ABOUT THIS ISSUE: APRIL 12, 2026

I got a late start on the issue this week, beginning with Pete Smith's submission Saturday morning. My wife and oldest son were on a day trip to see our daughter at college to celebrate her birthday. I stayed behind to look after my wife's 91-year-old Mom. I did some chores, too, sweeping leaves from our basement stairs and doing a couple loads of laundry. After lunch I took a walk for exercise. By 3pm I only had the one article ready to go. But Garrett had completed seven of them, and I pulled them into the issue. By the end of the evening I had 15 articles ready, a good enough start that I could finish off the issue on Sunday without too much stress.

I've been checking my change looking for the new semiquincentennial coins, but so far, no luck. I had a false alarm Saturday when one shiny piece with an unfamiliar design turned out to be the 2009 Northern Mariana Islands quarter.

Here are some interesting non-numismatic articles I came across this week. Were any of our readers born on April 11, 1954? Maybe that day had something going for it after all.

How Amazing Stories Served as the Blueprint for American Science Fiction (https://lithub.com/how-amazing-stories-served-as-the-blueprint-for-american-science-fiction/)

Original Memphis: The Legendary Sun Studio (https://focuslgbt.com/blog/original-memphis-the-legendary-sun-studio/)

April 11, 1954, may have been the most boring day in the 20th century. (https://interestingfacts.com/fact/april-11-1954-may-have-been-the-most-boring-day-in-the-20th-century/)

7 Weird Spellings That Are Actually Correct (https://wordsmarts.com/weird-spellings/)

Time Brings Order to the Universe (https://nautil.us/time-brings-order-to-the-universe-1279584)

The busiest place you've never seen: What life looks like on the world's most remote inhabited island (https://apps.npr.org/life-on-tristan-da-cunha/)

Your Boss Should Be Making You Learn to Vibe Code (https://www.thefp.com/p/your-boss-should-be-making-you-learn-to-vibe-code)

-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.