianoff (called Salomon Sorowitsch or Sally for short in the film and played very well by Karl Markovics), who fell into Nazi hands when they were trying to counterfeit British pounds and American dollars to finance the war and ruin those countries' economies. Salomon was already known to the German authorities as a brilliant forger and when the Nazis realized they now had him they quickly put him to work in the best possible environment under the circumstances. Asked about the process of writing the screenplay, Ruzowitzky pointed out, "It was the usual problems you have when you're writing a script that's based on (a book). Your first draft is very close to the material, very close to the actual events. And then you start making adaptations to make it a working screenplay. I was happy to have Adolf Burger, one of the survivors of the counterfeiters unit, as a story consultant. Adapting the lengthy book and its true story into a movie that runs 98 minutes wasn't easy: "It was mainly about sort of straightening up the chain of events and making one movie character out of three or four real life characters to make it better for the audience to understand. But all these details like operetta music being played to them all day long (to drown out the screams of other prisoners being tortured nearby!) -- all this is authentic. You couldn't make up something like that. You wouldn't dare to make up something like that." The film takes place mostly in the Sachsenhausen deathcamp, where two barracks were separated from the rest of the camp for use as a fully equipped workshop for what was called "Operation Bernhard" and revolved around counterfeiting dollars and pounds. There were two moments when I remember I got sort of emotional during shooting the movie. One was when we shot the scene where these normal inmates would enter the workshop (and see the markedly better living conditions for the prisoners who were working as counterfeiters). You could sense that the whole crew was quiet and full of respect. And then we shot that scene. When we were done, they would take out their cell phones and chocolate bars from their pockets and (that) reminded us that they were extras -- with makeup and costumes, but extras. "The other moment was when Burger and Plappler were visiting us on the set and suddenly we became aware that this is more than just a movie. We were actually reconstructing an environment where some of their friends had been killed, where they had been tortured for a couple of years and there definitely is a bigger responsibility (as filmmakers). When you're reading documents or the biographies this is part of the process where you're shattered as you read about all these unbelievable things." To read the complete article, see: Full Story SEATTLE TIMES 'ELIMINATE THE CENT' EDITORIAL Dick Johnson writes: "Perhaps the editorial writer at the Seattle Times watched the 60 Minutes TV program the day before, but it published yet another editorial that took an opposite view of Morley Safer's 'kiss up' to the U.S. Mint broadcast last Sunday. Is such a comment late to the party or does it add yet more weight to the public's view to abolish the cent as a denomination. "The writer knew of the zinc coated steel cents of 1943 and pointed out their discontinuation after only one year. It also mentioned the diminished purchasing power of the cent. Good arguments both. Read and form your own opinion." To read the complete article, see: Full Story NEW YORK TIMES 'ELIMINATE THE CENT' ARTICLE [Arthur Shippee forwarded this article from the New York Times favoring the elimination of the cent. -Editor] But generally speaking, New Yorkers have little use for the one-cent coin. Many reject it as change, tossing it instead into the tip baskets that sit on many store counters. Few stoop to pick up a penny on the sidewalk. In the not-so-distant days of the subway token, signs instructed riders to “avoid using pennies” as payment. Some in New York, a city not blessed with vast reservoirs of patience, find it a torment to be stuck on a checkout line while a customer up ahead fumbles for a penny or two. One bit of change that many New Yorkers definitely do not believe in is the penny. They would just as soon see it disappear, with business transactions rounded to the nearest nickel. A few European countries have blazed the trail, abolishing their smallest coins as a waste. In the last federal fiscal year, it cost the Mint 1.67 cents to make each of the roughly eight billion pennies it churned out. In other words, taxpayers paid more than $130 million for coins valued at only $80 million. Looked at another way, even your opinions have become more expensive. It costs about 3 cents to put in your 2 cents. That sort of change makes sense to Representative Michael N. Castle, a Delaware Republican with a longstanding interest in this issue. “Obviously, we need to get the costs in line,” Mr. Castle said. “The other alternative is to get rid of it altogether,” he said, referring to the penny, but the reality is that “there’s still a great deal of political opposition” to going that route. Too bad, says Beth Deisher, the editor of Coin World, a magazine for collectors that believes the penny’s demise is overdue. With the 100th anniversary in sight, Ms. Deisher said, “we think it would be a good idea to bring the Lincoln cent to a close.” “Name the things you can buy for a penny,” she said. Except for thoughts, not a single thing. If you’re the government, you can’t even buy a penny for a penny. To read the complete article, see: Full Story MOFFATT & CO. REACHES AGREEMENT TO PRODUCE GALLERY MINT PRODUCTS [Timothy Grat of Moffatt & Co. forwarded a press release this week about the Moffatt agreement to strike U.S. coin reproductions from the dies of the former Gallery Mint. Here are some excerpts. -Editor] Moffatt & Co. Extreme Custom Minting of Eureka Springs, AR. has announced that they have reached a manufacturing agreement with Martin Roenigk of Eureka Springs, the new owner of the Gallery Mint’s dies used to produce the line of Gallery Mint US coin reproductions. Mr. Roenigk purchased the rights, dies, and most of the antique minting equipment from surviving Gallery Mint owner Ron Landis in early January. Through this exclusive agreement Moffatt & Co. will be producing most Gallery Mint products. This agreement will also allow Moffatt & Co. to utilize design elements of these classic US coin replicas so that professional numismatists, and numismatic clubs and organizations can also create custom coins and medals with these original Gallery Mint classic US coin designs. Scheduled for immediate production is a previously unreleased, Ron Landis engraved, 1652 Massachusetts Pine Tree Three-pence. Soon to follow will be the Gobrecht Dollar, with main design devices sculpted by former US Mint artist Thomas Rogers, also known as the sculptor for the reverse of the Sacajawea dollar, the Massachusetts, Maryland, and South Carolina state quarters, as well as many other collectable commemorative coins, Congressional and U.S. Mint medals. For further information please contact Moffatt & Co. toll free at 866-530-MINT (6468), sales@moffattandco.com, or www.moffattandco.com. [But how will the Moffatt restrikes be distinguished from the original Gallery Mint strikings? The investment buyers made in limited-edition Gallery Mint products could be jeopardized if the original dies are used to make indistinguishable restrikes. -Editor] LITHUANIA'S BIG BANKNOTE BUILDING [The Baltic Times this week published an article about a building designed to look like one of the country's banknotes. I've heard of money art, but money architecture? Plenty of buildings have decorative elements that may mimic coins of money symbols, but until now I'd never heard of an entire building. Who built it, Scrooge McDuck? Read on to find out, and be sure to click on the article link to see a picture of the building. -Editor] They say that money doesn't grow on trees. Well, in Kaunas it grows on buildings. Earlier, if tourists ever bothered to visit Lithuania's dog-eared interwar capital at all, it was to see the Italian Baroque majesty of Pazaislis or quirky Old Town highlights such as the Thunder House and the White Swan. Now, however, a contender for the title of oddest Kaunas tourist attraction of 2008 is Office Center 1000. A curvaceous, luminous, 10-floor office building designed in the form of a LTL 1,000 banknote, Office Center 1000 is being touted locally as one of the Baltic region's most daring and original construction projects. The exterior is virtually finished, but the interior will only be fully completed in June. That's when the lucky companies that have signed up for this Class A office space will be able to move in. Jonas Plenta, marketing manager of Urmas, the company behind the project, insists that the new structure is not simply a mighty monument to the power of money. “At around the same time we were assessing some of the design projects for a new office building in 2005, Lithuania was one of two new EU member states applying to join the euro zone. We happened to come across a very elegant banknote dating from 1926, and decided to use it as our overall theme.” The exterior consists of 4,500 different pieces of glass with enamel designs, which are being slotted together like a giant jigsaw puzzle. The glass was made in the Netherlands and shipped over, and it can, Plenta assures, withstand even the most extreme Lithuanian weather. Acclaimed Dutch artist Rob Borgmann, managing director of Glass Printing International and a specialist of the “screenprinting” technique of placing images on glass for use in building facades, gave valuable advice on the Kaunas project. He previously worked on bold architectural projects such as the multicolored Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision near Amsterdam. To read the complete article, see: Full Story NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE ON GOING PAPERLESS [This week the New York Times had an interesting article on a family that has gone entirely paperless, putting all their paperwork, including books, into electronic format. The E-Sylum has been paperless from day one, and here and there we see examples of electronic numismatic literature. Will the day come when most collectors view their literature in electronic form only? -Editor] CHRIS UHLIK’S children can be found in their home computer lab almost every morning. Nicole is writing a story about her two lizards. Tony is playing an interactive spelling game, while Andy is learning multiplication tables. Even 5-year-old Joceline is clicking away at a storybook game. Mr. Uhlik, an engineering director at Google, and his family live a practically paper-free life. The children are home- schooled on computers. Other sources of household paper — lists, letters, calendars — have become entirely digital. Going paperless was a conscious decision by the Uhliks. But many families may be closer to entering a paperless world than they realize. Paper-reducing technologies have crept into homes and offices, perhaps more for efficiency than for environmentalism; few people will dispute the convenience of online bill-paying and airline e-tickets. “Paper is no longer the master copy; the digital version is,” says Brewster Kahle, the founder and director of the Internet Archive, a nonprofit digital library. “Paper has been dealt a complete deathblow. When was the last time you saw a telephone book?” “Some people are happy to throw away their past. Not me,” says Brad Templeton, who has founded an Internet newspaper and a software company and is the chairman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “I’m a digital pack rat. I have phone bills from 1983 and taxes from the 1990s. But I have everything scanned, so it takes up no physical space. For me, scanners provide the magic of still having all my documents without the clutter.” Although he would like to scan his entire book collection, Mr. Templeton, who is based in Silicon Valley, instead typically reads e-books when he is delayed at the airport or caught in a line somewhere. “It’s not as pleasant as reading a paper book,” he said. “But the e-book you have is better than the book you don’t.” Many companies, like H-P, Fujitsu, and Canon, have leapt into the paperless home market with new scanners for personal and home use, which is the fastest-growing sales segment. Worldwide shipments jumped to 623,000 in 2007 from 354,000 in 2005, and sales are expected to top 1.1 million by 2010, according to IDC, a market research company. Fujitsu introduced a document-fed scanner called the ScanSnap in 2003, expecting to sell it mostly to businesses. But the company quickly realized that there was a huge market for inexpensive, fast household scanners. Its small, portable ScanSnap was introduced in November, at a price of $295, well below the $495 price of the larger original. Some people prefer to bypass the purchase of a scanner and instead farm out the scanning — to India, where it can be done on the cheap. ScanCafé, which specializes in digitizing and retouching photographs, has an office in the San Francisco Bay Area, but most of its employees are in Bangalore. They will take a shoe box full of prints or a photo album and return the originals with a CD and your own online digital library. They scan paper documents, too, for about 40 cents a page. Robert Burdock, a student at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, carries a digital camera to class so he can take a picture of any handout and immediately turn it into a text-searchable document on his laptop. “Say I’m writing an essay on Edward III. A quick input of the term in Google Desktop and I’m presented with everything I have on the subject,” Mr. Burdock wrote in an e-mail message, which had a note at the bottom asking the recipient to consider the environment before printing. “This is a massive time saver when compared to manual searching and sifting.” IN the desire for efficiency — to find exactly what you need the moment you need it — paper is being left behind. Mr. Uhlik, who also worked on Google’s Book Search, the book scanning project, has scanned about 100 of his reference books to try to make his home library digital and searchable. Because he wants to keep the house nearly paper-free, most of his remaining 1,000 books are in a shed. He occasionally pays his children to help scan them. “Once the books are all scanned and backed up on several hard drives, I’ll never have to worry about the shed roof leaking and ruining them,” he says. “I’ve preserved them forever if I put them on the computer.” To read the complete article, see: Full Story UPDATE ON USING COINS AS TIRE GAUGE Dick Johnson writes: "We reported here in E-Sylum how to use a Lincoln cent as a test for tread wear on your auto's tires (December 5, 2004). Consumer Reports updated the coin test this week, saying to use a quarter instead. "Consumer Report's tests show that using a penny is too stingy and that most consumers should consider replacing their tires when the tread reaches 1/8 inch. To quote their report: 'To gauge tread wear, place a quarter upside down in a tire groove. The distance from the coin's rim to George Washington's hairline is about 1/8 inch. If you see more of his head, consider replacing your tires.' "Does it make a difference if you use a State Reverse quarter?" To read the complete article, see: Full Story LINCOLN CENT RECOMMENDED AS TIRE TREAD GAUGE esylum_v07n49a17.html FEATURED WEB SITE: NUMISMATIC EVIDENCE DATING REVELATION This week's featured web site is on Numismatic Evidence for the Dating of the New Testement Book of Revelation. Featured Web Site Wayne Homren Numismatic Bibliomania Society
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