On Friday, May 17, CBS Television broadcast "No Exit" hosted by Jane Pauley. The show discussed traffic congestion and some commuting alternatives. One segment featured Dan Hansen who regularly commutes to work on a unicycle.

Dan is a Minnesota numismatist and E-Sylum subscriber. He took his unicycle to Philadelphia last year for the World's Fair of Money. He went out one morning around 3:00 A.M. to tour the streets of Philadelphia without traffic congestion.

The attached photo shows Dan with CBS correspondent Susan Spencer in the courtyard of the Mill City Museum where Dan works in downtown Minneapolis.

I'm sure readers have noticed that U.S. auction houses are beginning to collect sales taxes on purchases made by successful bidders (unless the bidders have resale permits that exempt them from the taxes).

Some of them are improperly charging sales tax on U. S. Post Office shipping charges.

States lack the power to tax the Federal government or its agencies. Have you ever been charged sales tax when buying postage stamps? The reason that you're not charged is because of this lack of State power.

If an auction house uses a private shipper such as UPS or FedEx, a sales tax on that shipper's charge is proper. It is not proper on a U. S. Post Office charge.

Sales tax is proper on the hammer price, the buyer's premium, and the auction house's charge for packing. Some of the auctioneers absorb the packing charge as part of the BP, others charge separately.

I recalculate invoices that are improperly itemized.

This is a coin press that struck the first medal commemorating the founding of Belgium. When the Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert were built in 1846-1847, the coin press was too big to be moved, so they built the arcade around it....it's now a restaurant and wine bar!

I would like to contact Roger Dewardt Lane, author of the excellent book Brother Can You Spare A Dime? - Modern Dime Size Silver Coins of the World with a research question about some information in the book that I have not been able to track down anywhere else. Unfortunately, Mr. DeWardt Lane's only known email address has gone quiet. If anybody has a phone number or known good email address for Roger, it'd be appreciated.

You don't know me, but you probably saved me more than $90 today! I found an item in an online auction with the headline: "Extremely Rare 1700s Siberian Coin Fort Ross". The estimate for the coin was more than a few hundred dollars. I bid $80 on it, plus a hefty premium. After the bid hit my maximum amount, I decided to do more research. (My initial work proved to be quite poor!)

Fortunately, I found your articles. After reading the first one, I contacted the auction company. Equally fortunately, the gracious representative immediately removed my bid. Thank you, Wayne!

Continued success with your numismatic efforts.

Regarding the good luck token 'and 20 years after you're dead', this is a magic token as well, the reverse of a Balante 'Mr Hypnosis' token issued in 1968, probably in Canada. As you didn't depict the other side, here is MT030.100 in Paul Corville's magic token reference update.

As to George's suggestion, I thought of dropping a few ancient Roman in an archaeological dig in Fairbanks year ago. Never got around to it.

Regarding the comment last week that: "Wouldn't it be fun, and good PR, for coin collectors to 'salt' various old coins in unlikely locales?" I think it is a very bad idea in the long run. Archaeologists depend heavily on coins to date old sites, and get an idea of who was doing what there at the time. Imagine if random old coins started turning up in odd old locations-it would destroy the credibility of coins as useful dating and societal indicators, since there would always be the doubt that the coins could be salted. It would make a lot of publicity for a few months, but it may not turn out to be good publicity in the end. It would destroy a valuable archaeological tool for serious investigations and discredit collectors.

It is bad enough that some archaeologists dislike people removing coins from old sites, but then adding extraneous coins to a wide variety of sites would completely destroy the utility of coins to historical investigations. Just read the later article on how an Australian coin find could be from Africa. What value would there be in this investigation if the question were raised whether someone salted the area 5 years ago?