With Monday being the Memorial Day holiday here in the U.S., I was able to get a small head start in the morning, creating the template for the week's issue, answering some email and drafting the Notes From E-Sylum Readers section.

One of the emails was from Darryl Atchison, whose note seeking a 1958 RCNA Program appears in this issue. I responded: "Thanks for the reminder. I blame this on ants. My wife found some in our kitchen and sent me on an errand for ant traps last night. I was rushed to get the issue out and forgot about this." The ants seem under control now.

My diary article elsewhere in this issue has a narrative and images of my adventures this week numismatic and otherwise. I worked on The E-Sylum a bit each day from my Pittsburgh hotel room, and spent the weekend finishing up at home in Virginia. Saturday afternoon was the Kolbe & Fanning literature sale and some of my lots were on offer, so I periodically checked the sale's progress. I'm happy to see the John A. Beck archive (lot 330) found a new home. I found this cache at the home of the late Emerson Smith, working just steps ahead of a crew tossing everything left behind by his family into a dumpster. I think of it as my numismatic bibliophile "Indiana Jones" moment.

Midafternoon Saturday I saw an email on the Colonial Coins group from Dave Townson offering a number of 1990s fixed price lists from colonial coin dealers such as Don Mituzas, Tom Rinaldo, Frank Van Valen, Jeff Rock, and Chris Young. My old friend Bob Metzger took up the offer and I quickly reached out to see if we could digitize these for the Newman Portal. Bob quickly agreed and now Dave will ship them to Len Augsburger for scanning and Len will return them to Bob. Thanks, everyone. I also chimed in to suggest a similar treatment for a couple boxes of Colonial Coin Collectors Club (C4) materials.

The most unexpected interlude came about late afternoon Saturday when I noticed a text from an old high school friend sharing some photos while on a visit to Fairbanks, Alaska. On a whim I wrote back and asked, "If you walk past Alaska Rare Coins on 2nd Ave B, say hi to my friend Dick Hanscom. High school friend wrote back, "I'll try and stop in and say hey for you. I'm currently a couple blocks away." Shortly afterwards I got this photo of Dick in his shop and in return shared this selfie I took Friday at the PAN Show.

That was fun and unexpected. Thanks, guys. Small world. I'd love to get to Alaska someday to visit myself.

This week I also heard from Chris Eimer in London. I had just been talking about my time in London with my Garrett Ziss. I sent him a compilation of my old E-Sylum diary articles from that year. I never found a publisher for it, but at some point I think I'll put it on the Newman Portal as a downloadable .pdf. and do a few print-on-demand copies for my family.

BIBLIOPHILE QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

The problem with life is, by the time you can read women like a book, your library card has expired. -Milton Berle

-Editor