WAYNE'S NUMISMATIC DIARY

All week long I've been hoarding pocket change to save for my son Christopher to look through. A couple weeks ago he decided to dig out his coin folders and start filling some more holes. Together we plowed thru hundreds of coins, adding many cents, nickels, dimes and quarters to his collection. I usually spend mine, but I quit doing that and even scrounged around for more.

And tonight at bedtime I saw his younger brother Tyler putting away coins he got at the last coin show we attended. He'd had them spread out on the bedroom floor to look at. Maybe there's hope for these two as collectors yet.

Tuesday night was the regular monthly dinner meeting of my Norther Virginia numismatic social group, Nummis Nova. I mentioned Christopher's renewed interest in coins to Jon Radel. He asked about his age (12), and said he thought the interest would only last a few months. Well, we'll see. At least a seed has been plated.

The dinner was held at a restaurant in the Tyson's Corner Galleria mall. It was a great turnout - the room was packed. I sat next to Roger Burdette, and we got caught up on his various research projects.

Somehow the topic of jokes came up, and I retold one I'd heard on the radio recently. At a convention of comedians they took a vote for the funniest joke of the event. It was something like "The computer asked me to choose eight characters for my password. I picked Snow White and the Seven Dwarves"

Someone asked, "What's your funniest numismatic joke?" and asked me to post the question in The E-Sylum. Send in your submissions!

A guest at the meeting was Alex Clain-Stefanelli, now a new The E-Sylum subscriber. I met him briefly at a coin show years ago, where he was introduced to me by his mother, Elvira Clain-Stefanelli, She and his father Vladimir were curators of the National Numismatic Collection at the Smithsonian Institution for many years.

On Wednesday I couldn't help but notice a glaring error in the headline of a Coins Magazine article in Numismaster.com.

To read the complete article, see: Defunked Assay Commission Used to Check U.S. Coins (www.numismaster.com/ta/numis/Article.jsp?ad=article&ArticleId=23619)

So was the Assay Commission really funky before it was defunked?

This morning I packed up two boxes of duplicate or unneeded books to ship to Fred Lake for a future sale. It was nice to clean up a few of the piles around and beneath my desk.

This afternoon I took my sons and father-in-law to a local sports bar to watch the Steeler-Seahawks football game. As native Pittsburghers we naturally cheered for the Steelers. The won handily this week, unlike last week's rout at the hands of the Baltimore Ravens. Our neighbor and his son came along. I learned that I'd missed a great show on television the night before, a show about the famed 1933 Double Eagle. Did any of our readers see it?

Wayne Homren, Editor

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