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LOOSE CHANGE: JANUARY 5, 2025Here are some additional items in the media this week that may be of interest. -Editor Andrew Crellin published an article titled "Evidence In Plain Sight - AF Bassett Hull and the Port Phillip Patterns." Bibliophiles and researchers know the phenomenon - sometimes important numismatic evidence published long ago is overlooked and waiting to be rediscovered. -Editor So much has been written about Australia's numismatic items that I often forget evidence can sit in plain sight for decades without being noticed or appreciated. That reality smacked me in the face earlier this week when I was researching a few of the sixpence and shilling patterns from the Port Phillip Kangaroo Office.
Basset Hull dates the milled-edge patterns to 1855, which means they were struck before the Kangaroo Office was closed in 1857. He states the plain edge patterns were struck in 1860, which does mean they were struck after the Kangaroo Office closed, but still well before Taylor and / or his sons re-struck a whole lot of material several decades later. Now, this "evidence" has been in print for some 152 years, so it is hardly "news"! Sometimes the "lost" information is only a few years old, and I'll bet we're all guilty of this. With so many new books and publications in recent years, it feels like an impossible task to acquire, read, absorb and make sense of it all, even when it's your job as a numismatic writer or cataloger. But back to examples of "numismatic information that time forgot..." What are some other examples of important, publicly available numismatic information rediscovered generations later? -Editor
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This USA Today article discusses the treasure hunt driven by the recent book by Jon Collins-Black. -Editor
The Las Vegas-area teacher, trying to beat forecasted snow, had driven more than 400 miles to an area near Lake Tahoe, where she believed cryptic clues had led her. She stuffed a backpack with water, beef jerky and a pocket knife before setting out on forested trails. Cowling passed several other hikers, wondering if they were after the same thing: A treasure worth more than $2 million hidden by California crypto-millionaire Jon Collins-Black in five puzzle boxes in five secret locations across the country. Gold bars from a shipwreck. A 120-carat sapphire. A Bitcoin. Historic artifacts. A rare pendant by Picasso. Since November, legions of amateur treasure hunters like Cowling have been racing to decipher clues in Collins-Black's recently released book, "There's Treasure Inside," whose pages, including puzzles and maps, contain clues to finding the hidden fortune. The public hunt, which kicked off in November, has swelled online discussion groups and sent aspiring millionaires searching from Vermont to California. Thankfully, the author is attempting to discourage risk-taking on the part of would-be treasure finders. -Editor Collins-Black says that while he can't control what people do, he designed his hunt in hopes of avoiding all that. None of his treasure boxes are hidden on private property, buried underground or in dangerous places to reach like a cliff, he said. They don't require crossing a raging river. No special equipment is needed. Each is hidden within three miles of a public road. And he devoted a prologue to safety as people search. "I'm really trying to drill into people's minds that you don't have to do anything dangerous," Collins-Black said, who also hasn't shared information with his family so they won't be sought out.
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Last week we mentioned the filmmaker Ken Burns; here's a New York Times profile - see the complete article online. -Editor 
Burns working on his epic on the American Revolution The white colonial and a barn are flanked by an apple orchard in the electric green hills of New Hampshire in a town called Walpole. It's this house and this piece of land that gave him the financial freedom to make the films of his choosing. He moved here out of necessity: In 1979, Mr. Burns's landlord raised the rent on his fifth-floor, walk-up apartment in Manhattan from $275 to $325 — a sum now so quaint that it's hard to imagine how consequential it was for the beginning filmmaker. The increase meant that he would need to get a day job, and he had a vision of himself decades later, returning haggard from the office, the reels of his unfinished documentary atop the refrigerator. In a move that seemed rash then and remains unconventional now, he rented the white colonial, then heated by a wood-burning stove, and bought it a few years later for $94,000. The decampment to the small town — a pinprick of a village a 3½-hour drive from Manhattan that then had a population just over 3,000 — allowed Mr. Burns to explore, gave him peace and shut him out from the rest of world so he could see it more clearly. Here's hoping for some numismatics in the upcoming American Revolution documentary. -Editor
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For bibliophiles, here's a non-numismatic article of interest from earlier this year - a sale of "the Bibliophile's Holy Grail" - Edgar Allan Poe's debut collection, Tamerlane and Other Poems. -Editor
Instead—because its author went on to invent the modern detective story (think "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The Purloined Letter"), revolutionize the Gothic genre with tales like "The Cask of Amontillado" and "The Tell-Tale Heart," pen triumphs of supernatural horror like "The Fall of the House of Usher," and write the classic macabre poem "The Raven," which many of us tried to memorize as kids—TTamerlane, for its now-insignificant deficiencies as a poem and a pamphlet, is of towering importance to Poe specialists and aficionados alike. The Holy Grail of book collecting, Tamerlane is one of those books that—like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in the original boards, which sold at Christie's in 2021 for $1.17 million, or Shakespeare's first folio, priced at $7.5 million and sold last year by the London-based rare book firm Peter Harrington on its 400th anniversary—causes a stir among rare book enthusiasts whether or not they have any hope, or desire, of acquiring it.
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In another bit of biblio-trivia, a recently discovered book printed with movable metal type predates the Gutenberg Bible by two centuries. -Editor The oldest book printed with metal movable type has been discovered in Korea, eclipsing the former record holder, the Jikji of 1377. The new discovery is dated from 1239 and is called the "Jeungdoga," or "Hymn of Enlightenment." The full name is the "Nammyeongcheon Hwasang Songjeungdoga," meaning the "Hymn of Enlightenment of the Monk Nammyeongcheon." We don't know much about the monk who is credited with this book and his song in praise of reaching enlightenment, but we are learning more about Korea's printing history, which dates back to the 13th century — fully two hundred years earlier than Gutenberg's Bible of 1455.
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Wayne Homren, Editor The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org. To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor at this address: whomren@gmail.com To subscribe go to: https://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/esylum All Rights Reserved. NBS Home Page Contact the NBS webmaster 
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