ABOUT THIS ISSUE: APRIL 19, 2026

I got a late start this week, only beginning work on the issue on Saturday morning. My daughter had recommended the new film "The Drama" with Zendaya and Robert Pattison, so I went to see it Thursday evening after work. It was good, and I'd recommend it. No special effects, just great acting and directing with a mix of humor, darkness, surprises and suspense. Friday was a date night with my wife, and we went to an upscale new steakhouse in our area. We had a good meal and I ate well, tipping the bathroom scale upward the next morning, without even trying the desserts. I'd wondered, "what can they put on their dessert menu when there's a Cheesecake Factory next door?" The chef gave us a lengthy recitation of the three or four choices and afterward I said "apparently, you put a lot of adjectives on the dessert menu." No, we didn't run next door for dessert. I did enjoy a bourbon from their extensive selection.

My only numismatic encounter this week came when I went out Wednesday evening to run through the carwash to lose a coating of spring pollen and stopped at our Walmart Supercenter to pick up a few groceries. I'd ignored some paper trash in the shopping cart ("buggy" for those of you in certain states). But as I set something in the cart I took another look, and when I unfolded one of the papers, I found this.

I finished a book this week and acquired a new one. I enjoyed reading Sebastian Mallaby's new biography: "The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, Deepmind, and the Quest for Superintelligence." The new one is "The Banker Who Made America: Thomas Willing and the Rise of American Financial Aristocracy" by Richard Vague, who also writes the "Delancey Place" blog we excerpt on occasion.

Thought for the week, courtesy of the internet; "Portugal is smaller than the US, Russia and China combined."

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

6 Crunchy Popcorn Facts To Munch On (https://interestingfacts.com/popcorn-facts/)

Elizabeth Siddal: The Tragedy of the World's First Supermodel (https://www.barnebys.com/blog/elizabeth-siddal-the-tragedy-of-the-worlds-first-supermodel)

France pulls $15B of gold out of US vaults, and more EU member states may follow. (https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/commodities/articles/france-pulls-15b-gold-us-171300099.html)

A pre-Code Joan Crawford film was released from legal limbo after almost a century (https://www.avclub.com/joan-crawford-lost-film-letty-lynton-screened-after-90-years-lawsuit)

Upstate NY man in cow costume accused of attempting to stab family member (https://www.syracuse.com/state/2026/04/upstate-ny-man-in-cow-costume-accused-of-attempting-to-stab-family-member.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.