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V4 2001 INDEX       E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 4, Number 24, June 10, 2001, Article 15 NOTES FROM BILL SPENGLER Bill Spengler writes: "I have greatly enjoyed your latest E-Sylum which has prompted the following observations. "Dan Gosling wrote: "It might be a fun topic to find out if your readers know of other comic strips that deal with our hobby..." This reminded me of one. A syndicated strip of "Hagar the Horrible" by Dik Browne, run in the nation's newspapers on November 29, 1978, featured the lovable Viking Hagar flipping a coin high into the air in the presence of his sidekick Eddie only to have it fail to return to earth. In the last frame Hagar looks upward and exclaims "#@!!& SEAGULL!". Obviously a gull had snatched the coin in midair and made off with it. Coincidentally, this strip appeared just after the much respected British numismatist Peter Seaby had announced to the numismatic press that the medieval silver coin found in a shell heap on the coast of Maine U.S.A. in 1961 had been identified as a silver penny of the Norse king Olaf Kyrre (1067-1093 AD). While numismatists around the world speculated over how this post- Leif Erikson Norse coin could have found its way to the rocky coast of North America, I put the two stories together and wrote a satirical article for "World Coin News", published on page 3 of its January 9, 1979 edition and headlined "Aviary Theory Advanced for Penobscot Bay Find", hypothesizing that the coin could have been transported from Norway to Maine in the entrails of a waterfowl and "deposited" in a shell "bank" there. Re: EARTHQUAKES IN NUMISMATICS (I would have preferred NUMISMATICS IN EARTHQUAKES), two observations: (1) Some years ago I happened to acquire from a California dealer a stack of about 25 U.S. dimes which had been fused together in a small column, evidently by fire. The heat had not been enough to melt the coins as the obverse and reverse of the two respective end coins were quite visible and the number of coins could be counted. The item came with an affidavit certifying that it had gone through the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire and had been recovered from the rubble of a bank or store. Eventually I decided that the proper home for this oddment was the San Francisco Mint Museum, so I donated it to them along with the affidavit. In considering what its value might be as a charitable donation, the curator and I mused about whether it might contain one or more of the high-value Barber dimes without mintmark -- or even a precious 1894S! But we settled on a nominal valuation. (2) One of the numismatic consequences of the devastating earthquake which hit the northwestern Indian state of Gujarat three months ago has been to impoverish one of India's oldest and most respected professional numismatists, Mr. V. K. Thacker, a nonagenarian resident of Bhuj, a city at the very epicenter of the quake in Kutch district. Shri Thacker is well and favorably known to a generation of American collectors and dealers interested in modern coins, paper money, medals and tokens of India and has been a regular contributor to Krause Publications catalogs for over 30 years. He wrote recently: "The disastrous earthquake has made Bhuj a graveyard ... My house has so many cracks that it has to be demolished soon, at a cost of a minimum of (U.S.) $5,000... The residents of Bhuj are either victims of the quake or have left Cutch to live with friends or relatives." He is hoping for financial assistance from friends in the U.S. and other countries, either as donations or small loans to be repaid in installments, and has offered to present donors with a copy of his monograph "Cutch: Its Coins and Heritage" along with some silver coins and revenue stamps of the former princely state of Kutch-Bhuj.

Wayne Homren, Editor

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