ABOUT THIS ISSUE: APRIL 5, 2026

Another Monday, another medical appointment. Guess I'm reaching the "organ recital" stage of life, always talking about some body part gone wrong. This time it's one of my fingers. It has a bump near the fingernail. I mentioned it during a routine annual screening with my dermatologist, but he said a permanent fix might require a hand surgeon. So he made a referral, noting his diagnosis as a "digital cyst," which means "you have a bump on your finger." But a diagnosis isn't a cure, and the surgeon said it's due to bone spurs from arthritis. So I'm going to schedule a procedure.

Since I ordinarily leave the house very early for work, when I have one of these morning medical appointments I often leave at the normal time and go to the nearby Panera for breakfast and to get some work done on my laptop. This time I was able to go through a lot of email and get a start on this week's E-Sylum issue. But instead of going to work after my appointment, I took the rest of the day off and went home to work on the quarterly invoices for our advertisers and supporters so they could be mailed out Tuesday morning. As of yesterday, 42% of the money has already been collected. Wow! When you see one of these great folks at a coin show, please do what I always strive to do and thank them for their steadfast support for this effort. We couldn't do it at this level without them.

Tuesday night I had a Zoom call with NBS President Len Augsburger and my E-Sylum Assistant Garrett Ziss. We talked through some ideas for updating our RSS feed, which other websites could use to incorporate some of our content.

Finally, here are some interesting non-numismatic articles I came across this week.

A Civil War battle was briefly paused so that soldiers could watch a fistfight. (https://historyfacts.com/us-history/fact/a-civil-war-battle-was-briefly-paused-so-that-soldiers-could-watch-a-fistfight/)

The last surviving Civil War veteran died in 1956. (https://interestingfacts.com/fact/the-last-surviving-civil-war-veteran-died-in-1956/)

The costume maker who convinced Hersheypark to embrace candy mascots and ‘chocolatize' their old-timey theme park (https://theconversation.com/the-costume-maker-who-convinced-hersheypark-to-embrace-candy-mascots-and-chocolatize-their-old-timey-theme-park-269780)

‘Hannah Montana' Understood the Internet Before We Did (https://www.thefp.com/p/hannah-montana-understood-the-internet)

I used AI to dispute a $1,200 dental bill. I don't see the glory in wasting my energy on tedious life tasks. (https://www.businessinsider.com/used-ai-help-me-dispute-medical-bill-1200-2026-3)

An AI Agent Was Banned From Creating Wikipedia Articles, Then Wrote Angry Blogs About Being Banned (https://www.404media.co/an-ai-agent-was-banned-from-creating-wikipedia-articles-then-wrote-angry-blogs-about-being-banned/)

-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.