These are likely, I believe, to be the set of photographic reproductions separately issued by the Zenith Trading Company, aka Al Hoch, to complement the firm’s offset reprint of the Browning work, which also featured a reproduction of the Haseltine “Type Table” sale quarter dollar section.

I just wanted to say that I just finished reading the new Asylum. It was interesting reading all the opinions on the future of our hobby. I found it refreshing that you included an article with somewhat negative views of the NBS and what it is doing to promote the growth of the hobby. So many publications would have allowed that submission to get lost somewhere...oops. I for one can't see myself without books in my life. I am one of the people that uses the internet to find the resource they need and then buys the hard copy. Sometimes an actual copy is either not available or just out of my budget.

Warden and then Master of the Royal Mint 1696-1727, Sir Isaac Newton. The old boy was quite interested in the occult sciences. Cheers!

For about a month now, I have been doing a lot of research into Young Numismatist organizations, specifically the YNA. I have actually learned quite a lot, and I have recently been talking to previous members (specifically Greg Lyon and John Krajelvich). Then recently I was looking around coinbooks.org, and I saw that in 1992 a person by the name of Benjamin Phillips did an exhibit called The Evolution of YN Digest (which was the YNA magazine). I was just wondering whether anyone took pictures and/or somehow recorded what was in that exhibit. Or, if not, I was wondering whether anyone had any more information about the YNA.

Your work editing The E-Sylum is appreciated. I look forward to it every Monday morning. Beats the New York Times and Washington Post. Ok, almost....

If it were not for your publication I would lose touch with banknotes. It was a week or two ago that you had a short piece on a new book on polymer banknotes. I thought I might like to purchase it. At first I read the price as $200 US, but it's 25 Euros. That is reasonable.

I.m sorry to hear about the passing of Al Zaika. For the better part of 25 years Al was a regular bidder in our Mail Bid sales and buyer from our Fixed Price lists. I remember him as a pleasant man and willing to share his knowledge whether that meant correcting an attribution or helping me attribute a NJ item. Mostly exonumia and paper ephemera.

His last purchase from us was in mid-2006 and than over the next few years we ended up buying almost 200 medals and tokens from him including a nice collection of railroad medals and tokens. I don't believe that I knew that he used to work for railroads. My last notation about him, was "Took off mailing list at his request. Can't see". My Dad stopped collecting for the same reason. Unfortunately he kept driving until my brother took the battery out of his car.

Steve Bishop is quite right if we are talking apples and apples but I was talking about the numismatic fruit salad of centuries of struggle to have intrinsic metal value have a close relation to face value. The huge copper Russian coins he speaks of sound amazing.

My skinny groat of the 1450s or so was minted a century before the astounding quantities of silver began coming out of Peru and Mexico in either endless 70-pound ingots or millions of 8 real cobs which created the ‘Spanish dollar,’ the Thalers, then dollars and led to thick silver coins around the world. The days of thin silver were over. And yes, that is a 5 Kopek clunker. Thanks, Steve. Wishing you all the best – through thick and thin…

I'm a little late in chiming in on Julia's Victorian half pennies in iron mounts. I just wanted to mention I have a couple of Victorian pennies that are set in the base of bowls -- perhaps the iron casing was there to not damage the coin much when it was set in (if it was being welded in or something the copper would have melted at a lower temperature than iron would have, and the iron may have protected it from that fate).

I found a place to move to. I've already scheduled the first meeting of the Coinjock Coin Club. I'm feeling reinvigorated.

I got a little follow up from Alan Stullenbarger of CoinZip.com He told me Coinjock is Native American meaning "place of the blueberry swamp" I'm not sure how that would tie into numismatics unless you like "dye" varieties.