The dust jacket illustrated for your copy of Fractional Money looked strangely familiar to me, and I knew exactly where I'd seen something very similar. Attached is an image of a coin album from my new book on the Library of Coins. This title was produced only for the Second Edition of these albums. It's basically a stock book that has openings for six sizes of coins without printing, and it comes in both the color illustrated and in vivid scarlet. Both varieties are rare and evidently enjoyed just a single printing before being dropped from the line.

By the way, my book will be shipping to those who pre-ordered shortly.

On the topic of early email experiences, I was introduced to this new thing around 1990, while I was still employed with Pacific Gas & Electric Company in San Francisco. All of us were told in a memo that we now had something called electronic mail, and this would replace printed memos. After checking my "in box" for a week or two I came to realize that absolutely none of the messages had anything to do with my job, and none were addressed to me specifically. Therefore, I stopped checking them at all.

Several months later I received a printed memo from Personnel that my box was full and requesting that I act immediately to correct the situation. I decided to skim through some of the more recent messages and discovered that nothing had changed, so I simply got into the habit of deleting all messages once a month without ever reading them. Management was satisfied, and I never heard another complaint in my four remaining years there.

The indomitable Grover Criswell, a man of many numismatic talents and as keen sense of humor, was on a tedious flight from the East coast to the West coast. In need of a libation to shorten the trip, he asked the flight attendant for a stout spirit drink. To pay, he pulled out a half-sheet of $2 bills, and cut one out to pay for the drink.

The flight attendant notified the captain, who called ahead to Los Angeles, the flight's destination. Grover was met by the police and Secret Service when he exited the plane. It took Grover a bit of time, probably in an inconspicuous and dungeon-type room at the airport, to explain he wasn't a counterfeiter, but, rather, THE preeminent, worldwide numismatic scholar and coin dealer--as only Grover could. May Grover rest in peace and the stories of his life brighten any numismatic conversation.

Your readers surely know of Star Wars Day (May the Fourth…) The Ireland 2008 Skellig Michael 10 euro coin ties in nicely because it is the filming location for the final scene of Episode VII The Force Awakens.

Regarding the Spanish hoard recently uncovered maybe someone should send images to the discussions currently being hashed out in the US State Department regarding the MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) with Italy which will ban import of "scarce" Roman coins into the US. It is interesting to note that they could still be bought and sold in the EU. Crazy stuff!

It might sway some opinions. I know many of us have participated in the work done by Wayne Sayles and the Ancient Coin Collectors Guild to stop doing the bidding of the archaeology community in the US. These coins are not rare as they circulated in the entire known world. To quote Carl Sagan, there are "billions and billions."