LOOSE CHANGE: DECEMBER 31, 2023

Well, it's finally here: the 6th edition of Volume II of the Cherrypickers' Guide. But is it what cherrypickers have been waiting for? Or is it something else, something that presages a third volume?

Unfortunately, I think it's the latter. Don't misunderstand me: I don't mean to imply that there's anything wrong with the new book. I think it does a great job for the material covered, which is half dimes through quarter dollars. But it really doesn't replace the 5th edition volume II, which covered half dimes through quarter dollars and also half dollars, silver dollars, gold coins, commemoratives, and bullion.

Because the new edition doesn't replace its predecessor, the 5th edition volume II is selling for big bucks on Amazon (used at $78.97 and up) and eBay ($125). With that said, what will you find in the new edition?

To read the complete article, see:
Basics and Beyond: Review of Latest ‘Cherrypickers' Guide' (https://www.numismaticnews.net/collecting-101/basics-and-beyond-review-of-latest-cherrypickers-guide)

To read earlier E-Sylum articles, see:
CHERRYPICKERS' GUIDE, 6TH EDITION, VOLUME II (https://www.coinbooks.org/v26/esylum_v26n23a06.html)
CHERRYPICKERS' GUIDE SECOND PRINT RUN (https://www.coinbooks.org/v26/esylum_v26n37a08.html)

 

When I was a kid in 1952 in Forty Fort, Pennsylvania, I visited Robert Rusbar, the town tax collector, to see his collection of rocks and minerals—a prime interest of mine at the time. He showed me an album with a 1909 penny with an S below the date and the letters V.D.B. on the reverse, saying he had paid $10 for it at the coin department boutique at Gimbel's department store in New York City. I found this to be amazing and immediately set about finding some in change. That did not happen. The rest is history, as they say.

I was on a train traveling from Chicago to Phoenix in December 1958 when I read a newspaper account that the familiar wheat-stalk reverse design of the Lincoln cent would be changed to depict the Lincoln Memorial. There was no advance notice of this in the numismatic press.

In due course the Memorial Reverse cents reached circulation. The numismatic response was modest at best, with Don Taxay stating the motif looked like a trolley car.

To read the complete article, see:
Bowers on Collecting: harvesting Wheat pennies 1909-1958 (https://mintnewsblog.com/bowers-on-collecting-harvesting-wheat-pennies-1909-1958/)

Mark placed more than 300 sealed games into boxes and moved them to an Omaha storage unit. As 23 years passed, Mark lost track of what the games were worth and decided he would pass them on to his nieces and nephews.

But in 2021, Mark's older brother, Tim, found the vintage games in the warehouse and was curious about their worth. The '90s-era games, including Chrono Trigger and Mortal Kombat, were still in near-perfect condition. He said he sought out guidance at an Omaha video game store, where the employees were shocked at what Tim had brought them.

The Odorisios eventually had the video games appraised, and about 170 of them were found to be rare and in good condition. Gameroom, the store where Tim took the games in 2021, is helping the Odorisios sell the collection, which was recently posted online.

Mark said he's hoping to sell the games for nearly $1 million — a figure much higher than he had expected when he stored them.

To read the complete article, see:
He closed a video game shop decades ago. His games could sell for $1M. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/12/19/nebraska-rare-vintage-video-games-sale/)

To read the complete articles, see:
King Charles III now on Australian coins (https://ministers.treasury.gov.au/ministers/andrew-leigh-2022/media-releases/king-charles-iii-now-australian-coins)
King Charles III Effigy - Frequently Asked Questions (https://www.ramint.gov.au/news-media/news/king-charles-iii-effigy-frequently-asked-questions)

I'm haunted by the enormity of all of that which I'll never read. This need not be a fear related to those things that nobody can ever read, the missing works of Aeschylus and Euripides, the lost poems of Homer; or, those works that were to have been written but which the author neglected to pen, such as Milton's Arthurian epic. Nor am I even really referring to those titles which I'm expected to have read, but which I doubt I'll ever get around to flipping through (In Search of Lost Time, Anna Karenina, etc.), and to which my lack of guilt induces more guilt than it does the real thing. No, my anxiety is born from the physical, material, fleshy, thingness of the actual books on my shelves, and my night-stand, and stacked up on the floor of my car's backseat or wedged next to Trader Joe's bags and empty pop bottles in my trunk. Like any irredeemable bibliophile, my house is filled with more books than I could ever credibly hope to read before I die (even assuming a relatively long life, which I'm not).

A strong and bitter book-sickness floods one's soul, writes Nicholas Basbanes in A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books. How ignominious to be strapped to this ponderous mass of paper, print, and dead men's sentiments!

To read the complete article, see:
Ed Simon's Twelve Months Of Reading – 2023 (https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2023/12/ed-simons-twelve-months-of-reading-2023.html)

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
MORE ON THE MONEY MUSEUM (https://www.coinbooks.org/v26/esylum_v26n52a10.html)

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