A point of interest regarding Cuba. A friend of mine, who will remain nameless as she has already had more than her share of problems with this, informed me of the following:

She has a website and also does a list of banknotes for sale. Among the items offered are Cuba, North Korea and Sudan. A customer in Great Britain bought one of the Cuban notes and paid with PayPal. Shortly after he received the note, he was contacted by PayPal and told to send them an affidavit that it would not go back to Cuba. This is even though it was a date in the 40s! She contacted one of her congressmen and was told, yes it's doesn't make any sense but it's part of the embargo and "that's the way it is". I wonder when they will start checking at coin shows to see if any of this material is for sale on the floor! There doesn't seem to be an end to this nonsense.

According to the 1971 U.S. Mint Report, the total number of $3 gold pieces produced was 539,792. This does not include the 1870-S.

As Sacagawea died in 1812, I doubt that that is a photograph of her and her child. It may be two people portraying her and her child.

This picture has been circulating on the Internet for a while and is NOT of Sacajawea. Sacajawea died in 1812! Photography (or any of its various forms) had not even been invented at that time.

How could the photograph be of Sacagawea since the first known photograph of anything wasn't taken until 1826-27, the first known photograph of a living person not taken until 1838-39 and she died December 20, 1812? I've seen the photograph once before elsewhere and thought it and one time mistake, but here it appears again.

The first sentence lists new subscribers. I've heard of weird names in my life but the new subscriber, Welcome aboard, is possibly the weirdest I've ever heard.

A quick correction to the item on Ivan III. The image I sent was from the current edition of The Standard Catalog of World Coins, 1701-1800, and shows the rouble coin. There are a couple of similar portraits on coins in the Brekke book you mentioned, but they are rare patterns, and I felt that the rouble more closely represented a coin that the average collector would encounter.

Not only does Liberty bear a striking resemblance to the Goddess Ceres on the French one franc coin but Charles Barber has Liberty wearing a Phrygian cap. Marianne, the national emblem of France, is shown wearing such a cap. So, in a way, Barber's Liberty portrait is more French than the one after which he modeled it.

This coin has Tsar Nicholas I on the obverse, and on the reverse is his wife Alexandra Feordorovna (Princess Charlotte of Prussia) surrounded by her 7 children. The one at the bottom left looks like a baby. I thought I had seen a similar one with Nicholas II, the last Tsar, but I couldn't find it.

I read that as $1000 in 100s, I.e. 10 notes. Worth about 645 pounds so not a good deal at the lowered price of 800 pounds. They might even be real.....

A medal celebrating the 500th anniversary of the discovery of Florida has been commissioned by the Tampa Bay Coin Club through a private mint. Since the 1913 medal [HK-661], I do not think this event has been honored with any other piece. For a few more details visit the page http://tampabaycoinclub.org/Florida_s_Discovery_Me.html .