ABOUT THIS ISSUE: MAY 4, 2025

On Thursday I had my second cataract surgery. It went well, and by Friday I was seeing the world without glasses for the first time since the third grade. Personal computers weren't invented yet, but here I am working in front of my computer not needing eyewear to function. In about a month I'll get a new prescription matching my new vision, but in the meantime I'm getting used to seeing my real face in mirrors and on occasion using readers and sunglasses picked off the rack at the nearby pharmacy. My world's a much brighter and colorful place now.

Earlier this month I'd gotten a nice note from Mike Costanzo - see his note about Walter Breen elsewhere in this issue. Mike wrote:

"I recently purchased a mixed lot of old Legacy magazines from 1988-90, and one still had your mailing address label on it. What's really weird is the street behind me is also named Antietam. Other streets in my neighborhood are named Gettysburg, Bull Run, Antietam, Sumter, and Vicksburg."

Legacy magazie Wayne Homren mailing label closeup

Wow - that's interesting. I purged a lot of catalogs and periodicals when I got married and bought a new house. I purged more when we moved from Pittsburgh to Virginia. The Antietam address is where I grew up. My parents lived there until they passed away. I kept using that mailing address for a while after leaving home. Nice to hear my efforts to find homes for the printed copies weren't in vain. I named my business "Rebellion Numismatics" for that street and my interest in U.S. Civil War numismatics.

This also being Kentucky Derby weekend, I thought it would be fun to find a numismatic connection. So I went searching for images of nice tokens or medals, but had a hard time. There's a Kentucky Derby footrace for humans that produces medals, but I was looking for horserace medals. When I found a few nice ones it turned out that we'd published them here in The E-Sylum in 2022. That happens a lot - the circular search for quality content. Below is a nicely toned example of Marcel Jovine's silver medal for the 100th anniversary of the Kentucky Derby, from an article by Kentucky Colonel Dennis Tucker.

Kentucky Derby 100th anniversary medal obverse

Kentucky Derby 100th anniversary medal reverse

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
KENTUCKY DERBY CENTENNIAL MEDAL (https://www.coinbooks.org/v25/esylum_v25n21a27.html)

And here's a fun non-numismatic article about Ten Famous American Horses. Can anyone find numismatic tributes to some of these equines? It's a great list - how many can you identify? Traveller, Comanche, Beautiful Jim Key, Man o' War, Trigger, Sergeant Reckless, Mr. Ed, Black Jack, Khartoum, Secretariat.

To read the complete article, see:
May 3, 2025 (https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-3-2025)

And sometimes through total happenstance, our Flickr archive juxtaposes an interesting pair of images - here are two numismatists, a century apart.

No other numismatic adventures to report, just the usual flow of news, auctions, and reader comments. Keep those (electronic) cards and letters coming, folks. -Editor

Wayne Homren
Wayne Homren is the founding editor of The E-Sylum and a consultant for the Newman Numismatic Portal. His collecting interests at various times included U.S. Encased Postage Stamps, merchant counterstamps, Pittsburgh Obsolete paper money, Civil War tokens and scrip, Carnegie Hero Medals, charge coins and numismatic literature. He also collects and has given presentations on the work of Money Artist J.S.G. Boggs. In the non-numismatic world he's worked in artificial intelligence, data science, and as a Program Manager for the U.S. Department of Defense.

Garrett Ziss
Garrett Ziss is a numismatic collector and researcher, with a focus on American paper money and early U.S. silver and copper coins. He is also a part-time U.S. coin cataloger for Heritage Auctions. Garrett assists Editor Wayne Homren by editing and formatting a selection of articles and images each week. When he's not engaged in numismatics, Garrett is a Senior Honors student at the University of Pittsburgh.

Pete Smith
Numismatic researcher and author Pete Smith of Minnesota has written about early American coppers, Vermont coinage, numismatic literature, tokens and medals, the history of the U.S. Mint and much more. Author of American Numismatic Biographies, he contributes original articles to The E-Sylum often highlighting interesting figures in American numismatic history.

Greg Bennick
Greg Bennick (www.gregbennick.com) is a keynote speaker and long time coin collector with a focus on major mint error coins and US counterstamps. He is on the board of both CONECA and TAMS and enjoys having in-depth conversations with prominent numismatists from all areas of the hobby. Have ideas for other interviewees? Contact him anytime on the web or via instagram @minterrors.

John Nebel
Numismatist, photographer, and ANS Board member and Fellow John Nebel of Boulder, CO helped the ANA and other clubs like NBS get online in the early days of the internet, hosting websites gratis through his Computer Systems Design Co. To this day he hosts some 50 ANA member club sites along with our coinbooks.org site, making the club and our E-Sylum archive available to collectors and researchers worldwide.

Bruce Perdue
Encased coinage collector (encasedcoins.info) Bruce Perdue of Aurora, Illinois has been the volunteer NBS webmaster from its early days and works each week to add the latest E-Sylum issue to our archive and send out the email announcement.