ABOUT THIS ISSUE: SEPTEMBER 14, 2025

On Tuesday Google invited me to try its AI image generator. I asked it to "Create an image of a gold coin circa 1750 with the head of a King with a handlebar mustache and mole on his right cheek. The date is 1783 and the inscription around the edge is Latin for "nothing ventured, nothing gained."

Not too darn bad for a first shot. They say you can tell it to make corrections, but I gave up after twice asking it to fix that date. I ran the inscription "Nil atctum reputes si quid supperssdum" through Google Translate and it said the English translation is "Don't consider anything touched if something is left behind." Not so good, but damn, it created a convincing curved legend around the coin. This could be fun to play with.

I've felt behind the eight ball since before the ANA convention, but this week I've been getting caught up on some submissions that had gotten stuck in my inbox. I still haven't managed to write my ANA Diary, but I did at least manage to upload my photos to our Flickr archive, so that's a start.

Quote of the week, from today's Dustin cartoon: "Well, aren't you just a vast suppository of information..."

Finally, here's an interesting non-numismatic history article I came across this week.

6 Fascinating Facts About the Telephone (https://interestingfacts.com/telephone-facts/?lctg=fc99d453-51bd-454f-b10d-ed4d7ce03f91)

-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.