ABOUT THIS ISSUE: MARCH 9, 2025

No travel to report this week, but it's been a busy one. While a Wednesday morning dentist appointment afforded a short break from the office and a nice early lunch, my Wednesday evening commute home was a two and a half hour slog thru traffic caused by construction. Friday night was another treat though, when my son Chris and I went to a movie. We saw "Mickey 17" from director Bong Joon Ho. It was entertaining original escapism with a sci-fi premise that had me smiling and laughing a lot. It's not for everyone, but I think it will do well at the box office and next year's awards season. Check it out. In a theater.

While I very rarely watch films or series at home, I saw a New York Times article picturing a familiar place from my past. My first job after college was at the Holmdel, NJ location of Bell Laboratories. The old building is the setting for the Apple TV+ series "Severance". Interestingly, like "Mickey 17," the premise involves duplicating human beings, in this case splitting personalities into "inside" and "outside" selves. See
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/realestate/severance-lumon-industries-building-bell-labs.html .

And while driving about on Saturday morning listening to the NPR News Quiz "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me," I learned that Hasbro rolled out a new version of Monopoly with an app that takes over the role of banker and keeps track of every player's money and properties, eliminating cash. So even Monopoly money isn't safe from the coming cashless economy. Way to suck all the fun out of playing. Why not just let bots play the game and sit around in a circle mindlessly watching it on screens like everything else? -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.