ABOUT THIS ISSUE: MARCH 15, 2026

As an Official Old Guy (OOG), this week was one of medical appointments, all thankfully uneventful. On Tuesday a surgeon successfully removed a pea-sized spot of facial skin cancer below my left eye. On Thursday afternoon I visited the oral surgeon working on two dental implants, and on Friday I had another colonoscopy and I'm good for another five years there. Tomorrow morning will be a trip to my eye doctor. I'll be happy to get back to a normal work schedule for a while.

Seen on the interwebs: "My insurance plan doesn't cover GLP-1 medication, so my doctor gave me an exercise regimen he guarantees will help me lose weight. I just have to move my head from left to right anytime someone offers me food."

Finally, here are some interesting non-numismatic articles I came across this week. Check out the cool data-driven quizzes to see how rare your qualities and traits are compared to the rest of humanity. And... would you distract a 1,500 pound bull while wearing clown makeup? That's probably rare and likely getting rarer by the hour...

How Rare Are You? (https://www.howrareami.org/)

New 3D images show wreck of USS Monitor, iconic Civil War ship that sank in 1862 (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/shipwreck-3d-images-uss-monitor-civil-war/)

Man Finds Ancestor's Freedom Papers While Cleaning Out His Mom's Home. Discovery Called 'Treasure' by Expert (https://people.com/man-finds-ancestors-freedom-papers-while-cleaning-mothers-home-11917504)

Philogelos: The World's Oldest Surviving Joke Book from Ancient Greece (https://greekreporter.com/2026/03/09/philogelos-ancient-greece-joke-book/)

Ornamental Hermits Were 18th-Century England's Must-Have Garden Accessory (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ornamental-hermits-were-18th-century-englands-must-have-garden-accessory-180982469/)

Big Optimism: Who you gonna call? Or, "The Girl-Less, Cuss-Less Telephone" (https://www.understandably.com/p/big-optimism-who-you-gonna-call)

Sculptor Thaddeus Mosley, who found international fame in his 90s, is dead (https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2026/03/14/thaddeus-mosley-dead-sculptor/)

The Periodic Table of Cognition (https://kevinkelly.substack.com/p/the-periodic-table-of-cognition)

The Skills That Will Matter When AI Can Do Almost Everything (https://www.singularityweblog.com/human-skills-ai/)

The audacious plan to refill the Great Salt Lake (https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/utah-refill-great-salt-lake-us-olympics-2034-rescue-project-rcna261422)

In a clown's shoes: How bull fighters and barrelmen protect cowboys at the Houston rodeo (https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/events/houston-livestock-show-and-rodeo/2026/03/09/545548/houston-rodeo-cowboys-bull-riding-clown-fighter/)

-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.