I have laughed out loud at least three times while enjoying John Kleeberg’s piece about Ted Buttrey’s joust with John J. Ford. What a mighty fine tail-twister and tale-spinner.

What great reading! Thanks for publishing.

I have received a number of emails from people interested in my book after reading The E-Sylum.

I have been reading the many comments on Wayte Raymond’s display system, especially with regard to the handwriting found on what were originally described as coin blocks. The April 1938 issue of The Coin Collector’s Journal (volume 5 Number 1) has a fairly extensive section on the various display cases available, and includes both instructions on lettering the blocks and sample alphabets. The examples shown in the latest E-Sylum have some similarities, but are not quite identical to the sample alphabets provided.

I have tried to make copper blanks for tokens, but when I anneal them, they get very dark, as expected. The problem is that I can't bring them back to a nice bright copper color. A local jeweler used Sparex, an acid bath to quench, but I was wondering if there was another way.

When I saw the story about the 13 Gold coins each of 8 grams, I got interested since I remembered that those Gajapathi Pagoga weigh 3.7 grams, and it was interesting if older specimens were 8 grams. So I tracked the original 2013 story and found that they were 4 grams and only 8 found as shown in the image were discovered.

Also see the Pagoda and the much smaller Fanam, which at 5.8 mm and 0.39 grams is the smallest gold coin I know about.

Just a thought, but do doctors leave medical magazines in coin shops?