ABOUT THIS ISSUE: OCTOBER 12, 2025

Let's see, where did the week go? No races, but being off work with nice weather gave me a chance to get in a lot of walking. I won't need to upgrade my pedometer to have another digit, but it's getting a workout. I went a little farther each day, even making my way over to the W&OD Trail - "the skinniest park in Virginia." It's a 45-mile trail along the former roadbed of the Washington & Old Dominion Railroad.

Being off work has felt like a nice dry run for retirement, at least until my boss called Thursday and told me I'm being called back in next week from the government shutdown furlough. I won't get paid until *checks notes* maybe this is over, so that part's still like retirement. Or being Editor Emeritus, which Redbook Editor Emeritus Ken Bressett described as being, "you work anyway but don't get paid anymore."

Friday morning brought this retirement news:
"You'll never retire: A government panel in Germany has proposed raising the country's retirement age to 73 to prevent the collapse of their pension system. I'm a workaholic but even to me, making 73-year-olds keep working full-time seems insane. Think how long it would take them to open their emails every morning at that age?"

Opening emails is a lot of what I do in my editor's role. At first I thought an email about the "Treasures of the Occult" book was spam, but no, it was from Baldwin's and announced a legit numismatic book that sounds perfect for us E-Sylum coin freaks and weirdos. Check it out elsewhere in this issue.

Finally, here are some interesting non-numismatic articles I came across this week.
A volcanic eruption indirectly led to the invention of the bicycle. (https://historyfacts.com/science-industry/fact/volcanic-eruption-bicycle-invention/?lctg=fc99d453-51bd-454f-b10d-ed4d7ce03f91)
David Foster Wallace Tried to Warn Us About these Eight Things (https://www.honest-broker.com/p/david-foster-wallace-tried-to-warn)
What it looks like in the world's data center capital (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2025/data-centers-artificial-intelligence-virginia-photos/)

-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.