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About Us The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit association devoted to the study and enjoyment of numismatic literature. For more information please see our web site at coinbooks.org Subscriptions Those wishing to become new E-Sylum subscribers (or wishing to Unsubscribe) can go to the following web page link Membership There is a membership application available on the web site Membership Application To join, print the application and return it with your check to the address printed on the application. Print/Digital membership is $40 to addresses in the U.S., and $60 elsewhere. A digital-only membership is available for $25. For those without web access, write to: Charles Heck, Treasurer Numismatic Bibliomania Society P. O. Box 2058, Bluffton, SC 29910-2058 Asylum For Asylum mailing address changes and other membership questions, contact Chuck at this email address: treasurer@coinbooks.org Submissions To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor at this address: whomren@gmail.com BUY THE BOOK BEFORE THE COIN Sale Calendar December 11, 2021 WORKMAN BOOKS Watch here for updates!

Content presented in The E-Sylum is not necessarily researched or independently fact-checked, and views expressed do not necessarily represent those of the Numismatic Bibliomania Society.

WAYNE'S WORDS: THE E-SYLUM OCTOBER 17, 2021

New subscribers this week include: Alex Brown, Hiep Hoaung, Lori Kraft, and Keith Mawhinney of the Numismatic Society of Ireland (Northern Branch). Welcome aboard! We now have 6,730 subscribers.

Thank you for reading The E-Sylum. If you enjoy it, please send me the email addresses of friends you think may enjoy it as well and I'll send them a subscription. Contact me at whomren@gmail.com anytime regarding your subscription, or questions, comments or suggestions about our content.

This week we open with a numismatic literature sale, a new catalog and periodical issue, updates from the Newman Numismatic Portal, physical bitcoins and more.

Other topics this week include vintage coin envelopes, upcoming coin shows, the Chapman Brothers, auction previews, yap stone money, a Lord Baltimore shilling discovery, Space Shuttle medals, and the Lucky Tillicum token.

To learn more about the Jotosen Medallions, Glendining auction sales, the bitcoin pizzas, dollars and bits, Michael Joffre, numismatic educational programs, the Saint Gaudens National Historic Park, the National Currency Civil War Token, barter on the Galápagos Islands, the Sag Harbor Half Dollar hoard, Javanese Magic Coins, and when the U.S. defaulted on its financial obligations, read on. Have a great week, everyone!

Wayne Homren
Editor, The E-Sylum

 

HARTUNG & HARTUNG AUCTION 150

 

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NEW CATALOG: RAQMU COLLECTION OF JORDAN

World Banknote Auctions has now launched Raqmu Collection of Jordan at www.worldbanknoteauctions.com. This sale is open now and closes on November 4, 2021, with live bidding that day at 1 PM Eastern / 10 AM Pacific.

This collection, put together over several decades by a dedicated collector, contains both issued notes, specimens and proofs. It is highlighted by a complete specimen book of the second issue, prepared by Thomas de La Rue as a presentation piece in 1955. The entire collection contains 182 lots, ranging from the first issue dated 1949 to the series introduced in 2002.

We have created our first printed catalog for this collection. A limited number of copies will be distributed at the Den Bosch Paper Money Fair in the Netherlands held October 23/24. We will also have select highlights on display at our table, K-8. If you are not attending the show you can purchase a copy of the printed catalog for a minimal cost below.

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NUMISMATIQUE ASIATIQUE SEPTEMBER 2021

 

Editorial
2021 : Les 150 ans du Japan Mint
2021 : 150 years of the Japan Mint

JAVA
Pacifique Chardin's Javanese Magic Coins
by Joe Cribb

JAPAN
An Introduction to Jotosen Medallions
by Craig Greenbaum

Une monnaie japonaise découverte à Villemur-sur-Tarn
by Marie-Laure Le Brazidec

INDIA
L'énigme de la cache de Pondichéry
by Daniel Cariou

INDOCHINA
La Banque de l'Indochine face aux problèmes de traduction en chinois
by François Joyaux

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NEWMAN PORTAL ADDS GLENDINING SALES

Newman Portal Scans Glendining Auction Sale Catalog Series

The Glendining numismatic sales form a near endless series, numbering at least 1,435 catalogs published since 1901. Newman Portal has been processing this group at the American Numismatic Society for several months and has now completed scanning of the comprehensive set held by that library. Many thanks are in order, to David Hill, ANS librarian, Lara Jacobs, Internet Archive scanning associate, Bonham's, for granting permission to scan this series, and collector and author Eric Hodge for originally facilitating this project.

 

One interesting catalog in this series is the March 12, 1958 sale featuring a collection of medals related to all aspects of the book – printing, booksellers, authors, even papermakers. This collection included several hundred such pieces, generally 18th and 19th century European, which are featured mostly in group lots. Examples such as 1836 Leipzig gold medal commemorating the opening of the Booksellers Exchange are found, or an 1823 Haarlem gold medal marking the fourth centenary of printing. Sadly none of these pieces are plated, but this catalog will still serve as a reference resource for the genre.

Image: header for the section on printing medals

Link to Glendining series on Newman Portal:
https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/auctioncompanydetail/512958

VIDEO: OCTOBER 2021 USMEX COIN CONVENTION

USMEX Coin Convention Returns to Scottsdale October 21-23, 2021.
VIDEO: 2:00.

Max Keech, Partner, World Numismatics LLC,
David Lisot, CoinTelevision.com.

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PHYSICAL BITCOINS, BOGGS, AND EXPENSIVE PIZZA

More On Physical Bitcoins

Jeff Koyen writes:

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DOLLARS AND BITS

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NOTES FROM E-SYLUM READERS: OCTOBER 17, 2021

David Vice Contact Found
Regarding author David Vice, Randy Weir writes:

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
NOTES FROM E-SYLUM READERS: OCTOBER 10, 2021 : Query: David Vice Contact Sought (https://www.coinbooks.org/v24/esylum_v24n41a10.html)

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VINTAGE COIN ENVELOPES

Since my interest in vintage coin holders is well known, I recently was contacted by a longtime coin collector who offered me a large assortment of old coin envelopes issued by Littleton Stamp Company and Littleton Coin Company. I jumped at this chance to add such memorabilia to my collection, and there are about five dozen pieces. All are written up for coins, but the earliest are inscribed for LSC. I believe it was in 1960 that LCC achieved its own identity, but the earlier envelopes reveal that Littleton had been selling coins for some years prior to that time.

I'm attaching images of envelopes from both entities. The prices on the LSC envelopes clearly suggest the late 1950s, while those on the LCC envelopes appear to be from the early-mid 1960s. I remember similar pricing when I began collecting coins in 1965, though I didn't do any business with Littleton in my early years. I don't recall when I first learned of it, but it must have been in the early 1970s when I began getting COINage and COINS Magazines regularly. I received a few of these envelopes then, and I suspect the company still may be using this method of presentation for raw coins.

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LEGEND AUCTIONS 10/28/2021 PRESALE ANALYSIS

 

I've prepared a pre-sale analysis of Legend Rare Coin Auctions 10/28/2021 sale. The purpose of this product is to identify coins that are of Condition Census (Top Ten Finest) level and to provide additional provenance and price and grade history. This information is meant to augment the excellent work provided by Legend's catalogers and to give bidders more information on which to formulate their bids.

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OCTOBER 2021 PAN SHOW EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS

Thursday, October 28th

1:00pm - Brett Irick, ANA Judge, CSNS Vice President
Topic: ANA Competitive Exhibits Judging Class

3:00pm - Rick Lank, Becky Rush
Topic: The Furious Flight of the Confederate Treasure Train - Where Did All the Southern Dough Go? and a sequel (a new book)

4:30pm - Ben Franklin and Abraham Lincoln - performed by Patrick McBride and Dennis Boggs
Topic: Two Wars, Two Centuries

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2021 C4 CONVENTION EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS

 

Thursday evening, November 18
(Sheraton Inner Harbor, Harborside Room)

— 7:30 pm: Dennis Tucker, 75 Years of Colonials in the Redbook

— 8:30 pm: Jack Howes, The Making of the New Machin's Mills Book

— 9:30 pm: Randy Clark, Recent Literature for Attributing Connecticut Coppers (1785-1788)

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VOCABULARY TERM: FORM MOLD

Form Mold. A holding device made of lead or epoxy to hold large circular medals one at a time in a lathe while they are being trimmed. The form mold acts as a chuck to hold the medal secure while its flash or excess material is turned off on the lathe. Removing the flash is only required from medals struck by open face dies (medals larger than two inches and not struck with a collar). A form mold is a kind of jig and is also called lead form or lead chuck. Workers at the U.S. Mint call these chucks "carriers."

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THE CHAPMAN BROTHERS

The Chapman brothers, Samuel Hudson Chapman and Henry Chapman, were the first career coin dealers in the United States. They were born in Philadelphia to Irish Quaker immigrants Henry (1827-1907) and Jane (1827-1891) Hudson Chapman. The senior Henry went broke in the tea business and went into business as a money or specie broker.

The children collected stamps and went to work as teenagers for coin dealer John W. Hazeltine in 1876. By 1878, the two were experienced enough to start their own coin company, S. H. & H. Chapman, Numismatists and Antiquaries.

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THE SAINT GAUDENS NATIONAL HISTORIC PARK

Fall is a wonderful time to travel in New England, especially by car. This is the season that many thousands of ‘leaf peepers' will descend upon sleepy towns in the northeast to be dazzled by vivid displays of the changing season. Apple orchards, cider donuts, pumpkin-fests, decorative gourds and of course the foliage are among the many wonderful features to enjoy during your stay.

 

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MDC MONACO AUCTION 8 HIGHLIGHTS

Do not miss next MDC Monnaies de Collection auction on Wednesday 20th and Thursday 21st October 2021 in Monaco Monte Carlo.

Our expert Nicolas Gimbert will be delighted to welcome you to the auction. Live bidding will take place on BIDDR and the catalogue is also available on our website.

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STEPHEN ALBUM NOVEMBER 2021 INTERNET SALE 12

Stephen Album Rare Coins will hold its Internet Auction 12 at its offices in Santa Rosa, California on November 1, 2021. Internet pre-bidding has begun and can be accessed through their website.

The Auction is made up of an even 1,250 lots of Ancient, Islamic, Chinese, Indian, and General World Coins, and Ethnographic Money. Highlighted groups include:

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NUMISMATIC NUGGETS: OCTOBER 17, 2021

1720 French Colonies 1/3 Ecu

KM455.19 variety, Louis XV type. Struck at the Amiens mint.

A totally original, suitably crusty, old toned example of this early quarter-sized silver issue often collected as part of the U.S. Colonial series.

To read the complete lot description, see:
1720-X French Colonies 1/3 Ecu Louis XV Type (https://www.coinraritiesonline.com/product/1720-x-french-colonies-20s/)

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COPPER STATERS OF THE BOSPORAN KINGS FOUND

Phanagoria was the largest ancient Greek city on the Taman peninsula and was founded by Teian colonists around 543 BC, and developed into a Greek centre of trade between the coast of the Maeotian, and the countries on the southern side of the Caucasus.

The coin hoard was discovered during the third season of excavations, where archaeologists unearthed an amphora containing 80 copper staters (coins), whilst researching evidence of a destruction layer caused by fire from the 6th century AD.

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HOW YAP STONES PAVED THE WAY FOR BITCOIN

 

In "Banking on Stone Money: Ancient Antecedents to Bitcoin," published in January 2020 in the journal Economic Anthropology, Scott M. Fitzpatrick of the University of Oregon Department of Anthropology teamed with Inman Research Scholar and finance professor Stephen McKeon of the Lundquist College of Business to explore Bitcoin's precedents as "rooted in the ancient past, which involved the production, movement, and use of traditional forms of 'currency,' the most visible and prominent of which were the famous stone money of Yap."

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WITHOUT MONEY, GALAPAGOS RESIDENTS BARTER

As traffic and then goods started to slow from the continent, Galápageños turned to each other and a simpler way of life to take care of themselves.

During the strict 11-week lockdown that began in March, the majority of the 30,000 residents entered into a barter system. Fruit was traded for meat; milk for English lessons. Clothes were handed down, not just within families but through the community. At one point, Solís swapped 50 oranges for some dental work. Elsewhere, Brett and Maria Peters, the affable owners of Galápagos Deli in Puerto Ayora, traded produce they couldn't use in their restaurant for houseplants to decorate their new home. Nature guide Lola Villacreses, realizing she wasn't going to be aboard any cruise ships for the foreseeable future, did a crash course online and began growing fruits and vegetables on her smallholding in the fertile Santa Cruz Highlands. During my two-month stay, whenever I bumped into her around Puerto Ayora, she gave me a bucket of tomatoes.

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NEWLY DISCOVERED 1659 LORD BALTIMORE SHILLING

 

Stack's Bowers Galleries is proud to offer a newly discovered 1659 Lord Baltimore shilling in our November 2021 Showcase Auction. It will be presented alongside an incredible selection of Early American coins in our official auction for the Colonial Coin Collectors Club, better know as C4. With bold AU definition, this new discovery is certainly one of the sharpest Baltimore shillings known. Generally untoned and dove-grey, it exhibits scattered regions of olive patina on both sides. Significant marks are minimal, with only minor friction noted in the obverse fields. It was virtually brand new when it entered the soil over 400 years ago, and the portrait detail including the eyes, hair, and profile are truly astounding. It is a very pleasing example of an elusive and historic issue, coined for Sir Lord Baltimore Cecil Calvert to circulate in his proprietary colony of Maryland in the early 1660s.

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SAG HARBOR BUST HALF DOLLAR HOARD

 

It must have been a free-for-all among collectors on Long Island, New York in 1880, by which time the Capped Bust half dollars (minted 1807-1836) had long since disappeared from circulation. In fact, such pieces had not been generally seen since the early 1850s, when many if not most remaining pieces were melted down for bullion when the price of silver rose on international markets.?

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1933 ROOSEVELT LUCKY TILLICUM TOKEN

 

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SPACE SHUTTLE MEDALS

My family was stationed at Edwards AFB in Southern California in the late 1970s and early 1980s and was there for some of the Enterprise glide flights and even got up close to the Enterprise a couple of times. I very much remember the 747 carrier plane; it was kept near the giant lifting gantry along the northern part of the dry lake bed near the road heading out towards Boron. Out of the first 12 landings, I can chalk up 9 of them.

I was fortunate as a kid in a way because Dad was tangentially connected to the space program, though not as an astronaut, but were around a number of space flight pioneers. For instance, my babysitter's father helped suit up the Gemini and Apollo astronauts – his den was covered with autographed photos. I did meet a couple of astronauts, plus an X-15 pilot – (Pete Knight). Dad used to take me to the flight line every once in a while, especially if there was something neat there (like an SR-71 and the Enterprise, of course).

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SUPERMEN JEWISH-AMERICAN HALL OF FAME MEDAL

 

Announcing High Relief Art Medals and Zoom Induction Ceremony Honoring Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the Creators of Superman

Large 2-inch limited edition art medals commemorating Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the creators of Superman, the first comic book super-hero, are available from the non-profit Jewish-American Hall of Fame on a first come-first served basis. These high relief 3 oz. art medals, designed by award-winning medallist Eugene Daub, have maximum mintages of only 150 bronze, 75 pure silver and 35 gold-plated pure silver. These are offered for contributions of $50, $200 and $250, respectively. Mention that you read about this in The E-Sylum and you can get a 20% discount. You can order with paypal using email address of directorjahf@yahoo.com or by calling 818-225-1348.

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WHEN THE U.S. DEFAULTED ON ITS OBLIGATIONS

 

Congressional fights over raising the debt limit often result in superlatives. A failure to raise the debt limit would almost certainly shake the financial markets unless, perhaps, it was only a brief, technical breach with a clear resolution in sight.

But one superlative that should be retired is unprecedented. The debt limit has only been in effect since 1917 — Congress got tired of having to approve every spending request from the Treasury during World War I — but there are at least four instances in U.S. history when one could argue the United States defaulted on its obligations.

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LOOSE CHANGE: OCTOBER 17, 2021

The Coinage of Trebizond
 

THE SOUTHERN SHORE of the Black Sea is a narrow strip of fertile land–famed for excellent hazelnuts–between the sea and the rugged Anatolian plateau. The coastal fortress of Trebizond (Trapezus to the ancient Greeks and Romans, now Trabzon, Turkey) was the capital of a small, but remarkably durable medieval empire, remembered as the last independent outpost of Byzantine Civilization. We know something about the coinage of this lost empire thanks to diligent research by a handful of scholars and collectors during the past century, notably the great British numismatist Simon Bendall (1937-2019).

To read the complete article, see:
CoinWeek Ancient Coin Series: The Coinage of Trebizond (https://coinweek.com/ancient-coins/coinweek-ancient-coin-series-the-coinage-of-trebizond/)

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