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LOOSE CHANGE: JUNE 15, 2025Here are some additional items in the media this week that may be of interest. -Editor John Feigenbaum of Whitman Publishing was interviewed by USA TODAY on the future of the cent. -Editor
Doubtful. The U.S. Mint made about 3.2 billion pennies in 2024, according to its annual report, so there will be billions of 2025 pennies available. "There's nothing, statistically, that says they should become valuable," John Feigenbaum, publisher of rare coin price guide Greysheet and executive director of the Professional Numismatists Guild (PNG), a nonprofit organization composed of many of the nation's rare coin experts, told USA TODAY. The coin's legacy could be akin to the 1976 bicentennial quarter, Feigenbaum said. "Everybody, at the time, was hoarding them (and) you couldn't find bicentennial quarters in change. Now people have plastic bags full of them and they're still worth 25 cents," he added. However, the 2025 pennies could have an alternative value as an entry point to collectors. "This would surely spike demand … in other Lincoln pennies, like the ones that go all the way back to 1909," Feigenbaum said, adding that the Lincoln penny, which first featured the 16th president in that year, has had "quite a run." Parents could get a Lincoln penny coin collecting book – options include those from Whitman Publishing, which also publishes Greysheet – and talk to their children about "American history, and who this Lincoln guy is and what would the different designs be all about," Feigenbaum said.
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Kavan Ratnatunga passed along this article about cash hoarding in the U.K. Thanks. -Editor
Victoria Cleland said on Tuesday that UK households were building a cash contingency pot, much as they did during the Covid and cost of living crises. She said the Bank had tracked a significant increase in the number of banknotes in circulation in recent months, continuing a rising trend since 2022, at a time when the volume of cash transactions has "gone down significantly". In comments at the Cash in the UK conference, Cleland said cash hoarding suggested households were responding to a more volatile global backdrop after the pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the trade uncertainty sparked by Donald Trump's tariffs, Bloomberg reported.
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Kavan adds: "80% of US$100 bills are estimated to be outside the USA"
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Stack's Bowers Director of Consignments & Senior Numismatist Dennis Hengeveld published an article on the state of the world paper money market. Here's an excerpt - see the complete article online. -Editor 
From my (professional) perspective, I do see a few trends that are worth mentioning. First, collectors are focusing more on quality. While not everyone seeks uncirculated notes, premiums for notes that are deemed original and problem-free are becoming more and more pronounced. On the other side of that equation, problem notes (especially those that have been repaired or otherwise "improved") are becoming less desirable, and market prices reflect that. Another trend is that many collectors have abandoned the idea that completion is a feasible goal, except for the most modern collections. As a result, collectors are focusing more on notes they like, with the completion of sets or a country being less frequently taken on as a challenge. One of the biggest challenges facing the world paper money market is the limited supply of quality material. I've mentioned this before, and it remains a major hurdle. Many rare notes are genuinely scarce, often unavailable for a generation or more. Unlike U.S. coins, where assembling a high-quality Morgan dollar set can be done in a single show or auction, world paper money presents far fewer opportunities. Watch our sales closely and you'll see notes that haven't appeared publicly in decades. This can be frustrating for serious collectors: the notes they seek may be locked away in long-term collections, with no clear path to acquisition. On the other hand, if those notes appear at public auction today, we can expect spirited bidding and results that match that.
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I've always wondered what cryptocurrency ATMs are good for. According to this story from New Orleans, they're a go-to destination for scammers. Found via News & Notes from the Society of Paper Money Collectors (Volume X, Number 52, June 10, 2025). -Editor 
Almost as soon the new form of money called crypto-currency became widespread, sophisticated scammers turned to an even newer form of technology – crypto-based ATMs – to prey on victims throughout the New Orleans metro area. WWL Louisiana previously revealed how crooks are getting people to feed money into these ATMs using false promises of getting their loved ones out of jail on electronic ankle bracelets. But the scammers are going far beyond that, using every other trick in the book to steal from people using this new machinery of modern life. Similar to old-school versions of fraud, con artists are using scare tactics to fool people into thinking their bank account has been hacked, that they urgently need to make a mysterious overdue payment or they need to pay to get a loved one out of jail. "It's non-reversible, you can't charge it back, you can't reverse it and it's done in seconds," he said. "So it's the equivalent of convincing someone to go in their bank, withdraw cash and then go outside and give it to you." And if anyone directs you to a cryptocurrency ATM, Matherne said, stop in your tracks because it's probably a scam.
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Wayne Homren, Editor The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org. To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor at this address: whomren@gmail.com To subscribe go to: https://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/esylum All Rights Reserved. NBS Home Page Contact the NBS webmaster 
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