The writeup in last week's E-Sylum notes Gar Travis' origin in Jacksonville, NC. He was a long time and life member of the Lower Cape Fear Coin Club in Wilmington, NC, and active therein until he left for California following the death of his father, for whom he cared over several years. Gar served as the coin club's President during 1995, 1996 and 1998. Gar did everything he could to promote numismatics locally as well as nationally. He was dynamic, opinionated, and extremely knowledgeable in numismatics, as he proved over the past decade in CA.

Sadly, I did not hear from Gar since he announced his retirement and the reason therefore in June. I last saw him during one of his rare trips back 'home' a few years ago. As a photographer myself, I can appreciate all those pix he posted in covering so many events. He was a man not to be forgotten for a very long time for his dual interests and dedication to valued causes.

I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciate the kind things that you and others wrote about Gar. He was quite a character and very, very talented. We will miss him.

I was sorry to hear about Gar Travis. I spoke to him a number of times at ANA conventions. I especially remember the Banquet in Atlanta. I used my camera a lot on this trip and the night of the Banquet, my battery died. Gar left the table--he was sitting next to me-- and somehow found me a new battery!

Gar Travis used to send me an email every once in a while to comment on an article I had written. It was always constructive criticism and I greatly appreciated them. I remember way back one of my articles generated an email from him with "I do not believe that!" So I scanned the documentation and the piece and emailed it to him. His response was "I do believe that!" I will miss him.

I was saddened to learn about the passing of Gar Travis. I also had the Heritage issue and thumbed through the Max Mehl article. What struck me was that none of the letterheads of any of the letter writers, all of whom were successful wealthy people, had telephone numbers on the top. Most of the letters were from the 1940's when obviously businesses had telephones. Do any E-Sylum readers know when it became common to put phone numbers on letterheads?

Over the years I've offered documents and letters from the 1930's and 40's that I thought had phone numbers in the letterheads. But perhaps I'm mistaken. I'll have to see if I have photos of those in my files. I'll try to do some research this week.

Regarding the book American Centennial Tokens by Lingg and Slabaugh, years ago I purchased the remaining supply of this book from Paul Cunningham. I still have a few copies available at www.exonumia.com/books.htm

During every visit to Singapore, I stop in the Funan Stamp & Coin shop. The owner speaks VERY little English but we get along. His inventory includes lots of non-philatelic and non-numismatic items and he often has no idea where he placed an item. Many years ago, he gave me permission to start at some point in his small shop and just work my way around it looking at and opening up everything. Each year, he has less and less Southeast Asian items for me to purchase but every once in a while I get a goodie. One was a fairly modern minor Indonesian coin that was in a junkbox. When I told him it was worth much, much more than his junkbox price, his reply in pigeon English was "Do you want to buy it or not?" I bought it. I also came across the Japanese Occupation of Malaya (Singapore) book, and another one by the same printer about matchbook covers of the same era. I have no idea why I bought the latter book but it must have looked interesting to me at the time. How many people collect or even want to know about WWII era matchbook covers from anywhere in the world, let alone Malaya and Singapore?

Nice issue as ever! Thanks for excerpting my Coin World article. One of my current theses is that people who simply look at grade and price of coins are enthusiastic buyers, but lacking any real interest in their romance, history, and tradition come and go quickly. It is not unusual for an “instant collector” to spend a lot of money, including on rarities, then quickly tire of the pursuit, or run out of money, and put the items up for sale not long afterward. Because of this we have the same specimens of classic rarities appearing again and again in auctions. This is in sharp contrast to decades ago when rarities would disappear into collections and stay there for a long time!

This is one of the stored value cards you can buy at Half Price Books.