ABOUT THIS ISSUE: AUGUST 10, 2025

Another busy week, although Monday, not so much. I met my family at a local restaurant for a nice dinner after work. It was near a movie theater, and though no one else was interested in a movie I reserved myself a seat for The Naked Gun. The casting of Liam Neesen and Pamela Anderson was brilliant. It was uneven but thoroughly silly and often very funny. Not everyone will get the in-jokes and references to the earlier Leslie Nielson efforts, and even I missed Priscilla Presley's cameo. But it was plenty good enough entertainment for an evening. I enjoyed the little things they threw in everywhere, like the professional wrestling match at the "Ponzi-scheme.com Arena" with an NPR logo on the mat.

Numismatically I spent more time than usual on The E-Sylum as we worked on the move to MailChimp. I moved the mailing list over and dealt with various errors and exceptions; then Bruce and I worked on updating all the links to the subscription management pages. Let us know if you encounter any problems.

I also worked on plans for the upcoming ANA convention, including business for a sister organization, the Numismatic Literary Guild. I hope to see a number of our readers at the show in Oklahoma City.

I'll end with this question from comedian Rita Rudner: "How come when you mix water and flour together you get glue...and then you add eggs and sugar and you get cake? Where does the glue go?" -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.