Content presented in The E-Sylum is not necessarily researched or independently fact-checked, and views expressed do not necessarily represent those of the Numismatic Bibliomania Society.

WAYNE'S WORDS: THE E-SYLUM DECEMBER 13, 2020

New subscribers this week include: Darrell Luedtke courtesy John and Nancy Wilson; and Chris Steenerson. Welcome aboard! We now have 6,608 subscribers.

Thank you for reading The E-Sylum. If you enjoy it, please send me the email addresses of friends you think may enjoy it as well and I'll send them a subscription. Contact me at whomren@gmail.com anytime regarding your subscription, or questions, comments or suggestions about our content.

This week we open with three new books, two obituaries, updates from the Newman Numismatic Portal, and more.

Other topics this week include U.S. colonial coins, reeded edge half dollars, Gould patterns, the second Philadelphia Mint, the first coins of Israel, William S. Baker, Coin of the Year nominations, upcoming auction sales, the Royal Mint of Segovia, paper money depicting Jesus, the finder of Forrest Fenn's treasure, and two really, really big coins.

To learn more about U.S. Large Cent varieties, currency proofs, the National Silver Dollar Roundtable, Virginia Halfpence, openwork, the Half Noble of King Edward III, the Charles I gold Triple Unite, the coinage of Rhegium, Canaan silver, Tudor gold, the oldest psychiatric hospital in the world, the million pound note, the Giant Toonie, and Pistareen Mountain, read on. Have a great week, everyone!

Wayne Homren
Editor, The E-Sylum

NEW BOOK: LARGE CENT 1793-1814 VARIETY GUIDE

Some of you may recall that we offered a new Large cent variety attribution manual this past spring. Written by EAC member Robert Powers, and covering only 1793 to 1795 cents, it presented a very detailed attribution system that made a great deal of sense to me. Powers' system seemed familiar and comfortable since it used a general premise that I was taught 30+ years ago by my primary mentor in the Bust half dollar world, Dr. Michael Summers. Mike explained that I should learn to recognize Bust half dollar die marriages - especially the rare ones - as if they were familiar faces. The 20-odd copies we had of Powers' self-published book sold out in less than a week.

Now, Robert Powers is back with something way better. He's been using the pandemic to complete the work on his latest book, covering the entire Early Date cent series. We now have, "U.S. Large Cents 1793-1814, Variety Identification Guide" in stock and available. 274 pages that are packed with Powers' observations and ID keys, color photos throughout and printed in the USA. I am a big fan of this book, and highly recommend you get your copy soon. We have only 100 in stock.

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NEW BOOK: EXPLORING CURRENCY PLATE PROOFS

"Exploring The Certified Currency Plate Proofs" is a reference work indexing the National Bank Note plate proofs by state, bank charter, date period and denomination. The set of handbooks currently consists of 50,945 face and back proofs, divided into 333 volumes, in PDF format, with more coming soon to eventually total 400+ titles.

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BANKNOTE BOOK WEIHAIWEI CHAPTER PUBLISHED

Mark Irwin has added another chapter to his cataloging opus with this week's publication of the following: Weihaiwei (East and Southeast Asia)

This 7-page catalog covers notes issued by the Bank of Communications from 1914 to 1927, the Bank of China in 1918, and the National Industrial Bank of China in 1924.

To read the complete article, see:
Weihaiwei chapter of The Banknote Book is now available (https://banknotenews.com/?p=31635)

JEAN BELAUBRE (1931-2020)

Jean Belaubre, former curator of the Musée de la Monnaie, Paris, died on December 10, 2020. Designer and creator of the permanent museum dedicated to the history of French money, at the end of the 1980s, he was no less illustrated in many related fields. He participated in the heyday of the Club Français de la Médaille journal (1970s and 1980s), signing many articles devoted to remarkable coins and the work of medal engravers, which fueled his reflection.

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RICHARD L. HORST (1934-2020)

Richard L. Horst, 86, passed away November 10, 2020. He is survived by his wife, Joyce, four children, five grandchildren and a great grandchild. He was born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1934. He was a natural tinkerer and was involved with ham radios with his school friends. He put himself through the University of Minnesota by working at the local appliance repair shop and graduated in 1956 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering.

Richard was employed by Univac in St. Paul after graduation. He also served in the U.S. Army Reserve for seven years. He married Joyce Malmgren in 1957 and they celebrated their 63rd anniversary this year. In 1979, he moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado to work at Hewlett Packard (HP). After HP split into HP and Agilent Technologies, he moved to Agilent Technologies and retired from there in 1999.

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NNP ADDS KOENINGS' REEDED EDGE HALF NEWSLETTER

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VIDEO: NATIONAL SILVER DOLLAR ROUNDTABLE

Founding of National Silver Dollar Roundtable (NSDR).
VIDEO: 10:20. (June 1, 2016)

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VIDEOS: 2020 COLONIAL COIN EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS

The Long and Twisted Road to Virginia Halfpence
Dr. Roger Moore

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AUDIO: COIN WORLD PODCAST WITH ROGER BURDETTE

Part 1
Jeff and Chris discuss the record-breaking sale of the recently-discovered, third known Eid Mar aureus and interview Roger Burdette about his three-volume series The Renaissance of American Coinage.

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MORE COINS IN LUCITE: CHURCHILL, GOULD, KENNEDY

Bruce Perdue writes:

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NOTES FROM E-SYLUM READERS: DECEMBER 13, 2020

Castorland Jeton Obsessive Date

Chester Sullivan writes:

To read the earlier E-Sylum articles, see:
HELP SOUGHT FOR CENSUS OF CASTORLAND JETONS (https://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v18n16a15.html)
VOCABULARY TERM: OBSESSIVE DATE (https://www.coinbooks.org/v23/esylum_v23n48a16.html)
NOTES FROM E-SYLUM READERS: DECEMBER 6, 2020 : Frozen Dates (https://www.coinbooks.org/v23/esylum_v23n49a13.html)

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QUERY: SECOND PHILADELPHIA MINT IMAGE ORIGIN

I was amused by two images that I recently found in the archives of the Library Company of Philadelphia. Readers of The E-Sylum should recognize the building on the left as the Second Philadelphia Mint. It was located at the northwest corner of Chestnut and Juniper with South Penn Square on the north. It was about a half-block east of Broad Street.

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QUERY: THE FIRST COINS OF ISRAEL

These coins were the first ones minted by the State of Israel in 1948. They were mostly (perhaps exclusively) minted in the town of Holon, shortly after Israel's Independence Day on May 14, 1948. There are a number of different versions to this story, but I have gleaned some basics in my research. When the British withdrew their mandate, they took with them much of the circulating coinage, which were primarily Palestine prutas & mils. This left the fledgling State of Israel in a precarious situation financially, as well as militarily.

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VOCABULARY TERM: OPENWORK

Openwork. A pierced coin or medal, with an opening made as part of its artistic design, or cut out at a later time. Coins are found with square or round holes in the center, with little other openwork design. Openwork medals are somewhat more artistic in that the open area is usually not in the center but appears elsewhere in the design, as part of the artistic expression. All openwork is cut entirely through the item forming the most severe treatment and allowing showthrough with a view of any thing placed behind it.

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WILLIAM SPOHN BAKER (1824-1897)

Baker, William Spohn (1824-1897), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Author of Medallic Portraits of Washington.

Baker was a Conveyancer, Collector of Art, Prints, Medals and Rare Books, Archaeologist, Author, Educator, Antiquarian, and Banker.

He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 17 April, 1824, son of George Nice Baker (1788-1859), and Ann Keyser (1792-1867), "was a great-great-granddaughter of Dirk Keyser, who settled in Germantown in 1688. His great-grandfather, Michael Baker, who became a resident of this city in 1740, and his grand-father, Michael Baker, Jr., served during our war for independence, the former as a private and the latter as a lieutenant in the artillery battalion commanded by Colonel Jehu Eyre. His great-grandfather, Captain George Nice, also commanded a company of the Second Battalion Philadelphia Artillery Militia."

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2021 COIN OF THE YEAR NOMINATIONS

A pandemic won't stop COTY.

The nomination process for the 2021 Coin of the Year awards looked a bit different this year, but the program is well under way despite travel and gathering restrictions due to COVID-19. One-hundred nominees – 10 coins in each of 10 award categories – emerged after the Nominating Committee met virtually Nov. 3, 2020, to consider 400 coin nominees curated by more than 45 issuing entities from around the world.

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THE NEW YORK SALE AUCTION LIII

The coins in this catalogue are offered for sale on Thursday 14th January 2021 and will be sold from the Los Angeles offices of New York Sale partner Ira and Larry Goldberg (due to the cancellation of the 2021 New York International Coin Convention).

The sale's two main core groups are a collection of European silver Talers, and a collection of British coins which incorporates the Anglo-Saxon and hammered portion of the William Oldknow Collection; whose main Ancient coin collection is featured in the Ancient coin sale being held by the group two days earlier.

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CLASSICAL NUMISMATIC GROUP TRITON XXIV SALE

Classical Numismatic Group, LLC is proud to present Triton XXIV, a Live Online Sale closing Tuesday & Wednesday, 19-20 January 2021, from our Lancaster, Pennsylvania office. This sale offers 1461 lots with a presale estimate of $6.5 million.

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CANAAN BRONZE AGE SILVER DEBASEMENT

A shortage of silver caused by the collapse of leading Bronze Age civilizations around the eastern Mediterranean about 1200 B.C. resulted in the original "dirty money" — several hundreds of years before coins had been invented.

The ancient counterfeiting was revealed by archaeologist Tzilla Eshel, then a doctoral student at the University of Haifa, who studied the chemical composition of 35 buried hoards of Bronze Age silver found at archaeological sites around Israel.

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THE COINAGE OF RHEGIUM

FOR CENTURIES, THE narrow Strait of Messina that separates Sicily from the toe of Italy has been a crossroads of history.

The town of Rhegium (or Rhegion, today Reggio di Calabria) located on the Italian side of the Strait, was one of the first Greek cities in Italy, founded by colonists from Chalcis in the eighth century BCE. Cities of this region competed vigorously during the fifth and fourth centuries BCE to create coins of enduring classical beauty, and the silver tetradrachms of Rhegium stand as some of the finest – and most highly valued – products of the ancient engraver's art.

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READING ROMAN COINS

ANCIENT ROMANS WERE practical-minded people; they didn't like wasted effort. Every letter on an ancient Roman coin die was painstakingly engraved by hand, so inscriptions on Roman coins are often heavily abbreviated. Generations of classical scholars have toiled to unravel the meaning of these cryptic abbreviations, so we can usually understand what the coins are trying to tell us.

Still, modern collectors are accustomed to a lot of specific information on a coin: the name of the country or issuing authority, the coin's denomination, the date of issue, the mintmark, and perhaps a motto (such as E PLURIBUS UNUM – "out of many, one" – on American coins).

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BACKYARD TUDOR GOLD COIN HOARD FIND

An important hoard of Tudor coins – some of which shine light on the marriage history of Henry VIII – has been found by a somewhat startled family weeding their garden.

The British Museum revealed details on Wednesday of discoveries registered to its Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS), the majority of which are made by the nation's army of metal-detecting enthusiasts.

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THE COINING HOUSE OF SEGOVIA

The Segovia Mint

UNTIL THE MID-16TH-CENTURY, EUROPE'S MINTING techniques had not progressed from ancient Greek coinage, which was struck by hand using dies and a hammer. Eventually, this method became ineffective as a large amount of bullion was imported from across the world and the mints had trouble keeping up.

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LOUIS ELIASBERG'S BARBER HALF DOLLARS, PART II

1900-1909
This is the second installment of a three-part series where I identify many of the Barber Half Dollars that were sold in 1997 as part of the Louis Eliasberg, Sr. collection. This installment will look at the dates from 1900 to 1909 and provide updated provenances for as many of the coins as possible. Several of these coins will be coming up for sale as part of the Larry Miller collection by Stack's/Bowers on December 17, 2020. Mr. Miller was in attendance at the April 1997 sale of the Eliasberg Barber Half Dollars conducted by Bowers & Merena, where he purchased quite a few of the coins and placed them in his collection. This cache of Barber Half Dollars from the Eliasberg/Miller collection allowed me to fill in enough holes so that the listing of Eliasberg provenances for this series is almost complete.

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ADVENT COINS: ON THE ROAD TO BETHLEHEM

On the Road to Bethlehem

This week we are on the way to Bethlehem. Bethlehem is where the young couple travelled to because the Emperor had made a ruling that everyone had to go to their home town for a census. It was probably a government ruse to raise more taxes. We have got used to obeying government decrees this year and like the good citizen he was, Joseph, went there, knowing that it would be busy at Christmas time.

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PAPER MONEY DEPICTING JESUS

The decorations, music, gatherings, and television let us know that it is the Christmas season. However, do these items emphasis the real "Reason for the Season?" Likewise, many consider the fact that US money states "In God we Trust," to be inspirational since it shows that the US is based on faith. Do other countries depict Christian faith? To answer this question, I performed much research and found the answer to be a resounding "Yes." This led me to write the book Paper Money Messages – Vol 3 (Christianity).

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BANK OF ENGLAND FATHER CHRISTMAS £5 POSTCARD

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MOVIE REVIEW: THE MILLION POUND NOTE

What 'currency' does a 'banknote' have? The question itself might sound utterly senseless and absurd. However, it is this supposition that becomes the premise for a wager that one may say is something of 'financial philosophy' between the wealthy and eccentric Montpelier brothers in London that sets off the events that form the comedic and somewhat exciting 'The Million Pound Note'. A work of British cinema from 1954 with Hollywood screen legend Gregory Peck in the lead role as the penniless American seaman Henry Adams, this film directed by Ronald Neame is based on the short story The Million Pound Bank Note by Mark Twain.

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U.S. POST-WWII GERMANY BARTER UNIT CERTIFICATES

Lexicon: Barter Units

At the instigation of the US occupation zone in Germany, so-called barter stores were opened in 1946 based on the pattern of the previously existing exchange ring stores, initially only in Berlin, then also in Frankfurt am Main. Items that were made available by American soldiers and essential for the German population were exchanged for expendable items.

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BEP CHOOSES ARCHITECTS FOR NEW FACILITY

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) has announced that it has been chosen to design, master plan, and engineer a new currency production facility operated by the United States Department of Treasury's Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP). With the formal announcement, the firm will now join a joint venture, the Capital Currency Team (CCT), that also includes industrial engineer Ghafari Associates and MEP engineer Huitt-Zollars and is administered by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Baltimore District.

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FORREST FENN FORTUNE FINDER FOUND

A decade ago, Fenn hid his treasure chest, containing gold and other valuables estimated to be worth at least a million dollars, somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. Not long after, he published a memoir called The Thrill of the Chase, which included a mysterious 24-line poem that, if solved, would lead searchers to the treasure. Fenn had suggested that the loot was secreted away at the place where he had envisioned lying down to die, back when he'd believed a 1988 cancer diagnosis was terminal. Since the hunt began in 2010, many thousands of searchers had gone out in pursuit—at least five of them losing their lives in the process—and the chase became an international story.

So many people had invested and sacrificed so much in pursuit of Fenn's treasure that it was possible the finder would face threats, be they legal or physical, from people who resented them or wished them ill.

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UZBEKISTAN'S MINI GOLD BARS

Since November 2020, the central bank of Uzbekistan (CBU) issues sealed gold bars with a QR-code for real time verification. With these new bars CBU aims to stimulate gold to be used as a store of value, as well as promote the circulation of gold.

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CASH, COINS AND COVID SEMINAR

MDC Webinar: CASH, COINS AND COVID – THE PERFECT STORM

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, coin circulation faced challenges. Although coins are a payment instrument in their own right, they are, of course, only one part of the cash cycle. Any consideration of the impact of COVID on coins starts with the wider payment scene to provide the full picture.

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LOOSE CHANGE: DECEMBER 13, 2020

Book Review: Ancient Coins in Early American Auctions

To read the complete article, see:
A Contribution to Provenance Research (https://coinsweekly.com/a-contribution-to-provenance-research/)

To read the earlier E-Sylum articles, see:
NEW BOOK: ANCIENT COINS IN EARLY AMERICAN AUCTIONS (https://www.coinbooks.org/v23/
esylum_v23n38a02.html)
REVIEW: ANCIENT COINS IN EARLY AMERICAN AUCTIONS (https://www.coinbooks.org/v23/
esylum_v23n42a06.html)

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BIG COIN: THE GIANT TOONIE

WHEN DRIVING NEAR THE CANADIAN town of Campbellford, visitors may miss this 27-foot tall statue of the iconic silver and gold two dollar coin. The trees that surround the monument tend to obscure it from public view.

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BIG COIN: THE BIATEC MONUMENT

Biatec Monument

IT'S UNCLEAR WHO BIATEC WAS. The name appears on the coins that circulated among the Celtic tribe of the Boii, minted in what is present-day Bratislava around 60-40 B.C. These rare ancient coins are also referred to as Biatec (or Biatex) by modern scholars. Although this has not been confirmed, it was likely the name of the leader of the tribe.

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FEATURED WEB SITE: WAR WORK TOKENS

This week's Featured Web Site is Mark Smith's War Work Tokens: The Tokens, Checks & Passes of the British Munitions, Ordnance & Military Supply Industries.

https://war-work.com/