NOTES FROM E-SYLUM READERS: JANUARY 16, 2011

I liked Dick Johnson's note on the Churchill crown. His criticisms of Todd Sciore's article in The Numismatist would appear to be spot on, if the work � I have not read it � is as he says. However, while he is right to criticise the author there are some important people he forgets � namely the Editor and the publication's outside reviewer(s). If all of these people missed those mistakes and allowed this work to see print then they are as liable as Sciore.

Well, I did read the article, and I think it's important to note that it is less than a page long (including photos), totaling a whopping four paragraphs of text. I'm not sure a filler piece needs to be held to the same standard as a feature article.

In general though, standards are high for print publications, and I don't envy the task of their editors. It's a tough job. There are hundreds of ways to draw criticism, and few accolades when you get everything perfectly right - that's when nobody even notices.

Dick's criticism of the author's omission is fair - just be sure to acknowledge the good work of all involved in producing a major numismatic periodical on a regular monthly basis.

Also be aware of another problem that Dick himself has identified in the past - author paralysis. It's when the quest for perfection leads to an inordinate delay or precludes publication entirely. I'm guilty of that myself. In fact, I had a decent manuscript for an article for The Numismatist on Dickin medals that the editors wanted to publish as part of a special issue on dogs in numismatics. I demurred, not feeling I'd done enough homework yet to justify going to print. The issue came and went without my article. It was an excellent issue, and I regret not being a part of it. Dick is right to encourage authors to be wary of letting their quest for perfection preclude publication in the first place. It is sometimes better to publish first and correct later than never to publish at all.

-Editor

If I could read your mind, you are about to ask us, what other pieces of exonumia struck in chocolate do we know about? Well, a 76mm gold foil chocolate filled medal of President Kennedy made it into Edward C. Rochette's Medallic Portraits of John F. Kennedy (Krause Publications, Iola WI, 1966) and is catalogued as item K-63A-10. You don't want to let that one get too near the stove.

And, as Alberto F. Pradeau tells us, cacao beans circulated as money in pre-colonial M�xico and "remained as a monetary unit in New Spain until the opening of the nineteenth century." Numismatic History of Mexico, English edition (Los Angeles, published by the author, 1938), pages 10-11.