ABOUT THIS ISSUE: FEBRUARY 23, 2025

It's been a tough week or so for my New Year's diet, with restaurant dinners with my wife for Valentine's Day, Nummis Nova at Outback, and the next night our middle son Tyler treating my wife and I to dinner at Morton's. So far so good, though - I'm down again today.

On Saturday morning I got a note from ANA President Tom Uram reporting that he'd run into fellow Fairfax Coin Club member Jonas Denenberg at a show in El Paso. Jonas sure gets around!

Always on the lookout for items to add to the Newman Numismatic Portal, something caught my eye in an AbeBooks search result Saturday morning. Although it was for a modern reprint, the title was intriguing: "Notes on the Establisment [sic] of a Money Unit, and of a Coinage for the United States". This was a 1785 pamphlet by Thomas Jefferson. I had trouble locating it on NNP and Project Coordinator Len Augsburger confirmed we didn't have it.

Len writes:

"This document was written in Annapolis and printed in Paris. It is likely quite rare. I don't recall ever seeing one for sale. Library of Congress has an example."

Happily Len was able to secure a digitized copy to add to NNP at
https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/book/645711

I also realized this weekend that we were not archiving the website of the Southern Gold Society and didn't have any of their periodicals on NNP. I reached out to David Crenshaw of SGS and we'll work on that. Stay tuned for more on the group in a future issue.

Sunday morning brought a nice note for me and Garrett from dealer Bill Rosenblum (see Notes From E-Sylum Readers) and an email from Pat McBride, who's feeling a bit better following his hospitalization (see the article on the new issue of the PAN Clarion.

I'm also happy to be one day closer to Spring. It was cool but sunny today, and I got in a couple nice walks outside. It could hit 60 degrees later this week. Have a great week yourselves, everyone. -Editor

Wayne Homren
Wayne Homren is the founding editor of The E-Sylum and a consultant for the Newman Numismatic Portal. His collecting interests at various times included U.S. Encased Postage Stamps, merchant counterstamps, Pittsburgh Obsolete paper money, Civil War tokens and scrip, Carnegie Hero Medals, charge coins and numismatic literature. He also collects and has given presentations on the work of Money Artist J.S.G. Boggs. In the non-numismatic world he's worked in artificial intelligence, data science, and as a Program Manager for the U.S. Department of Defense.

Garrett Ziss
Garrett Ziss is a numismatic collector and researcher, with a focus on American paper money and early U.S. silver and copper coins. He is also a part-time U.S. coin cataloger for Heritage Auctions. Garrett assists Editor Wayne Homren by editing and formatting a selection of articles and images each week. When he's not engaged in numismatics, Garrett is a Senior Honors student at the University of Pittsburgh.

Pete Smith
Numismatic researcher and author Pete Smith of Minnesota has written about early American coppers, Vermont coinage, numismatic literature, tokens and medals, the history of the U.S. Mint and much more. Author of American Numismatic Biographies, he contributes original articles to The E-Sylum often highlighting interesting figures in American numismatic history.

Greg Bennick
Greg Bennick (www.gregbennick.com) is a keynote speaker and long time coin collector with a focus on major mint error coins and US counterstamps. He is on the board of both CONECA and TAMS and enjoys having in-depth conversations with prominent numismatists from all areas of the hobby. Have ideas for other interviewees? Contact him anytime on the web or via instagram @minterrors.

John Nebel
Numismatist, photographer, and ANS Board member and Fellow John Nebel of Boulder, CO helped the ANA and other clubs like NBS get online in the early days of the internet, hosting websites gratis through his Computer Systems Design Co. To this day he hosts some 50 ANA member club sites along with our coinbooks.org site, making the club and our E-Sylum archive available to collectors and researchers worldwide.

Bruce Perdue
Encased coinage collector (encasedcoins.info) Bruce Perdue of Aurora, Illinois has been the volunteer NBS webmaster from its early days and works each week to add the latest E-Sylum issue to our archive and send out the email announcement.