"As I promised, above is a quick picture I took last Sunday with Carl Subak at his 100th birthday party. Carl was surprised to see a small gathering of friends and family to celebrate his special day (which was actually a few days earlier). All the guests brought photos with to share with Carl. Jon told me that Carl loves photos now. He prefers photos on photo paper and not from an iphone. It was an interesting morning printing out (or trying to!) photos to bring to Carl. We rely so much on our phone now and the “cloud” that the days of printing them out are starting to be a thing of the past."

When Frank Sinatra sung his song about the three coins in a fountain this tradition had existed for nearly a century. It was invented by a German archaeologist named Wolfgang Helbing. Here's a story we published a few years ago.

Though not related to numismatics, the History Blog has a pretty neat antique book-related item - a rare medieval book chest.

In the January issue of The E-Sylum, Jeff Wing asked about a piece of Greek paper money that featured a picture of an ancient Greek coin. The coin is a didrachm from the Epirote Republic. Attached is a photo on an authentic specimen.

Please pass along my thanks to the three readers who made suggestions for the host coin of the 1696-A Recoined Sol. All three were good guesses and had some promise, but Julia Casey nailed it -- the legends match up pretty much exactly! Another feather in her cap - she has proven amazingly adept at tracking these sorts of things down! The funny thing is that I did look through the Swiss cantons in the Krause book but there was no match there - or at least not one that was plated or had the legend written out.

When I sent you the request I said that there would likely be someone in the group who would know the answer, and I am pleased to see that rang true - with nearly 6,000 collectors you have formed the 21st century equivalent of Selfridge's Information Bureau! I suspect that just this group could likely write or rewrite the entire history of numismatics, from every era and every country in the world! Pretty amazing, isn't it?