I read with profound sorrow of the passing of Richard Margolis. I knew him reasonably well, going back to my years with Coin World and the lamented World Coins Magazine. I admired the rigor with which he policed the early New York International shows, defying dealers who attempted to display U.S. coins in that pioneer all-world show.

Here's one I dare anyone else to match: my bride Pat (nee LaBranche) and I had our honeymoon at the New York International show in December 1977 at the Americana Hotel! We had a luxurious room on the 32nd floor, to which we had rushed back for a quick change, my bride going ahead to the charter bus carrying invitees to a special showing of the Royal Mint's new facility in New Jersey, created by ex-Amos Press functionary John Van Emden. I followed just AFTER all the elevators failed! I rushed down 32 stories on foot and found there was a bar aboard! Next day was somewhat painful... The International was never the same in the ghastly environment of the Waldorf.

I'd never heard of "Essequibo & Demerary" either until earlier this year, when I stumbled onto an old ha'penny from there (alas w/a hole in it) at a coin show in Timonium, MD. As you may know now, this was incorporated into British Guiana => Guyana. I was familiar with "Demerara Sugar" which is what brown sugar is called in the UK, named for the Guyanan region.

BTW, that rhinoceros on the Gabon token looks a lot like an Asian rhino (i.e., the skin-folding "plate armor" look), but it does have the proper two horns of an African rhino, at least--like the engraver was looking at a composite drawing of a generic rhino, rather than sketching from life, which wouldn't be all that surprising, I suppose.

I just purchased a bound set of Whitman Numismatic Journals 1964 - 1968. Looks like they were bound for William A. Pettit. I gather he was pretty well known in the numismatic field, but I can't really find out much about him on Google.

Any chance you or some of your E-Sylum subscribers can pass on any more info. about the gentleman?

I saw in the last E-Sylum that coins are being recovered from junk cars. This is not new or different. Back in the late 1990s I worked at Alcoa on a project to sort out fragments of different scrapped aluminum alloys for recycling. As an example, there is much greater value to having the aluminum-copper alloys sorted and separated from aluminum-magnesium alloys than by keeping all aluminum alloys mixed together. As part of the project, I went to a company in Michigan where they shredded and recycled old cars. The company sorted steel fragments from aluminum from copper from "fluff" (seat cushions etc). and sold the metals for melting and re-use. I was supposed to look into further sorting aluminum castings (high silicon) from wrought aluminum (low silicon).

While there, I was amazed to learn that they regarded old coins left in the cars as part of their revenue stream. I forgot the exact number, but they told me that something between $1 and $5 in change was left (hidden, lost, or neglected) in the average car. After shredding the cars, they had sorting equipment that would take the now-mangled coins and keep them separate. After accumulating several thousand dollars worth of abused coins, they turned them in through government channels and got a nice check. Therefore, the story is more than plausible, the recovery of coins from scrapped cars is real, has been around for over 20 years in the US, and more coins than I imagined possible are left in junk cars.

I much appreciated JP Koning's commentary about redenominated coinage. I found his commentary about the Mitchell-Innes theory enlightening. That said, I'd like to correct one statement. He wrote: "The Cameron House theory, which also happens to be Mitchell-Innes's theory ..."

My theory wasn't about the apparent redenomination. It referred specifically to the location. Since this specific redenomination of coins appears to have been a Civil War generated phenomenon, it's much more likely that the Cameron House counterstamps were not products of the LaCrosse establishment (as thought by some), built about twenty years later. My theory then is that the Harrisburg Cameron House is a far more likely candidate. Harrisburg is not a slam-dunk attribution, as yet, just a stronger contender.