LOOSE CHANGE: NOVEMBER 29, 2020

PREV ARTICLE NEXT ARTICLE FULL ISSUE PREV FULL ISSUE

V23 2020 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 23, Number 48, November 29, 2020, Article 34

Here are some additional items in the media this week that may be of interest. -Editor

Here's a curious discovery (or total coincidence): a study claims that homes are worth more when they're on streets with money-themed names. -Editor

When it comes to buying a home, most people focus on the location, size and style of a property.

However, savvy house hunters may want to factor in the street name if they are shopping on a budget.

New analysis from Invezz.com shows that houses with money-related street names often sell at a higher price.

It looked at around 1,000 road names across the UK and discovered that London streets with cash terms in their name sold for £272,000 more than others in that area.

In North London houses sold for more on Bank Lane (N11), Copper Close (N17), Gold Close (EN10), Pound Lane (NW10) and Silver Street (EN1, EN7 and EN9).

The same was true of houses in East London on Bank Street (E14), Copper Street (E20), Pound Close (EN9), Pound Lane, (RM16) and Rich Street (E14).

Do any of our readers live on or near streets/neighborhoods/towns with numismatic or money-themed names? I'll keep your response confidential if you like, but send in your entries and I'll compile a list. There may not be an Uncirculated Circle, but there is of course, a real Penny Lane. Dime Street? How about a Greenback Chase? Dollar Hollow (pronounced "Holler")? Currency Canyon? Banknote Bend? Bonus points for pictures of street signs. Have fun! -Editor

That small change adds up. Disney World fished $20,000 worth of coins from its wishing wells to donate to charity. -Editor

Some $20,000 in coins that tourists tossed into Walt Disney World's wishing wells and fountains became a Thanksgiving gift for central Florida's largest homeless shelter.

"I am just so thankful, especially in light of everything that's going on in the world and everything Disney is going through," said Allison Krall, CEO of the Coalition for the Homeless of Central Florida, told the Orlando Sentinel. "We needed this so very much."

The coins were dropped in the iconic wishing well at Cinderella's Castle, along the waterways of the "It's a Small World" ride, and in fountains throughout the local parks.

Disney periodically collects, cleans and sorts the coins before donating the total to a Central Florida charity, the newspaper reported.

Richard Miranda passed along this story of a surprising house find. It's non-numismatic, but we collectors enjoy stories of unusual and valuable discoveries. -Editor

A New York couple didn't believe that their century-old home was built by a legendary bootlegger until they decided to undergo renovations last month.

Nick Drummond and Patrick Bakker were shocked to discover that hiding in the walls and floorboards of their house in the village of Ames, about three hours away from New York City, was more than 66 bottles of smuggled Prohibition-era whiskey, according to CNN.

Drummond told CNN he was removing outside skirting along the bottom of the mudroom when a package fell out.

"I'm like what is that? I'm very confused," he told the outlet. "I'm looking and there's hay everywhere, there's paper, and glass ... I see another package and it's this whiskey bottle. I'm like holy crap. This is like a whiskey stash. And this is like, all of a sudden, the whole story of the bootlegger."

Drummond said he has done a lot of research on the man who built his home and found out that Humpfner was under numerous investigations and died a suspicious death.

The couple plans to keep one of the full bottles of whiskey to taste for themselves and sell the other full bottles, which are estimated to sell for $1,000 each, Drummond said.

To bibliophiles, book thieves are the lowest of all scum. Lower still are those who damage books to take valuable illustrations like maps. This article details how German librarians eventually caught a notoriously elusive map thief. -Editor

Müller and Roeder began combing through the volumes. Two of them, including a valuable Spanish geography tome, were unharmed. The third, Louis Renard's Atlas van Zeevaert en Koophandel door de geheule Weereldt, a sea-and-trade atlas from 1745, seemed fine at first glance—but then they looked closer.

Schild had cut out nine maps, including Renard's rendering of the entire known world and intricate illustrations of southeast Asia and the Hudson Bay. He'd also cut out the appendix, which included the list of those maps. As if that weren't enough, he'd also taken a pencil and numbered the remaining maps in tiny writing on the upper right-hand corner, in the manner of a professional archivist. Only an attentive reader would notice what was missing.

"I was sitting there, and I could hardly breathe," Roeder recalls. "He was really a professional."

Roeder filed a report with the Oldenburg police. (She later estimated the damages at between $44,130 and $48,800.) At the recommendation of an acquaintance, she also scoured online auctions for maps that could have come from the Renard book. She compared sales photos with the distinctive coloring, size, paper yellowing, and wrinkles of the Oldenburg atlas, and emailed antiques dealers, asking about the provenance of the maps on sale.

By Easter, Roeder had narrowed her search down to two sellers. On a sunny day in early May, 2006, Roeder and her colleague Klaus-Peter Müller climbed into the Oldenburg Library's red VW Golf and drove off in search of the missing maps. "We felt like we were in a road movie," Roeder says.

Kavan Ratnatunga passed along links to two European Central Bank articles relating to the proposed Digital Euro currency. Bitcoin fans would likely provide a very different "explainer" on its pros and cons. It will be interesting to see how these digital currency battles turn out. In the end I suspect we'll see a handful of parallel viable systems emerge, with and without central bank backing. -Editor