One (remotely) possible explanation for the 1840-O half dollar with its weight engraved upon it might be that when the weight standards of the fractional silver coins were reduced in 1853, some person interested in culling out the older, heavier coins might have taken one of the heavier coins, weighed and marked it, and used that as his standard to sort coins against.

This would assume that he was unaware of the Mint's much simpler sorting system of marking the new, lighter coins with arrows at the date, so that any coin without the arrows could be culled out and remelted. We as numismatists all know about the reasons for the arrows, but did the Mint publicize it at the time, or did they keep it secret so that the Treasury Dept. could cull out the older coins for its benefit?

As to receiving coins of the new year early in the year, on January 6, 1973, I was working as a cashier in Detroit, and I noticed in somebody's deposit a bright, shiny 1973 cent. I replaced it with another, and that night noticed that Frank Gasparro had doubled the size of his initials on the reverse. I stuck it in an envelope and mailed it off to Coin World with this observation, thinking it might merit one paragraph in Collectors Clearinghouse, to which I had already submitted an application for employment.

It arrived in the proverbial slow news week, and was splashed across the front page. Later that year when CW was looking for a proofreader with numismatic experience, Margo went through the applications on file and remembered my name from the 1973 cent story. I got the job, and next year transferred to Clearinghouse working for Ed Fleischmann. Later I followed Ed to ANACS, and the rest of my numismatic career followed from that, all because I got a 1973 cent in change on January 6th!

Have you taken advantage of the great numismatic libraries of the American Numismatic Association or American Numismatic Society? If so, I'd encourage you to nominate a librarian for the American Library Association's 2012 "I love my librarian" award. (For the purposes of these awards, these libraries would be considered "public libraries".)

Anyone who does numismatic research would have a much tougher time without these libraries and their librarians (Elizabeth Hahn at ANS & RyAnn Scott at ANA). Whether you have visited the library in person or gotten help via email or phone or only used online resources, you've been helped by their work. Let's show them our appreciation. Nominations are open until September 12.

Here's another Noah's Ark coin: 1/2 Piastra AN VII (1697/98), Rome. Muntoni 28