ABOUT THIS ISSUE: SEPTEMBER 20, 2026

In the Real World beyond numismatics, this week we took my wife out to dinner for her birthday and enjoyed some birthday cake with neighbors. We also met with a lawyer about documents for her mother, and I picked up the resized wedding band I'd had to get cut off back in August. That was just Wednesday.

I went out for 3.3 mile runs on two mornings and Monday night took in a movie - "By Any Means" with Mark Wahlberg. In the vein of "The Green Book" and "BlacKkKlansman", it's a (potentially) true story based on the reported involvement of a mob hitman in civil rights investigations in 1960s Mississippi. Wahlberg plays Gregory Scarpa Sr., "a ruthless capo in the Colombo crime family".

My Diary articles cover most of my numismatic activities, but I also had a nice "show and tell" session at lunch Thursday with a former boss who is also a collector. I brought some off-center type coins and obsolete paper money acquired since I'd last seen him, and he showed me photos of his collection, including U.S. type coins, a Spanish cob and a countermarked piece. I'll see if I can help him find a Flowing Hair dollar for his collection.

Here are several interesting non-numismatic articles I came across this week.

A Rare Marble Sculpture by America's First Professional Female Sculptor Sat Hidden in Plain Sight for Decades in an English Garden (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/a-rare-marble-sculpture-by-americas-first-professional-female-sculptor-sat-hidden-in-plain-sight-for-decades-in-english-garden-180989508/)

How Did the Nation Get Its Name? Other Suggestions Included the United Colonies, Columbia and the United States of Alleghania (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-did-the-nation-get-its-name-other-suggestions-included-the-united-colonies-columbia-and-the-united-states-of-alleghania-180989435/)

The Strangest Ways the Postal Service Has Delivered Mail (https://historyfacts.com/us-history/article/strange-ways-postal-service-delivered-mail/)

7 Major Inventions That Were Created by Accident (https://interestingfacts.com/accidental-inventions/)

They Built a Shrine to Cable TV. Then Everyone Cut the Cord. (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/13/business/media/cable-television-cable-center-museum.html)

The Nickel Beer That Turned Into 128 Years: The Berghoff, Chicago, Illinois: Open Since 1898 (https://opensince.substack.com/p/the-nickel-beer-that-turned-into)

Rational Optimism: 100 charts for the skeptic (https://substack.com/@stephenmcbride1/note/c-338203698)

The tiny logos behind a global power shift (https://thehustle.co/originals/the-tiny-logos-behind-a-global-power-shift)

Eating Alone: what we've actually gained on the path to convenience (https://longreads.com/2026/09/15/convenience-friction-eating-alone/)

I put a chatbot to work on my grandmother's Bergen-Belsen mystery (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/09/16/anthropics-claude-solved-my-grandmothers-bergen-belsen-mystery/)

-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 via instagram @minterrors. He can also be reached by email at minterrors@gmail.com.

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.