The line art of the woman coining is taken from page 38 of George Evans’s “Illustrated History of the United States Mint” which went through several editions in the late 19th century

I’m looking for print-resolution (300 dpi, ideally at 6 x 9 inches) portraits or other photographs of nickel industrialist Joseph Wharton, preferably dating from the 1860s or earlier. I’ve searched the Newman Numismatic Portal and I have queries out to the Wharton School of Business and other potential archival sources, but figured I’d check with the readership of The E-Sylum, as well. Anyone with a lead can reach me at dennis.tucker@whitman.com.

Tom Caldwell wrote in suggesting that collectors seek coins having different designs of a single denomination and struck during a single year. I wrote a series of columns on that very topic of "Transitional Pairs" for The Numismatist, and these ran April-September of 2012.

I imagine that most readers of The E-Sylum are ANA members and can access those columns online but, for those who are not ANA members, the same columns are reprinted at the NGC website, dated March-August, 2013.

Here's an unusual $1 note, and I hope you can see the two lines on the right side. See if you readers have any idea. If someone hasn't added these lines as a hoax, then this has to be some kind of amazing BEP error.

I also have a Minerva 35-dollar bimetallic gold-silver coin. The story of Minerva and many other attempted "micronations" appears in How to Start Your Own Country by Erwin S. "Filthy Pierre" Strauss (Loompanics, 1979; Breakout, 1984). Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, stimulated many people to at least talk about starting new communities Operation Atlantis, also a libertarian venture of the 1970s, minted 10-gram silver "deca" coins in two varieties, plain and reeded edge. Again, their story is in the Strauss book.

Perhaps the most common monetary media are the notes issued by Hutt River Principality, which is surrounded by Australia and completely unassociated with Ayn Rand or the libertarians. Allow me to suggest that for that very reason HRP is a venture with several decades of nominal success. Their website is here: http://www.principality-hutt-river.com and was recently updated.

The Principality of Sealand (https://www.sealandgov.org) also remains successful. They, too, issue stamps and coins. Sealand survived on a workable business plan, radio broadcasts that are more interesting than BBC fare.

On the other hand, the Internet has spawned a swarm of "cinderellas" that have no other reality except to sell their postage stamps and paper currencies.

I found this while looking for something else, and thought it might be of interest.

If we can securitize mortgages, why not coins and other collectibles? How about Rent-A-Coin? The lessee would have to pay for appropriate insurance coverage, of course. Museum curators put together great exhibitions by borrowing items from other museums and from collectors. Can, and should, this be permitted for competitive numismatic exhibits?

How about numismatic time shares? How about trusts, life estates and remainder interests in numismatic property? Unfortunately, nothing I collect is valuable enough to make such property concepts practical, but just wait, it will happen sooner or later.

Your 2010 article "SO WHAT IS THIS STRANGE 'GOOD LUCK' SYMBOL?" has reference to my web site about the symbols being Runic Symbols which I no longer believe. They could be hieroglyphs as I now state but it make no sense. I have been looking to the meaning for years and have not found anything helpful. I have looked up Hobo symbols and Native American symbols and others but with no luck.

I was rather surprised to see so much on baseball cards in last week's issue of The E-Sylum. Here is another numismatic link. Topps, the baseball card giant, has come out this year with a series "Have Ball, Will Travel". Each card includes an actual fare token for the city where the pictured player was active. I have never seen the actual product, but it does look very interesting. Charles Hodder found this for our Transportation Token Collectors group on Facebook.