The Numismatic Bibliomania Society

PREV ARTICLE       NEXT ARTICLE       FULL ISSUE       PREV FULL ISSUE      

V14 2011 INDEX       E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 14, Number 39, September 18, 2011, Article 9

NOTES FROM E-SYLUM READERS: SEPTEMBER 18, 2011

On Mark Blackburn
Regarding the passing of Dr Mark Blackburn, Howard Berlin writes:

Dr Mark Blackburn I was saddened to learn of Mark's passing. Attached is a photo I took of him in his office next to one of the many coin cabinets. He was a gracious host and was very helpful in the preparation of my WorldWide Coins article on the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge. I was planning to make return visits to both the Ashmolean (Oxford) and Fitzwilliam Museums sometime next year. Somehow, it won't be the same without him there.

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see: MARK BLACKBURN HAS PASSED (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v14n38a02.html)

Ordering The Alexander Medallion Book
Regarding the new book by Frank Holt on the Alexander Medallion, John Cadorini writes:

I thoroughly checked the web and cannot find Imago Lattara listed nor a copy of this new work within ADDALL BOOKS-NEW nor BOOKFINDER. Perhaps you can have Frank Holt provide an order address? Even nicer if we can order directly from the authors.

I'm afraid I don't have Frank Holt's email address. Could Frank or anyone else supply us with ordering information? Thanks. -Editor

An Encounter With An Author
Larry Gaye writes:

Good Money I'm glad to see George Selgin's book come out in paperback; it is a revealing and fun read. I purchased mine from Jon Lusk at the 2009 Token Congress held in Seattle, Washington. I immediately started to look through it and was looking forward to reading it when I returned home. I went to the table I shared with Jerry Bobbe for the bourse section of the conference and started to tell all I met about the book and that every British token collector should have a copy.

One fellow walked up and was looking at our tokens and of course I went into my enthusiastic spiel about the book and why I felt it was so essential to the historian and collector alike. It was then that I was introduced to George Selgin. We both had a great chuckle together. My copy is autographed. What fun!

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see: NEW EDITION: GOOD MONEY BY SELGIN NOW AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v14n38a06.html)

German East Africa Coin References
Regarding Jarrett Briscoe's question about references on German East African coins, Tom Wetter writes:

I very quickly found references for German East Africa in both Krause SCWC and online at www.numismaster.com.

Jarrett adds:

I'm currently deployed overseas and I really miss collecting. I really want to assemble a set of German East African coins but I can't find any published reference information (if I can't collect, at least I can do the research). My ultimate goal is to assemble as complete a set as possible of both the coinage and notes.

New Coins From Sierra Leone
Ultramodern numismatic P.K. Saha follows news of new coin issues around the world. These two from Sierra Leone caught my eye - interesting use of positive and negative space to convey a scene.

SierraLeone1Dollar SierraLeone1Dollar2

On Pounds, Dollars and Dollars
About 20 minutes after publishing last week's issue, this note from Heath MacAlpine arrived:

Australian Victoria Cross As always, a very interesting Sunday night read. Regarding the Victoria Cross story, I thought the Aussies gave up the pound 45 years ago and switched over to the dollar.

Joe Boling writes:

The Sun, which reported the sale of the Victoria Cross, is evidently a British paper, so the 770,000 pounds was the British currency equivalent of the sale price. Australia has not used a pound in decades. The sale was actually of a group of ten medals, with the VC at the head of the bar. Noble Numismatics in Melbourne sold them 26-28 July for AUD 1,167,330 (with juice), or USD 1.193 million this evening.

Jon Radel also picked up on this. He writes:

They really need to give you a bigger research budget so you can get out of the U.S. more often: As I'm sure others have mentioned, there's been no such thing as an Australian Pound since 1966. The newspaper article you reference was from the UK, and they had converted the sales price into UK pounds for the benefit of their readers. The price in Australian Dollars was $1,002,000 for the lot that included the VC, according to the Australian press coverage.

On July 28, the date of the sale, that was USD 1,104,580 at the interbank rate.

(And why The Sun, in the UK, published such an vague story that long after the sale....oh, who knows.)

Thanks again to our eagle-eyed readers for spotting the big, fat errors in my so-called commentary. This is why the good people at Coin World and Numismatic News get paid for what they do. I'm lucky to find time to get any of this done, let alone research or proofread it.

I did convert Australian Dollars to U.S. Dollars to get the figure I quoted, but I was in such a rush I wasn't thinking that the amount was actually listed in pounds. Sorry! Thanks to everyone for setting this straight. And although The E-Sylum has no travel or research budget (I'm lucky to make enough ad revenue to buy lunch), as it happens my day job employer is planning to ship me to Canberra for a week in November, so I'll have my chance to spend Australian dollars after all. -Editor

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see: RECORD PRICE FOR AN AUSTRALIAN VICTORIA CROSS MEDAL (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v14n38a18.html)

Wayne Homren, Editor

Google
 
NBS (coinbooks.org) Web

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

PREV ARTICLE       NEXT ARTICLE       FULL ISSUE       PREV FULL ISSUE      

V14 2011 INDEX       E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

Copyright © 1998 - 2020 The Numismatic Bibliomania Society (NBS)
All Rights Reserved.

NBS Home Page
Contact the NBS webmaster
coin