ABOUT THIS ISSUE: JANUARY 25, 2026

With Monday being a holiday here in the U.S., I got a small early start on The E-Sylum, ran some household errands, and had a nice video meeting with my assistant Garrett Ziss and NBS President Len Augsburger. We reviewed some new tools Garrett is building to help speed our work, and discussed options for the expected weekend snowstorm now hitting much of the nation. While my wife and neighbors were hoisting a pre-storm brew at a local bar Saturday evening, I was working on this issue to finish more of it before possible power outages. Snow arrived here in northern Virginia overnight Saturday and changed to sleet midmorning, earlier than expected. I expect to have a snow day off work Monday as the region digs out from the snow and ice.

Given the possibility of a power outage due to ice accumulation, I prepared this week's ads early and periodically sent drafts of the issue to Garrett. I managed to wrap up after dinner and sent everything off to Bruce for publishing. There is always more that could be added to an issue, but better safe than sorry. It's been a long time since I completed an issue that early on a Sunday. Hope you enjoyed it. And if you're in the path of this winter storm, be well and stay safe and warm.

Here are some interesting non-numismatic articles I came across this week.
Jukebox heroes: H. Lazar and Son installs and repairs everything from jukeboxes with nickel slots to electronic dart machines (https://www.post-gazette.com/business/career-workplace/2026/01/18/h-lazar-and-son-bloomfield-pittsburgh-jukeboxes/stories/202601140081)
Stolen $30K harp found after man jumped naked in Pittsburgh river (https://www.wtaj.com/weird-news/stolen-30k-harp-found-after-man-jumped-naked-in-pittsburgh-river/)
Archaeologists Say They've Unearthed a Massive Medieval Cargo Ship That's the Largest Vessel of Its Kind Ever Found (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/archaeologists-say-theyve-unearthed-a-massive-medieval-cargo-ship-thats-the-largest-vessel-of-its-kind-ever-found-180987984/)
Pin Point: The Most Common 4-Digit PIN Numbers (https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/most-common-pin-codes/)
Gladys West, mathematician whose work paved the way for GPS, dies at 95 (https://www.npr.org/2026/01/23/nx-s1-5685027/gladys-west-gps-mathematician)
American high school student stuns scientists by mapping 1.5 million previously unknown space objects (https://www.futura-sciences.com/en/american-high-school-student-stuns-scientists-by-mapping-1-5-million-previously-unknown-space-objects_23177/)
What is true? (https://www.understandably.com/p/what-is-true)
The pioneer behind Google Gemini is tackling an even bigger challenge—using AI to ‘solve' disease (https://fortune.com/article/demis-hassabis-deepmind-artificial-intelligence-google-alphabet-drug-discovery-isomorphic/)
The end of the fictions: The operating system of civilization is upgrading. Mark Carney noticed. (https://www.exponentialview.co/p/the-end-of-the-fictions)
Can AI replace me? I asked AI. (https://www.understandably.com/p/can-ai-replace-me-i-asked-ai)
How many gallons does a 10-gallon hat hold? (https://interestingfacts.com/fact/a-10-gallon-hat-actually-only-holds-three-quarters-of-a-gallon/)

-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.