I have a few of my History of Central States softback books left to sell. I will sell them at $6.00 and include postage. My email address for orders is sunrayofmarion@aol.com .

I thought the readership might be interested in the 1796 cent sold on Wednesday 21st by Salisbury, Wiltshire (United Kingdom) auctioneers Woolley & Wallis. It was estimated at £500-700 and graded VF (which I thought understated its condition), and was unidentified as to variety. Only the obverse was shown in their online catalogue. I asked for an image of the reverse, and whilst not an expert on US coins, it appeared to me to be the rare Sheldon 96, which would explain the price realised.

The U.S. Mint struck a single example of the Frank Sinatra congressional gold medal; bronze examples of the were never struck, owning to a legal issue involving the source material for the design.

As Coin World reported in its April 20, 2009, in an article about a presentation by former Mint engraver-sculptor Thomas D. Rogers Sr.: “Rogers had worked on it [the Sinatra medal] for six months, and it went into production with a design based on photos provided by Sinatra’s daughter, Nancy. Just as the medal was ready to be released, the photographer of the source photo contacted the legal department of the U.S. Mint and asked for $15,000 in payment. Ultimately, neither the Sinatra family nor the U.S. Mint paid the fee and a single 3-inch medal was presented to the Sinatra family. No bronze medals were made for sale to the public as is traditional for congressional gold medals.”

I have information on the Macerated Currency bust of George Washington. I was a third partner in the transaction which occurred 5 to 10 years ago. Rich Rossa (semi retired at the time) found it on the bourse floor of a Baltimore coin show. He brought it to the table Steve Tanenbaum and I were sharing and the three of us decided to purchase it jointly. I believe Dave Bowers photographed the piece shortly after its purchase for a then upcoming book, likely on George Washington quarters. I don't remember if it made the book or not. I do remember, however, the troubles with shipment that Alan mentioned.

Steve had it tentatively sold to Bert Cohn and was greatly worried about shipping and insurance. Steve, a very skilled packer in his own right, ultimately decided to take it to a shipping/packaging company and letting them do the packaging, reasoning if the worst happened we would have the best chance at an insurance claim.

Nearly the worst happened and the bust arrived with George's face flattened. The company that did the packing promptly refused the insurance claim. Their reasoning... anything that broke after their careful and professional packaging must have been too fragile to ship in the first place. I remember Steve making additional claims, getting appraisals, repair estimates, theoretical appraisal of a potentially repaired item etc.. He meet with the type of stonewalling you fear from a government agency or large corporation.

At one point I suggested taking our lumps and accepting whatever Bert thought it was worth "as is" and letting him arrange for its repair. As far as I know this remained an open issue at the time of Steve's tragic death though the original transactions were years earlier. To the best of my knowledge the bust is still damaged and likely in the estate of Bert Cohn.

Two dozen original works of art by coin and medal artist Joel Iskowitz are going up for auction this week. The auction, conducted by Tangible Investments, contains portraits of celebrities, political figures, entertainers, and, of numismatic interest, a portrait of Victor David Brenner. The sale closes February 2nd.

Is there a U. S. source for the two current “Photographic” coins shown in last week's E-Sylum issue?

• Bulgaria 10 leva 2015.
• Hungary 2000 forint, 2014 Rectangular.

Thanks for thoughts,
Nick

Nicholas M. Graver
nmgraver@gmail.com