John Lupia should be pleased to know his copy of C.W. Franklin's "Numismatic Blue Book" is not the only one. I have a copy that I got from an August 31, 1996 Money Tree sale. It has a stamp on the inside cover page of "Aug 19 1907, The Ohio National Bank, Columbus, Ohio, L.F. Kiesewetter, Cahsier." Nice to see it was actually used by a Bank in its day.

Regarding the subject of numismatic book jackets, I always store mine separately inside boxes. I know that they'll get shredded with the frequent use many of my books receive. Though the books may become worn, they'll look all dressed up when the time comes to sell my library, as the dust jackets will remain Near Mint.

This practice has backfired on me a few times, as I sometimes sell older editions of books no longer needed and forget that I have their dust jackets tucked away. A few years ago I took an inventory and found about half a dozen for which I no longer owned the books. I listed these as a single lot on eBay, but it took a long time for them to sell. They were mostly for hardbound auction catalogs, and I'd simply forgotten that these had been issued with dust jackets when I consigned the catalogs to one of our book dealer friends.

The Good Samaritan Shilling is not the only "coin" to be delisted from the Redbook. The "Blake & Co. $20" associated with John Ford has gone down the memory hole, along with other questionable Western items associated with him.

Back in 1974 while I was working at Coin World, I saw a letter addressed by Mr. Ford to the Editor of the Numismatic Scrapbook Magazine. In the letter Mr. Ford assured the Editor that various items listed in the Redbook in the 1960's had been removed from the Redbook "due to lack of space." Mr. Bressett assures me that this was not the case.

A fascinating article would be what numismatic treasures were incinerated when the Twin Towers collapsed. Have you ever seen anything reported about that? I'm sure there must have been "oodles" of bullion and gemstones too

The coin showing the Queen on horseback is a South Georgia & South Sandwich Islands £2. It is one of a series of crown-sized coins produced by Pobjoy Mint for the Queen's 90th birthday. All depict major events in Her Majesty's life. The SGSSI £2 coin shows the Queens very first ‘Trooping the Colour' ceremony in 1952 - when she was 26 years old and in the first year of her reign.

At 90 the Queen still rides and still does so without a helmet as she has done all her life. She had her first riding lesson at age 3 and was given her first pony, a Shetland mare, by grandfather King George V when she turned 4. The coin shows her riding side-saddle - as was required by a woman. As a top rider she loathes doing so. Most of her family are serious riders. It is part and parcel of being a British royal. Her daughter of course has ridden in the Olympics.

The Major Eras of Numismatic Research item brought back many OLD memories for me.

A couple of weeks after a briefing at SOG Studies & Operations Group headquarters (it was a weak cover name for Special Operations Group) in late July 1970 in Saigon, I suddenly received orders to an intelligence unit in Germany.

I arrived in Heidelberg in August 1970 and was surprised to see some Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC) taking over part of the computer room for an IBM 360-50. What was it doing here? As the new Operations NCOIC, I should know about everything in my area of responsibilities, so I walked up to the senior operator on duty and asked him to explain what was going on.

It turned out to be an ARPANET test site. ARPANET was the organization which invented what became the Internet and it was there to test the sending of our intelligence through their system. Could anyone "see" what was being sent? I sat down at the console and the senior operator taught me how to operate it, and he assigned me what became later, an "email" address. He told me of a mutual friend back in the USA in one of the major intelligence agencies! So I sent my first "email" to this friend in August 1970.

We only used dummy information in the tests. Anyone and everyone with the capability of tapping into our signal could read everything because those were the days before encryption for this new type of communications. So we ended the test; the equipment was returned to ARPANET; and we went back to using couriers to get bulk intelligence back to the intelligence agencies back in the USA.

I remember back in the 1980s and 1990s, I would receive surveys asking me when I first used the Internet, when I sent my first email, etc., etc. When I replied that it was in August 1970, they would contact me and tell me that I had incorrectly typed in the wrong year. I would explain the above to them and they would then accept it, but my entry was never used because the published results was always many years after my date!

Now I correspond via emails with almost 1,200 different numismatists and those in related fields worldwide, and over 800 more via Facebook! The world has really changed!!!