ABOUT THIS ISSUE: NOVEMBER 23, 2025

My diary article tells all about my Tuesday evening. Thursday our daughter Hannah came home from college for the holiday break, and Friday night her and my wife went to see the Wicked: For Good movie. Being back at the office fulltime I didn't get to really dive into working on The E-Sylum until the weekend. But Garrett was working hard (and smart), using some automation to help create a number of articles. Thanks! And speaking of thanks, here's hoping our U.S. readers have great Thanksgiving. This image is from the American Numismatic Association Money Museum Society of Medalists virtual exhibit. Check it out at https://www.money.org/money-museum/virtual-exhibits-mia-case20/ .

Abundance Turkey and Corn medal by Albert Laessle

Finally, here are some interesting non-numismatic articles I came across this week.
Thousands of rare American recordings — some 100 years old — go online for all to enjoy (https://laist.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/thousands-of-rare-american-recordings-go-online-for-all-to-enjoy)
How the Internet Rewired Work—and What That Tells Us About AI's Likely Impact (https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/internet-work-ai-9c42127d)
Cardea or Carda was the ancient Roman goddess of the hinge (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardea#Cardea_and_doorways)
Man Who Stuffed Parakeets in His Pants Faces Smuggling Charges (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/15/us/parakeets-smuggling-in-pants.html)

-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.