I am enclosing as a gift to the Numismatic Bibliomania Society , perhaps to include in its auction, the original paste-ups for the cover of my 1979 book, Adventures with Rare Coins. The postcard on the back is an original from circa 1910 (not a photographic copy). I thought perhaps this might be of interest to add to the auction with the proceeds going to the Numismatic Bibliomania Society.

E-Sylum readers may be interested in a soon to be released historical novel about Dahlonega's gold rush era. The University Press of North Georgia will release Dahlonega's Gold on July 26. The book's narrative will bring to life Dahlonega's gold rush and U. S. Branch Mint, the miners who left Georgia to go to the California gold rush and much more.

The author, Anne Amerson, will be the guest speaker at the Southern Gold Society's annual gathering on Saturday, August 23 at the Whitman Coin and Collectibles Atlanta Expo. For more information about the SGS and its gathering, visit www.southerngoldsociety.org/about.html.

For show information, visit www.whitmanexpo.com.

I have a new coin book coming out soon called Profitable Coin Collecting (Krause Publications, $19,99). This was a neat book to write since it took so much that seems familiar but was actually hard research - the 1838-O half is part of its story.

The carpet in the Coiner's office was necessary, as his was entirely worn out and entirely unfit for use, and being so full of gold and silver, was replaced with a new one, in order that he might burn the old one. (p9)

The watchmen used axes to try and extinguish the flames, but were unsuccessful due to the fact that the flames had reached above the ceiling and had begun to burn the roof. Not wanting to call in the fire department, the watchmen contacted Superintendent Hempstead at his home. (p11)

Vault "J" had not been opened in five years. On that near fatal day, employees unsealed the doors to the vault. They were unaware that moisture had oozed through the walls and rotted the sacks holding the dollars, so that when the fresh air came in, it quickly began to rot the sacks even further. The bags began to come apart as the seams...

No sooner than he made his way out of the vault door, when the 29,000,000 silver coins began to move. With a huge roar, the coins burst thorough their sacks, and filled the passageway where Michael had stood just moments before. The coins continued to escape their rotted sacks, spilling out the vault door and into the corridor.

It took two months, and the work of 14 men, to gather the coins, to weigh them, and to count them...

The cover price is $20, but to E-Sylum subscribers we will defray the extra cost for shipping and handling so the total cost remains at $20. If you are interested, please email Nancy Oliver and/or Richard Kelly at noliver146@sbcglobal.net.

We have endeavored to correct the typing errors since we have sent out our first batch to our very first customers. We are doing all the work on the book ourselves, the creation, and the final printing - and do each book to order. Since the creation of the first six, we have made minor corrections. The "charge" word to "change" has already been corrected, as has several others we have found since doing yet another series of editing. None of them serious, thankfully.

Second, yes a few of our images of the Superintendents came fuzzy, especially Peter Lott, and Nancy worked hard to bring them clear with our software. The Lott photo came from a portrait on a wall of the Supt's office, which was almost invisible. But Nancy pulled it out, and I was generally shocked that she even got it that clear. And as well, a portrait of Stevens, after six months of search, was surprisingly unobtainable. We know for a fact that portraits of maybe all of the Supt's were on the walls of the Superintendent's office, but after questioning Washington DC, Director Moy, etc., no one seems to know if they still exist. We have tried to make the book of the best quality, and you have made us feel good that we have mostly accomplished that. And yes, the Michael Kelly story of the falling silver dollars is also one of our favorites.

We sold special edition white cloth copies of Hodges and Gwynne & Day in our 88th sale in a consignment from Roy Pennell.

We also sold special interleaved green leather-bound copies of both in our 39th sale from the library of Bob Medlar. Only ten copies of each of these were produced.

For those who yearn for relief from “meaningless’” adjectives in descriptions, there is hope: Computerized billing, Excel files, and the like. “Just the facts, ma’am,” and “no embellishment please.”

The long legal notices published by the DEA in newspapers, offering seized coins for sale, have no adjectives at all, and offer a rich opportunity for adjective-phobes to do some bedside reading.

I for one like adjectives, and within the context of numismatics I think that many coins, situations, and events can indeed be “important.”

Isn’t it delightful that there are so many people with so many diverse and interesting (pardon the adjective) commentaries on what we all do?

I feel the same ambivalence that Ron Guth feels. As a long-time numismatist, I want to see a museum's coin collection on exhibit, not in the storage room. But as a former curator, I know that museums own much more than they can exhibit, and have to rotate their exhibitions to keep them up-to-date. Ron is right that Frank Stewart was promised that his Old Mint Collection of coins and artifacts from the first Philadelphia Mint (1792-1832) would be permanently displayed at Congress Hall (now part of the Independence Hall National Historical Site of the National Park Service), and that this promise has been forgotten or ignored.

This reminds me of Phillipe de Montebello promising a major donor that the donor's name would be attached to a gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art "in perpetuity." The donor shrewdly asked, "How long does 'perpetuity' last?" Montebello candidly replied "Fifty years." In answer to the Editor's question, Len Augsburger and I have recently done research at the Independence Hall Library, and Len has done research at Rowan University's Stewart Collection, all for our forthcoming Whitman book, Pictures of the First United States Mint: The Numismatic Legacy of Frank H. Stewart.

Both repositories have been very helpful, and have allowed us to directly examine artifacts from Stewart's collections. Neither repository has numismatics as a primary competence, but the curators at both have been interested in learning from us, and certainly care deeply about the important numismatic artifacts under their care.

This design reminds me of the J.B. Script token, Courteau 360 (Nova Scotia) and the 1812 date would fit. Haxby & Willey thought that Courteau 360 was a token of J. Brown of Halifax (#71, first ed. 1971). The editors of the Charlton Standard Catalogue of Canadian Colonial Tokens (first ed. 1988) lumped it in with the blacksmith tokens and gave it a number – I can’t tell you what the number is because I am forbidden to use it without their permission! I have this token in my collection, but have no clue as to when, why or by whom it was issued.

In your most recent (terrific, as usual!) E-sylum, you mentioned that Mr. Tom Kays has a contemporary counterfeit U.S. $20 gold that was made into a spur. I collect contemporary counterfeits. Would you ask him to forward an image of it to me sometime?

This object was dug about six years ago near Petersburg, VA. It is a brass counterfeit double eagle weighing 7.8 grams. The style is pre-civil war "Twenty D", no motto, with milled edge. It has some wear and was center holed and crudely (angrily?) hand cut into a spur rowel - perhaps by someone who was out twenty dollars!

I find no alternative lettering as expected on a spielmark, yet that is a possibility that I cannot rule out as it seems shallowly struck, but of good die work. I’d feel better that it was meant to deceive, if it had gilt or leaf remaining, or if it were heavy, approximating proper gold weight. It has good dug patina and moderate porosity that would be hard to fake regarding age.

I think it is a neat relic and was probably Civil War camp made. The obverse is nearly obliterated but the reverse center at the eagle’s head and stars are clear. Pictures are of reverse, obverse, edge.

During the 1980s and early '90s, the Old Mint became one of my favorite research facilities. As I began to write articles and then books, its vast collection of books, catalogs and unpublished documents were a real treasure troce. I especially prized its collection of annual Mint Director's reports, complete from 1873 to date. Though at first my visits were supervised, I soon got to know the staff well enough that they more or less gave me the run of the library. While the individual pieces of this resource still exist, they are no longer easily accessible to researchers. This was just one of the many losses the numismatic community suffered when the Treasury Department closed the OSFMM in 1994, citing an alleged earthquake hazard.

New York. New York City. Dr. Lewis Feuchtwanger. Three Cents. 1837. Low-118A, Rulau HT-unlisted. Feuchtwanger's composition. Rarity-8. Choice Uncirculated. Prooflike. Reeded edge. 106.7 gns. 24.9 mm. Struck coin turn.

Obverse and reverse types as Low-118 but counterstamped at the top of the reverse JMP in logotype. The counterstamp applied carefully with thought to its placement in the space between W and the leaf below it. Ford's was counterstamped just like this, too.

Who JMP was or why he thought to counterstamp his logotype on a scarce token is still a mystery.

The famous golden Horseman or Vaquero, Spanish for cowboy... Only eight appearances of this famous issue were listed in the Dannreuther-Garrett reference, those crossing the auction block between January 1994 and November 2002; other appearances have occurred since then. The golden Horsemen has long been a focal point of famous collections, among them the cabinets of Louis E. Eliasberg, Sr., John Jay Pittman, and the spectacular Harry W. Bass, Jr. specimen...

'GREAT LOCO FOCO JUGGERNAUT, A NEW CONSOLE-A-TORY SUB-TREASURY RAG MONSTER... 12-1/2 CENTS [or] GOOD FOR A SHAVE..' Ca.1837. No location.

A defining satirical cartoon in the form of a slightly oversized obsolete banknote of the period. Engraved by David Claypool Johnston, without imprint. The designs and texts are extremely detailed (easily the most complex of the period).

The only private gold coin recovered from the wreck of the S.S. New York, but one that illustrates the wide acceptance of the Bechtler coinage in commercial trade even more than a decade after the original issue, and a considerable distance away from the site of production and release in Rutherfordton, North Carolina.

This is among the most interesting of all Bechtler issues from an historical viewpoint. It bears the day date of August 1, 1834. Bechtler was aware that the Coinage Act of June 28, 1834, changed the composition and weight of gold coins, making them lighter than before, permitting them to circulate once again. No gold coins had been seen in domestic circulation since 1820, for the international price of gold bullion was at a higher level than the face value imprinted upon federal coins. Coins that did circulate, including the Bechtler issues, were taken in not at their face value but based upon their bullion content, resulting in each selling at a premium.

I came across this story about a skeleton found at the Royal Mint in London. There is a short video about how due to the mint dumping waste copper this body absorbed it.

This needs to get the widest publicity possible and I have been forwarding it to everyone I can think of. They are also making excellent banknotes too. The Chinese will operate ANY business that will bring in foreign currencies/employ people until they are pressured by the person/people/firm being hurt. We need to pressure them now, continuously and hard!

Counterfeit currency and tourist goods made by a major Chinese fake coin operation.

In the photos of the Chinese coin counterfeiting ring that my sources provided, there were very few banknotes shown. This photo is the best of the banknote bunch. The other items in the photo seem to be some kind of tourist-trade goods.

We have used this American Numismatic Society web page in looking for useful numismatic information on a wide range of subjects.