One of the things I love about The E-Sylum is how we can hear directly from experts in the field and people who were there in the room when numismatic history happened. These first-person accounts are invaluable, which is why headlines such as "I'm the WSJ's Tax Columnist. Here's How I Tackle My Own Taxes" draw interest from readers.

But to piggyback on this natural instinct, spammers and clickbait headline writers (or their robots) have glommed onto this by falsely claiming first-person authorship, such as in this breathless numismatic headline from The U.S. Sun: "I found ‘silver-looking' pennies in the reject slot of a Coinstar machine – turns out they're worth up to $108,000." -Editor

The finder of the coins was some random unnamed Reddit poster, not the author of this piece. And of course, none of the coins *IS* worth $108,000 - the other slimy clickbait part of this is the weaselly "they're worth up to..." phrase. Sure, maybe if the coin is an authentic rarity, third-party graded, MS-70 with stars, pluses and CAC-stickers galore, has a famous pedigree and sells in a top of the market bidding frenzy. Yeah, and with my Publisher's Clearinghouse entry, I "may already be a millionaire." These actual, common well-circulated pieces? Not so much.

Mind you, I'll repeat what I've written before, that these Sun pieces actually present decent numismatic information, and do give the general public an idea of what to look for when searching coins. It's the presentation and headlines that make my skin crawl. -Editor

Then there are the fact-free robot-generated bullshit articles on sketchy content-farm sites that pop up because they have a few keywords in common with other webpages you've visited, like the "Rare Bicentennial Quarter Worth Nearly $49 Million USD." -Editor