"I saw the post on Xavier. Funny, I own that Naxos drawing. His stuff is fantastic but just very expensive."

Small world, numismatics. Great to see the art has found its way to our community. -Editor

Richard Lobel runs CoinCraft, a longtime London coin business headquartered on the opposite side of Great Russell Street from the British Museum, a strategic location that factors into his note on the recently revealed thefts from that institution's collection. -Editor

"The story has hit all the newspapers over here. No one is sure what has been taken and by who. In 1983 Spink, Seaby and ourselves were sold coins that a member of staff was stealing from the coin department. Spink and ourselves returned the coins without charging them, despite our just starting up again in 1982. Carson was in charge then. When I told him I wanted to keep his coins on his side of the street and my coins on my side of the street, I had never seen a grown man walk on empty egg shells without breaking them.

"The girl was in charge of cataloguing new acquisitions and was taking the coins from their duplicate collection. Only when they compared photos of those trays with what was actually there did they believe me. Carson retired the next year and moved to Australia. At that time if you asked to look at coins, they would bring out trays and then leave you alone with them. Many other coins went missing. But that was 40 years ago. Seaby bought a William IV crown from the young lady but refused to return it."

"Some forty years ago on a visit to the British Museum Department of Coins & Medals I dropped a coin or maybe a jetton and it vanished. On returning home I found it in my trouser turn up! I returned it ASAP."

"I noted the lack of distribution in the US for the 2 Euro book. Even Amazon refuses to be helpful. Ultimately the only source I found was an eBay dealer in Poland. I patiently await my copy."

Thanks for letting us know. Good luck! -Editor

"I wanted to offer a suggestion to Pete Smith on his research of numismatic murder victims and the perpetrators of those crimes. I don't know of a (useful and trustworthy) site that has that aggregate data, but there should be some sort of searchable database for each individual state. For example in Maryland, we have MD Case Search (free and run through the state of MD). So if, theoretically, there was a murderer in Maryland he wanted more information about, he could use that database to search for that person and find all the cases that person has been involved in, as well as the outcomes of those cases. I hope that helps!"

Thank you. Daniel Fearon also provided a link to information about Lenny Kaitcer, murdered in Belfast in 1980. I passed both notes along to Pete. -Editor

In correspondence this week with Erik Goldstein (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Senior Curator of Mechanical Arts, Metals, & Numismatics), I learned that the press (unsurprisingly) got several facts wrong in the recent report of gold coins found at a battle site in Virginia. They're not even $1 coins - they're half eagles. The coins have not been conserved yet, but Erik has examined them and will have more to report in a future issue. -Editor