I live in Mansfield, Ohio and I wanted to inform you that Mr. Walter has passed away. His obit mentions Operation Bernhard, so I researched it. I read your article mentioning yourself and a friend coming to meet him.

I didn't know him or anything about the above subject, but I liked your article so much I thought I'd let you know. I think it's important to share stories such as these. I pray to God that we never, ever experience anything like the Holocaust again. May Mr. Walter finally rest in peace.

The April 1 issue of The E-Sylum reported on the death of Ray Lockwood on March 29, 2018. He was a friend I knew through the Central States Numismatic Society. He collected conventional things like encased coins. I also remember him for his collection of clocks with coins on the clock face.

The May issue of The Numismatist has a memorial for Walter R. Lockwood, Jr. of Marion, Indiana. His funeral notice confirms that this is the man we all knew as "Ray."

I did a search of back issues of The Numismatist. He was most frequently mentioned as Ray Lockwood and less frequently as W. Ray Lockwood. I could not find a single reference in The Numismatist to him as Walter R. Lockwood, Jr., until his death.

Last Tuesday my wife Barbara and I traveled from Mannheim to Essen on the ICE train, and when we arrived, found that my wife's purse had been removed from her backpack somewhere en route. In it were all the usual things which will be a pain in the neck to replace, but there was also a gold bracelet we had just purchased. Thankfully our passports and my credit cards were not in it, but the bracelet is unique.

It consists of six Byzantine solidi from Justinian to Heraclitus and one holed late Constantinian. The clasp is an ancient black intaglio seal of Zeus and his Eagle.

The coins are typical Byzantine Solidi, one with 3 standing figures, one with obverse about 30% off center, and a couple of Facing Armoured bust type. The seal is black, about 1 1/4" encased in gold, Crowned Zeus in top half, Eagle in bottom half.

My friend who gifted it to us told us these jewelry pieces are now very rare as most have been broken and melted. This one is about 100 years old and made of genuine pieces.

The police were notified immediately and detailed descriptions taken...Nothing to do but wait. If the robbers were smart, they would have melted it immediately, but if they weren't, and one decided to sell it, maybe it will appear in the trade.

This was the work of professionals...they were fast, quiet and efficient, and probably worked as a team. This was our first theft in 25 years of train travel, and we were careful...but not enough. Thankfully we visited with friends who let us vent and helped us calm down.

As a side note, we were near Koblenz for the EUCOPRIMO ( European Collectors of Primitive Money) conference....Which was Fantastic!

You recently published an article from Bangladesh numismatist about variation in Queen Victoria coins. Similar, if not the same, is also reported by a Mumbai numismatists.

The memory of the foreign involvement in the Taiping war lasted long after the fall of the Taiping capital at Nanjing in 1864. The events were commemorated by various actors, Chinese and foreign, from the end of the war until the end of the treaty-port century in 1943 when the right to extraterritoriality was abrogated. This article explores the commemorations of the foreign role through three media: the issuing of medals to foreign fighters, the building of memorials to the foreign dead, and the writing of histories of the events. Across these media, different interest groups used the foreign interventions as a proxy for continuing debates about the role of foreigners in China and about China's place in the world. More broadly, the commemorations of the role of foreign fighters in the Taiping war is a case study in the transnational politics of memory.

The blender test for verifying the authenticity of the dollar bill is interesting, but since it destroys the bill in the process, not very practical.