As an avid magic token collector and researcher I would like to add some more information on it and ask for any information about the issuer, as none has been found. The Society of American Magicians (of which I am also a member) has no record of him.

Many years ago anyone who could do something that the ordinary person couldn't do was considered to be using magic. This included juggling, shadowography (making silhouettes using their hands), contortionism, ventriloquism, even to performing Punch and Judy shows etc.?

The token is listed as MT196 in Kuethe's reference Magicians' Tokens and Related Items, and was issued in both copper (R-5) and brass (R-6). Notable is the incorrect spelling of Samson, adding a 'P'.?

Related to last week's E-Sylum article on the Mint engraver Salathiel Ellis engraved cameos, I own a splendid high relief 2/3rds face forward Abraham Lincoln cameo, 67.5 x 57 mm in gold frame hinged pin which was a prized item in Norman Stack's personal collection for decades - he showed it to me when I was a kid.

It is pictured in color on the center cover of Stack's Philadelphia Americana sale Sep 23-26, 2009 and in color as lot 7739 "From the Stack Family Collection". I bought it for $17K.

I think your readers might be interested so I would like to announce that I have placed a Eureka Money Manual on eBay. The link is below. This is a coin price list issued by C.F. Clarke of Le Roy, NY, and according to information I found in the Newman Numismatic Portal it was issued in 1895. I found it in a lot of vintage coin books I purchased at an estate sale.

There is actually a small mystery there. The coin on the right is a 16 maravedis, minted in the 1660s in Madrid. Not a common find, especially in an area that didn’t have Spanish settlement in the late 1600s, but not entirely impossible. The coin on the left, although they didn’t show the more distinctive side, appears to be a dinero of Alfonso X of Castile, from the mid-1200s. Definitely not in circulation in the colonial period. That one must have been brought to the region by a collector, either modern or colonial, and the 1660s coin might be explained that way as well.

This was sent to me by another collector and I thought it appropriate to use and fool somebody with as this is the Chinese calendar "Year of the Pig."