ABOUT THIS ISSUE: JULY 13, 2025

Busy week this time - I was working on transitioning our email list to the MailChimp platform while also keeping track of quarterly payments from our advertisers. Thursday evening Len Augsburger and Bruce Perdue were on a video call with me while I walked Bruce through how to publish an issue on the new platform. The transition should be seamless for readers and we hope to complete it this summer.

On Friday night I got a text from Garrett wondering if I'd have any articles for him to work on. Crap!! - I'd been so busy I'd forgotten. First thing Saturday I sent him several items that he turned around that day for this issue. Later that morning I learned of the passing of George Kolbe and dropped everything to work on our lead article for the week.

That evening I worked on the money art exhibit story and just had to take this selfie to show my t-shirt for the day, a cartoon nod to Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte, whose work was also echoed in one of the money art works. Our daughter had no clue when she saw my shirt that morning, but she's majoring in nursing, not art history, so I gave her a pass.

If the below photo were numismatic it would be a shoo-in for Image of the Week. I ran across it Saturday morning. My caption would be "Prototype of the world's first hearing aids." Have a great week. -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 pursuing a Master's Degree in Quantitative Economics 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.