LOOSE CHANGE: MAY 1, 2022

 

The contemporary plague of counterfeit coins being made and then placed into counterfeit third-party holders is now affecting rare paper money. Counterfeit notes are being placed in bogus early generation PCGS Currency holders.

A recent example is a case currently being pursued by the U.S. Secret Service involving a Series 1882 $500 gold certificate. The note, identified as Friedberg 1216a, is a blatantly obvious fake, even without close personal examination. Nonetheless, the Secret Service laboratory did its own technical investigation, and based on additional information provided by trade specialists, confirmed this conclusion.

One 1922 $500 gold certificate bearing this very E72108 number has been known since 1993, when it was sold by Dean Oakes. Then, the Gengerke census says, it was sold by Currency Auctions of America in 2000, and then went unsold in a Lyn Knight auction in 2003. After that, Heritage sold it twice, in February 2005 and April 2013. It final recorded appearance was a month later, when it was sold on eBay.

To read the complete article, see:
Secret Service reviewing counterfeit notes in counterfeit holders (https://www.coinworld.com/news/paper-money/secret-service-reviewing-counterfeit-notes-in-counterfeit-holders)

This column is about what I call secret marks on coins. Many of you know that I have been using a stereo microscope to examine coins for most of my adult life. Today, many of you get to see my world through magnified images posted in online coin forums taken by other collectors. These observations at high powers of magnification have allowed me to identify many things I see again with just a 5X hand lens or my naked eye alone!

Today, I'll write about unusual characteristics found on the dies that were applied at the Mint to serve a specific purpose. Some of these marks occur on a single die while others are on all the dies with a few exceptions. The secret marks placed on one die are very interesting and, in a few cases, researchers have identified the reason they exist.

To read the complete article, see:
Secret Marks on Coins (https://www.numismaticnews.net/collecting-101/secret-marks-on-coins)

Walter, John Whitney (1934-2018) - CoinsWeekly John W. Walter was a businessman and a passionate collector. The cousin of President Donald Trump put together a superb collection of Roman aurei, auctioned off as The Men of Rome. His collection of early American coins brought him the nickname Mr. 1796.

To read the complete article, see:
Walter, John Whitney (1934-2018) (https://coinsweekly.com/whoswho-sammler/walter-john-whitney-1934-2018/)

San Antonio police say they have arrested the man accused of stealing gold medals out of a USA Paralympian's vehicle.

Police Chief William McManus on Wednesday confirmed the arrest on Twitter. McManus said the suspect, identified as 36-year-old Rogelio Solis, was picked up by US Marshals near Roosevelt and I-410 on the city's South Side. He is charged with burglary of a vehicle and theft.

The medals were recovered the following day from a West Side gas station.

Lee thanked the community for its quick response sharing his post and raising awareness about the case.

It is more than just a medal because it's the memories, the people that I connect with, the rehabilitation, the physical therapists, to the doctors to my teammates alongside the guys at rehab with my brothers and sisters in arms, Lee said.

To read the complete article, see:
Paralympian's stolen medals returned; suspect arrested (https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2022/04/20/suspect-in-custody-after-usa-paralympians-gold-medals-were-stolen-sapd-chief-says/)

Among the many books about punctuation, precious few are devoted to a single mark. There's On the Dot, by the Brothers Humez, which celebrates the period, or full stop; Semicolon, a thoughtful treatise by Cecelia Watson; and F*ck*ng Apostrophes, a jewel of a book by Simon Griffin. The hyphen, which may not technically qualify as a punctuation mark, because it operates at the level of the word rather than the sentence—it doesn't make you pause (though it may give you pause)—has inspired not one great book but two: Meet Mr. Hyphen (And Put Him in His Place), a classic by Edward N. Teall, published in 1937, and Hyphen, by Pardis Mahdavi, which came out in 2021.

To read the complete article, see:
How to Use (or Not Use) a Hyphen (https://www.newyorker.com/culture/comma-queen/how-to-use-or-not-use-a-hyphen)

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