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About Us The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit association devoted to the study and enjoyment of numismatic literature. For more information please see our web site at coinbooks.org Subscriptions Those wishing to become new E-Sylum subscribers (or wishing to Unsubscribe) can go to the following web page link Membership There is a membership application available on the web site Membership Application To join, print the application and return it with your check to the address printed on the application. Print/Digital membership is $40 to addresses in the U.S., and $60 elsewhere. A digital-only membership is available for $25. For those without web access, write to: Jeff Dickerson, Treasurer Numismatic Bibliomania Society P. O. Box 578, Weatherford, TX 76086 Asylum For Asylum mailing address changes and other membership questions, contact Jeff at this email address: treasurer@coinbooks.org Submissions To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor at this address: whomren@gmail.com BUY THE BOOK BEFORE THE COIN Sale Calendar Watch here for updates!

 

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 JANUARY 26, 2025

New subscribers this week include: Blaine Morin from Sanford, Maine, and Eric Brothers. Welcome aboard! We now have 7,255 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 a new podcast episode, two new books, two club newsletters, updates from the Newman Numismatic Portal, a phishing warning, and more.

Other topics this week include glass trade beads in California, medal designer Eugene Daub, reduction punches, the first ANA President, Gerry Fortin, Jim Halperin, an auction preview, coin hoards, collectible counterfeits, a Dickin medal, and Wyoming National Banknotes.

To learn more about Postal Orders used in India, the International Primitive Money Society, ANS Curator Howland Wood, puddles of fire-melted coins, the woman so weighted down with coins that she could barely move, William Jerrems, Jr., the Numismatic Certification Institute (NCI), Presidential documents appointing Carson City Mint officials, a Roman coin counterfeiter's coin molds, zincers, the 1793 Manchester Promissory Halfpenny, the United East India Company, and the National Medal of Science, read on. Have a great week, everyone!

Wayne Homren
Editor, The E-Sylum

 

NBS BIBLIOTALK PODCAST WITH ERIC BROTHERS

NBS Podcast Interviews Numismatic Author Eric Brothers

Our latest episode features an interview with Eric Brothers, a prolific numismatic author. Eric discusses his journey into numismatics, starting with a childhood fascination with coins, which he revisited years later by joining a coin club in Florida. He highlights his extensive work as a numismatic writer, with contributions to multiple publications like The Numismatist, Financial History, and Fun Topics. Eric emphasizes his storytelling approach in numismatic writing, inspired by his broader literary interests and past experiences in counterculture journalism and historical research.

Eric further delves into his methodology, explaining how he integrates economic, political, and historical contexts into numismatic topics, avoiding narrowly focused accounts. He discusses several key resources and books that influenced his writing, spanning numismatic, economic, and artistic studies. Additionally, he touches on his work documenting the anti-fascist resistance in Berlin during WWII, a project that took decades to complete. Eric's advice to aspiring writers includes reading classic literature like The Great Gatsby to learn effective storytelling, demonstrating that great numismatic writing goes beyond just coins, encompassing art, history, and human narratives.

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NEW BOOK: GLASS TRADE BEADS IN CALIFORNIA

Glass Trade Beads in California
£ 38.00

Authors: Clement W. Meighan and Elliot H. Blair
Publication Year: 2024
Language: English
ISBN: 9781407362038
Paperback: 107 pages, Illustrated throughout in black & white, and color.

Description
In 1949 Clement Meighan began compiling a type collection of glass trade beads in California at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley--his monograph documenting this collection was never published. This volume is an updated and annotated version of Meighan's original manuscript, including a complete reanalysis of the entire type collection. Updated to be consistent with contemporary scholarly standards for bead analysis, this volume documents and describes the global circulation of glass trade beads into California, from early contact through the early 20th century. Documenting more than 400 glass bead varieties, this is the only treatment of archaeologically recovered glass trade beads in California with substantial regional and temporal breadth. This volume is an essential resource for historical archaeologists interested in the global bead trade from ca. AD 1600-1900.

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NEW BOOK: CATALOG OF INDIA POSTAL ORDERS

Introduction

On January 1st 1881 Great Britain became the first country in the world to issue Postal Orders. Ten different denominations were issued.

Indian Postal Notes were introduced on 1st January 1883 and withdrawn on 31st October 1886.

Indian Postal Orders were introduced on 1st April 1935.

Postal Order is an order for payment of a specified sum to a named payee, issued by the Post Office very similar to a bank cheque.

Postal Orders provide a convenient means of transmitting small sums of money by post.

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EUGENE DAUB BOOK UPDATE

Adolfo Nodal writes:

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JANUARY 2025 IPMS NEWSLETTER

IPMS Secretary Bob Leonard writes:

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ORIENTAL NUMISMATIC SOCIETY WINTER 2024

Journal of the Oriental Numismatic Society
258 Winter 2024

CONTENTS

Editorial
Pankaj Tandon

Some rare and interesting Rajanya coins
Devendra Handa

Spears, javelins, sceptres, goads and clubs on ancient coinage: a comparative study
Sanjeev Kumar

Sasanian and Arab-Sasanian coins in the Four-Season Museum, Arak
Amir Zamani and Sina Abaslou

Coin types of Avantivarman, first king of the Utpala dynasty of Kashmir
Gul Rahim Khan

Nanakshahi coinage: symbols of religious tolerance
Jeevandeep Singh

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NNP ADDS HOWLAND WOOD CORRESPONDENCE

NNP Completes Scanning of Howland Wood Curator Correspondence

Howland Wood served as Curator of the American Numismatic Society from 1913 to 1938 and in that capacity sent and received thousands of letters, which have now been digitized under sponsorship of Newman Portal. This series consists of nearly 3,000 individual correspondent files, with scanning by Internet Archive associate Lara Jacobs launched in late 2023 and recently completed.

One of the final files is that of Mario Zucchi (1872-1949) of the Royal Library in Turin, Italy. In this correspondence, Wood requests plasters of ancient coins of Metapontum and later acknowledges receipt of the same. Today, the ANS holds thousands of plaster casts of Greek coins, but these are not catalogued in MANTIS. It is likely that the Zucchi copies remain in the collection.

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VIDEO: 1894 CALIFORNIA MIDWINTER EXPOSITION

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COIN CLUB PHISHING SCAM WARNING

The American Philatelic Society has received reports of an email-based info-gathering scam targeting stamp clubs and other philatelic societies. In the emails, an individual going by the name Pierre Champion claims that he was referred to the society by the APS because he is relocating to the United States from France. He requests that an application and an introduction to the club via the mail, and shares anecdotes about his collection and history with philately. Below is an example that was sent to us.

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2026 COIN DESIGN IDEAS

Instead of using Lincoln and Jefferson on the one and five cent coins, let''s try and be creative. Why not use the versions of the dime that will not be used-to create a new cent and a new nickel for 2026.

For the ONE CENT coin-a modified version of dime O-02 with Liberty straightened out.

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NOTES FROM E-SYLUM READERS: JANUARY 26, 2025

Elephants
John Byars Jr. writes:

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
HERITAGE: WINTER OBSOLETE CURRENCY SALE (https://www.coinbooks.org/v28/esylum_v28n03a21.html)

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WEDDING TOKEN OR BROTHEL TOKEN?

I was studying a hoard of Chinese amulets and then went to an old mining town for a day out. At the bookstore was an old book with tokens that I looked through and noted a token present that I was trying to figure out. The usual name is a Wedding token, thought to help the innocent husband know what to do after the marriage. The possibly wrong explanation of these being brothel tokens makes much more sense. And knowing how much the Chinese presence in the Old West was overlooked I think that the new idea backed by a book reference may be real.

Maybe too much for bibliophiles but neat for me. The one amulet is in the upper right of the plate. Others in the hoard are not presented.

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SPMC WEB UPGRADE DONATIONS SOUGHT

The Society of Paper Money Collectors strives to make available as much of its research and educational materials as it can to SPMC members and the general public alike. Unlike other organizations, the SPMC does not hide most of its resources behind a paywall. As a result, the SPMC website serves as the beating heart of our community, providing essential resources for all paper money collectors, beginners and experts alike.

To keep serving you and future generations of collectors, the time has come for SPMC to invest in a substantial upgrade of its website to ensure its functionality, security, and usability for years to come.

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VOCABULARY TERM: REDUCTION PUNCH

Reduction Punch. A patrix or hub cut on a die-engraving pantograph; it may contain all design and lettering, but more often was the device alone. The reduction punch was particularly used in diesinking at a time when early pantographs were adequate to cut portraits (or other devices) but were inadequate to cut lettering or detail particularly near the border of a coin or medal design. What the reduction punch accomplished then, was a marriage of early machine engraving with existing hand engraving – with the machine cutting the device and hand working the lettering by engraving or punches.

Reduction punches were first used early in the 19th century when fixed-cutter pantographs – notably those of Dupeyrat and Wohgemuth in France, those of the Soho Mint and the Royal Mint in England, and several others elsewhere – were capable of cutting an acceptable portrait. The device was modeled, cast in some hard metal for the pattern, then reduced by the pantograph cutting a hub the intended size needed.

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WILLIAM GEORGE JERREMS, JR. (1869-1945)

Last week I asked a Smarty-Pants question. What is the numismatic connection to Nicoll the Tailor? The answer may appear somewhere in this article.

I will begin the story with William G. Jerrems, Sr. He was born in 1843 in Gainsborough, England, and went to Australia with his parents in 1859. He was married at Gainsborough to Mary Adelaide Nicoll in 1867. She was the daughter of Alexander Nicoll, proprietor of “Nicoll the Tailor.” William sold his printing and publishing business in 1875 to move to America, then London, then New York in 1881 to work for his father-in-law. He died at French Lick, Indiana, on May 4, 1905.

In 1885, Alexander Nicoll retired from the firm of Nicoll the Tailor. He transferred ownership of the New York and eastern stores to his son Donald. He sold the western stores to his son-in-law, William G. Jerrems, Sr. The business became Wm. Jerrems & Sons with Nicoll the Tailor retained as a trade name.

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GERRY FORTIN INTERVIEW, PART FOUR

GERRY FORTIN: Something happened in my semiconductor career. I left Fairchild very frustrated and I ended up going to mainland China and working for a Chinese semiconductor company for six years. How about that?

GREG BENNICK: It's a twist I didn't anticipate. So that's really interesting.

GERRY FORTIN: That's what happened. In 2005, our CEO, who was very, very cost focused, he was not strategic at all, but just very cost focused. He decided that the organization I was running at that point, and I haven't talked about it, but starting in around 2000/2001, with the new Fairchild, I managed all worldwide contracted manufacturing. So, we had contractors throughout the world, you know, in Asia and in Europe, and I had an organization of 13 people, and we managed that part of the business. So, all the sourcing of chips made in those sub-cons, I had to ensure the quality, the yields, delivery, and so on and so forth. And all that flowed into our assembly sites to make our products.

I was doing that, and I was flying all over the world. So, I was in China frequently. I could tell you a whole bunch of stories offline, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and in Europe, it was working with the Dutch, working with the Germans. I had led a busy life, but still in the background, I was doing all this Liberty Seated stuff. So fast forward to 2005, the CEO said, “All right, you're spending way too much money. Your department is too expensive. Well, let's rebuild it in Singapore,” because we had a secondary headquarters in Singapore, and we had operations there. He says, “All right, I want you to move all your function there, including yourself, and hire your replacement.” That was no fun.

GREG BENNICK: That doesn't sound fun.

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JIM HALPERIN INTERVIEW

At just 11 years old, Jim Halperin had already found his calling, although he hadn''t realized it yet. Back in the early 1960s, the Boston native was a fledgling but eager comic book dealer and fanzine publisher. But by 1968, he had turned the page on comics and started dealing in stamps and coins instead. That teenage pivot turned into an early withdrawal from Harvard University and a full-time numismatic career.

Halperin launched New England Rare Coin Galleries in 1971 and 11 years later teamed up with his friend and former rival Steve Ivy to form Heritage Rare Coin Galleries and Heritage Numismatic Auctions. Over the next few years, Halperin started Numismatic Certification Institute (NCI), the first privately owned collectibles grading service; wrote a book called How to Grade U.S. Coins; became an early shareholder in Professional Coin Grading Service (PCGS) and Numismatic Guaranty Company (NGC); and earned a reputation as possibly the most successful American coin dealer of the 20th century.

But even though the numismatic world is where Halperin made his name, his career came full circle when Heritage launched its first Comics & Comic Art auction in 2001. Once again, Halperin was immersed in the collecting category that first captured his attention as a bright-eyed adolescent. Today, he still oversees Heritage''s Comics & Comic Art department, a cornerstone of Heritage Auctions'' worldwide success and explosive growth over the past two decades.

Below, Halperin looks back on Heritage''s early days, looks ahead to what might come next and explains how Mad magazine helped shape generations.

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HOLABIRD DESERT RICHES AUCTION

Offered will be over 2,100 lots in categories that include mining, gold, numismatics, scripophily, Native Americana, railroadiana, philatelic and Americana. Day 4 will be a timed-only session.

Holabird Western Americana Collections, LLC will burst onto the scene in 2025 with a huge, four-day Desert Riches Auction, January 31st thru February 3rd, featuring over 2,100 lots in numerous collecting categories to include mining, gold, numismatics, scripophily, Native Americana, railroadiana, philatelic and general Americana, starting at 8am Pacific time each day.

The first three days – January 31st thru February 2nd – are live sessions, hosted in Holabird''s gallery located at 3555 Airway Drive in Reno; as well as online on all of their auction platforms (iCollector.com, LiveAuctioneers.com and Invaluable.com). The fourth day – Monday, February 3rd – is a timed-only session, hosted on iCollector.com and LiveAuctioneers.com only.

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WORCESTERSHIRE NERO-ERA ROMAN HOARD

A hoard of 1,368 coins, most of them silver, has been discovered in a pot by a metal detectorist in Worcestershire, a county in England.

The hoard was buried around A.D. 55, a time when the Roman Empire, led by emperor Nero (reign circa A.D. 54 to 68), was struggling to take control of England. His predecessor Claudius (reign A.D. 41 to 54) had invaded Britain and gained control of large amounts of England, but resistance continued into Nero's reign. In A.D. 60, a rebellion launched by Boudica, the queen of a British tribe known as the Iceni, nearly succeeded in driving the Romans from the island before the empire put the rebellion down.

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MOLDS FOR COUNTERFEITING ROMAN COINS

Archaeologists have uncovered a crime nearly 1,700 years after it was committed.

A dig has revealed a number of moulds which would have been used to create fake Roman coins – an offence that was punishable by crucifixion.

During a time of crisis in the Western Roman Empire of the 260s, hyper-inflation meant people had to resort to forging coins to keep up with the rising costs.

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MEDIEVAL COIN HOARD FOUND IN ISRAEL

Archaeologists have discovered a hoard of gold and silver coins by the remains of a centuries-old synagogue in Israel, near the Sea of Galilee.

The hoard of 364 coins, which was unearthed at the archaeological site of Huqoq (also spelled Yaquq), dates to the 15th century.

The team found the stash within two jugs under the collapsed wall of the synagogue. Most of the coins are from medieval Venice or the Mamluk sultanate, which controlled the region at the time. It's unclear why the jugs were filled with coins and left at the site, Robert Kool, a curator in the Israel Antiquities Authority's coin department, wrote in a paper published in the latest issue of the American Journal of Numismatics.

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EXPLOSION AND THEFT AT DRENTS MUSEUM

A major theft at the Drents Museum in Assen has resulted in the loss of valuable gold and silver artifacts from the Dacia – Rijk van Goud en Zilver (Dacia – Kingdom of Gold and Silver) exhibition, which was in its final weekend.

The robbery occurred early Saturday morning following an explosion at the museum. Among the items taken were three gold bracelets and the exhibition's centerpiece, the golden helmet of Cotofenesti, which had been featured in all promotional material. Additional objects may also have been stolen.

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COLLECTABLE COUNTERFEIT COINS, PART ONE

I was struggling with what to write about for our January's MintMaster then the idea of counterfeit coins came to mind. As we are, and should always be, on the lookout for counterfeit coins, it is my opinion that just about all significant collections very likely contain an undetected counterfeit coin. Especially with modern technology and techniques of manufacturing counterfeits are improving every year many very high quality fakes already exist. In fact it has been discussed if so-called “Perfect” counterfeits already exist. Most experts presently deny the existence of perfect counterfeits but if one were to exist how would they or anyone know.

This article is not about detecting counterfeits but instead I will discuss the collecting of counterfeits. You may ask, who in their right mind would actually collect counterfeit coins, or even pay good money for them? I started digging through my library and found a number of books not aimed at counterfeit detection but their identification and collectability. There are several such books and they are quite interesting with specific pictures and details of collectable counterfeits.

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ZINC VS. COPPER ELONGATED CENTS

Given a choice, elongated coin collectors prefer to roll on pre-1982 copper cents. If you''ve heard this and wondered, “why anyone would prefer a dirty old penny over a shiny new one?”, it''s because over 40 years ago, the U.S. Mint changed the cent from 95% copper to 99.2% zinc. When a zinc cent is rolled, its very thin copper coating flows and exposes the zinc core, leaving cracks and gray shadows. Exposed to water, cleaners, or even just air, the zinc corrodes. When the change in composition happened, a lot of private rollers and collectors didn''t know that zinc cents would eventually corrode and ruin their work and cherished elongateds. Although some private rollers treated the back of cents with a stain or shoe polish so the year of the coin would remain visible on the reverse after rolling, none treated the front of the coin. Unfortunately, the option to use our own carefully saved and cleaned copper cents is increasingly unavailable to us as vendors convert their machines to accept credit cards and preload them with zinc cents. So, even the most pro-copper of us need a solution. We all want to preserve our elongateds! Two of the this issue''s elongateds demonstrate the problem and one solution: an older uncoated elongated zinc cent and an older elongated zinc cent sprayed with a copper metallic finish to preserve the image.

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DOGE TAKES AIM AT THE PENNY

Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency is targeting one of the federal government's most notorious examples of waste: the penny.

Getting rid of the penny would be an early test of DOGE's influence: Could it help eliminate a piece of government inefficiency that has survived decades of reform attempts?

On Tuesday, DOGE's account on X highlighted the coin's mounting costs, writing that in fiscal year 2023, more than $179 million in taxpayer money was spent producing over 4.5 billion pennies, with each coin costing more than three cents to make. (According to the US Mint's 2023 report, pennies and nickels combined cost taxpayers nearly $179 million, while pennies alone cost them $86 million.)

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1793 MANCHESTER PROMISSORY HALFPENNY, PART ONE

In the late 18th century, shops lined the busy streets of Manchester, England, offering a wide range of goods. Among them were the haberdasheries, apothecaries, and grocers, - or spice merchants - who specialized in selling spices, sugar, honey, tea, coffee, and tobacco alongside drugs and medicinal products. Typically, these items were sold by weight in what was commonly referred to as a "grocery store." They prided themselves on their selection of coffee and tea and were known to keep a kettle in store to offer samples to potential customers. It's a tradition we still see today in modern markets. During the early industrial age, tea and exotic spices arrived in England from across the empire. Ironically, it was often easier to find these items in stores than it was to find the coins needed to purchase them.

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PIGEON TOMMY VC DICKIN MEDAL SALE

A military medal awarded to a Second World War racing pigeon from Dalton is set to be auctioned in Carlisle.

The Dickin Medal, considered the animal equivalent of the Victoria Cross, will be part of a two-day auction at Laidlaw Auctioneers and Valuers, where a variety of rare items will be up for sale.

The medal was awarded to a Cumbrian pigeon named Tommy VC, who undertook a perilous journey during the war.

A historic news article featuring the story about the Dalton pigeon Tommy's story started in the German-occupied Netherlands, where all homing pigeons were ordered to be killed, and their identity rings handed over to authorities.

However, two pigeons belonging to Dutchman Dick Drijver, who was working with the underground resistance movement, managed to survive.

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WALTER KOHN NATIONAL MEDAL OF SCIENCE

Prestigious National Medal of Science won by Walter Kohn, presented to the Nobel Prize winning scientist by President Ronald Reagan in 1988. Kohn rose to great heights in his life after being rescued as a child from the Nazis during World War II through the Kindertransport program. Kindertransport was established by the United Kingdom in 1938 immediately after the ''Night of Broken Glass'' pogrom in Germany, authorizing the safe passage of almost 10,000 children into the UK. The children were placed in homes throughout the British empire, with Kohn ultimately placed in a home in Canada after both his parents were killed in the Holocaust.

The National Medal of Science is one of the most prestigious scientific awards in the world and the highest scientific honor in the United States, bestowed by the President to individuals who have made significant contributions in the field of science. Kohn won this Medal as the architect of density functional theory (DFT), a computational quantum mechanical modeling system which has allowed scientists to understand the nuclear structure of microscopic matter. Though the underlying structure of NFT is complex, the actual equations are now commonplace among scientists, with countless practical results ranging from discovering trace impurities in chemicals to modeling planetary systems.

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MORE ON THE TRUMP INAUGURAL MEDAL

Jeff Kelley writes:

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WYOMING NATIONAL BANK NOTES

When coin collector and history teacher Randy Tucker first saw the $10 bill with “National Bank of Lusk” printed across it, he was convinced it was a fake.

“I did a little research,” he said. “It wasn't phony. I discovered that Lusk, a little tiny town with 1,800 people, was quite affluent.”

In the 1980s, when Tucker first saw this hometown note, there were still people around who remembered using the bills when they were kids. They confirmed that money printed with the names of Wyoming towns and signed by local bankers were real, legal tender.

“The Manville Bank, which is a little town west of Lusk, also printed money,” Tucker said, still amazed at the practice. “Other small towns like Meeteetse and Dubois did, too.”

According to the 1918 Bankers' Directory, the Bank of Lusk issued the $10 bill and was one of the oldest state banks in Wyoming. It had been established in 1886 with a capital stock of $50,000 and deposits of $300,000. In contrast, the Bank of Manville, organized in 1907, had a capital stock of $10,000.

The capital stock of each bank was important because the more money that a bank was able to send to the Federal Reserve, the more currency that could be printed with their names on it to issue to customers.

While these bills are still legal and can be spent for their face value, collectors pay big money — sometimes tens of thousands of dollars — for them.

Printing Money

In all, 51 Wyoming National Banks located in big cities like Cheyenne and small towns such as Basin issued currency under this system.

The Harford Coin Co. said that National Bank notes are one of the most complex and interesting areas of U.S. numismatics. Over a 70-year span, these Nationals, as they were called, were issued by more than 14,000 federally chartered banks, located throughout the U.S. and in U.S. Territories.

The bank names were featured prominently on the note face and included the names of their local towns and cities. As a result of this prominence of town names, Nationals earned the nickname hometown notes.

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ABOUT THIS ISSUE: JANUARY 26, 2025

Dawn posted on Facebook Saturday:

To read an earlier E-Sylum article on Pat McBride, see:
PAT MCBRIDE AKA BEN FRANKLIN (https://www.coinbooks.org/v24/esylum_v24n40a17.html)

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