The E-Sylum v7#51, December 19, 2004
whomren at coinlibrary.com
whomren at coinlibrary.com
Tue Dec 21 13:57:18 PST 2004
Welcome to The E-Sylum: Volume 7, Number 51, December 19, 2004:
an electronic publication of the Numismatic Bibliomania Society.
Copyright (c) 2004, The Numismatic Bibliomania Society.
EMAIL SYSTEM UPDATE
This E-Sylum issue is being distributed on Monday,
December 20, 2004. We will adhere to a Monday publishing
schedule for at least the next few weeks. Thanks again for
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The full, lovingly hand-edited archive remains at the
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To submit items for publication, continue to email them
to me at whomren at coinlibrary.com. Keep those cards and
letters coming, and happy holidays!
LAKE SALE #77 PRL AVAILABLE
Fred Lake writes: "The prices realized list for our sale
#77 which closed on Tuesday, December 14, 2004 at 5:00 PM
EST, is now available for viewing on the Lake Books web
Site at: http://www.lakebooks.com/archive.html There you
will find the PDF and MS Word links under that sale number.
The sale was quite successful, with 90% of the lots being
sold and very strong prices realized for some of the
rarities offered from the estate of John M. Ward, Jr.
and the library of Robert Doyle.
Our next sale will close on February 15, 2005 and the
catalog will be available for viewing in early January.
Selections from the library of Jack Haymond will be
featured.
Our best Seasons Greetings to all, Fred"
NUMISMATIC FILM MAKER'S KILLER APPREHENDED
Dick Johnson writes: "The driver of the truck which ran
over and killed Michael Craven in a "road rage" incident
April 30, 2000 on LA's Ventura Freeway has been tracked
to Armenia. He was extradited to California late November
2004 and is now charged with three felony counts,
including the murder of the numismatic film maker. Craven
died of injuries from that incident. (Reported here in
The E-Sylum vol 3, no 19, May 7, 2000.)
Craven had produced three numismatic videos and had been
working on a major film on the history of America's coins.
He had over seven hours of film - including interviews
with U.S. Treasury officials and prominent numismatists
-- he had nearly completed the filming before editing the
material for a multi-part series.
Among the videos Craven had produced included "The Granite
Lady" on the San Francisco Mint and "The Medal Maker,"
narrated by former Chief Engraver of the U.S. Mint Elizabeth
Jones, on sculptor Laura Gardin Fraser. [In addition to
writing the filmscript for that later video, I was working
with Mike on a history of the Philadelphia Mint's Third
Building at 16th and Spring Garden Streets -- America's
first truly modern mint -- for its 2001 centennial. His
death halted that project.]"
GOOGLE INDEXING BOOKS OF MAJOR LIBRARIES
From Forbes magazine:
"Google just made the Internet significantly bigger
-- at least for the worlds of search and book
publishing.
The Mountain View, Calif., search engine company has
reached agreements with Harvard University, The
University of Michigan, Stanford University, Oxford
University, and The New York Public Library to scan
their books and make the digitized contents searchable.
Up to 50 million titles are involved, including titles
held in common by the libraries.
The project, which will probably take five or more
years to complete, will deliver a database of volumes
that Google users can search. Users will be able to
download entire volumes in the database that are not
under copyright protection. Books under copyright
will be excerpted at varying lengths, depending on
whether Google has agreements with their publishers
to carry longer excerpts."
To read the full article:
http://www.forbes.com/2004/12/14/cz_qh_1214google.html
From the New York Times:
"It may be only a step on a long road toward the
long-predicted global virtual library. But the
collaboration of Google and research institutions ...
is a major stride in an ambitious Internet effort by
various parties. The goal is to expand the Web
beyond its current valuable, if eclectic, body of
material and create a digital card catalog and
searchable library for the world's books, scholarly
papers and special collections."
"Within two decades, most of the world's knowledge
will be digitized and available, one hopes for free
reading on the Internet, just as there is free
reading in libraries today," said Michael A. Keller,
Stanford University's head librarian."
To read the full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/14/technology/14google.html
From the Associated Press:
"The Michigan and Stanford libraries are the only
two so far to agree to submit all their material to
Google's scanners.
The New York library is allowing Google to include a
small portion of its books no longer covered by
copyright while Harvard is confining its participation
to 40,000 volumes so it can gauge how well the process
works. Oxford wants Google to scan all its books
originally published before 1901."
"This is the day the world changes," said John Wilkin,
a University of Michigan librarian working with Google.
"It will be disruptive because some people will worry
that this is the beginning of the end of libraries.
But this is something we have to do to revitalize the
profession and make it more meaningful."
To read the full article:
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/041214/googling_libraries_4.html
From the Boston Globe:
"Company spokeswoman Susan Wojcicki said the project
is the fulfillment of a dream for founders Sergey Brin
and Larry Page. "This is something the founders wanted
to do before they even started Google," she said. "The
mission of the company, from the day it started, was
to organize the world's information and make it easily
accessible."
But Google also hopes that its book search service will
give it a major edge over rival search services, including
an up-and-coming challenge from software titan Microsoft
Corp. "Google has constantly over time always been
increasing our search index," said Wojcicki. "Having a
more comprehensive search engine . . . leads to, we
believe, a better product." In turn, that means more
visitors to Google's search service, which makes money
by selling advertisements."
To read the full article:
http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2004/12/14/google_to_inde
x_works_at_harvard_other_major_libraries/
How does this commercial effort affect nonprofit efforts
to digitize some of the same material? In earlier E-Sylums
we discussed the "million book" plans. From the San Jose
Mercury News:
"Libraries from India, China, Egypt, Canada and the
Netherlands, for instance, are working with the San
Francisco-based non-profit Internet Archive on a plan to
create a publicly available digital archive of one million
books on the Internet.
"The public domain belongs to the public and should be
publicly accessible without running only into commercial
interests,'' said Brewster Kahle, founder and president of
the Internet Archive. ``There's room for both, and I hope
that we do not evolve into an either-or situation."
To read the full article:
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/10416638.htm
Bill Rosenblum writes: "My son works for the University
of Michigan library as a digital librarian (whatever that
is) and has been involved in the acquisition of scholarly
publications to be put on line. He told me that he and
his colleagues were told of the Google plan about two
hours before the press release and were as surprised as
most everybody else."
Dick Johnson adds: "It made news this week. Five major
libraries in U.S. and U.K. agreed to have their books of
greatest scholarly interest digitized and will be placed
on Google's website for anyone in the world to access.
This continued a plan announced earlier, and reported
in E-Sylum last week, that a group of libraries in the
U.S., Canada, Netherlands, Egypt and China plan to
digitize one million books, with 70,000 available by
April 2005.
The five major libraries who have agreed to open their
stacks are Harvard, University of Michigan, Stanford
and the New York Public Library in the U.S. and Oxford
University in England. The agreement with each library
differs. Harvard's agreement is limited to 40,000 volumes,
in contrast to the full collections at Stanford and
Michigan; NYPL agreed to "fragile material not under
copyright."
This has come about at the present time because Google
became wealthy from its stock offering last summer. It
is employing its newly gained wealth to stretch its
already humongous databank towards a long-predicted
global virtual library. The cost is estimated at $10
to digitize each book.
The digitizing task is labor intensive. It requires
several people to operate sophisticated scanners whose
high-resolution cameras capture one page at a time. At
Stanford Google hopes to scan 50,000 pages a day within
a month, doubling this amount with more people and
equipment.
When this story first broke, December 14th, 629
newspapers ran the story or commented on it before Google
took the story down. One of the best was by George Kerevan
editorializing in Scotsman.com. "I can't wait," he wrote,
"for Google to get on-line with the Bodleian Library's one
million books. Yet here's one other thing I learned from
a physical library space: the daunting scale of human
knowledge and our inability to truly comprehend only a
fraction of it."
How soon until a large number of numismatic works will
be digitized, perhaps among those millions of books in
five or more libraries, is yet to be seen. Existing
numismatic libraries, however, still have a major
function to perform in gathering bound books and
documents for present and future numismatic scholars
to use."
Kerevan's comments:
http://news.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=1434442004
[There are a lot of caveats in Google's ambitious plan;
for example, Harvard is hedging, wanting proof that the
process will not damage its holdings. But it's another
important step in the march toward digitization. I
question the $10/book estimate, for despite all the high-
tech trappings, the drudgery of scanning and correcting
text is still a slow process, and time equals money;
see the following item by Mike Marotta's about the effort
going into making The Electronic Numismatist. If Google
uses gentle but efficient book-scanning robots (which I'm
not sure exist yet), then perhaps the $10/volume estimate
is correct, but human editors with subject matter knowledge
are still likely to do a better job of digitization,
albeit at a higher price.
Collectively, how many out-of-copyright numismatic works
are in those libraries? More importantly for writers
and researchers, how many tidbits of numismatic knowledge
are locked in those pages, currently unseen and unknown?
As more works become accessible through indexing, more and
more new numismatic information is likely to become
available to researchers. It could indeed be a whole new
world. -Editor]
MAKING THE ELECTRONIC NUMISMATIST
Regarding Jorg Lueke's "The Electronic Numismatist,"
Michael E. Marotta writes:
"Bringing these classic volumes to collectors is a great
service to the hobby. In Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451",
the fireman, Montag, explains his fascination with books:
"Inside each one is a man." To read the words of Dr.
George Heath is to share with him the creation of the ANA.
Even more, these old magazines reveal the world of
collecting in the early days of our hobby. Of course,
being able to search text is an incomparable joy. The
range and breadth of Heath's interests illuminate many
aspects of collecting, and serve as a benchmark for the
most modern research. Jorg deserves the highest praise
for this effort.
In an email to me, Jorg said that the few glitches will
be fixed in Rev 1.02. Blank pages fill some spaces, for
instance. Jorg attributes these to "the relationship
between the index, bookmarks, and links. Once all that
is created they keep the document page numbers correct
whenever the document is edited. It will take me probably
till this weekend to create version 1.02 with consistent
titleing, no blanks, and a new index."
In real life Jorg is an IBM mainframe programmer. He was
able to draw on standard project management skills when
creating "The Electronic Numismatist." He said, "I hired
someone to do the inital scanning and basic editing. They
could scan some things but not everything due to the type
style and weakness [of the printing], so they did hand
key 40-50% of the text. I then did the next few rounds of
editing, formatting, indexing etc. ... the cost benefit
of my time versus money pointed towards spending the money
for that portion." Best of all, from the bibliophile's
perspective, Jorg worked to keep the original formating
of Dr. Heath's 19th century typography.
No doubt, each of us will find our own rewards in owning
this. The work is loaded with gems. At first, Dr. Heath
accepted no advertising. Then he relented. "Thanks to
the liberality of our advertisers," Heath wrote, "... we
can see our way reasonably clear to continue THE NUMISMATIST
at the old subscription price of FIFTY CENTS a year (outside
the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, two shillings six pence)."
NEW YORK SUBWAY MOTORMAN AMASSED $1 MILLION IN RARE NOTES
The New York Times published an article December 12
about Malcolm A. Trask, a New York subway motorman who
built a remarkable collection of U.S. paper money in the
1940s and 50s. His collection languished unnoticed in a
family closet for years after his death until it was
discovered by his youngest son, now 75 years old. The
collection will be auctioned at the upcoming Florida
United Numismatists show.
"One of the most intriguing among the 4,288 lots to be
sold at the convention, the year's biggest coin and
currency show, will be the remarkable collection that
put together during the 1940's and 50's at his small
apartment in south Yonkers.
But the real story is not the collection. It's the
collector. Mr. Trask was a subway motorman with an
eighth-grade education who died in 1989 at the age of
88. While raising four children on a working man's
salary, he somehow amassed one of his era's greatest
currency collections, only to stash it in a closet
where it languished, forgotten, until his children
found it two years ago after his wife died."
"Mr. Trask was born in Yonkers in 1901, dropped out
of school after the eighth grade, enlisted in the
Navy in 1917, and then went to work for 46 years as
a motorman on the old IRT line.
The subway was his job. The collection was his passion.
He began with coins, but by the late 1940's he had
sold them all to concentrate on paper money, at the
time an arcane satellite universe. Apparently using
$20, $40 or $80 he was able to squirrel away, he
bought at auctions, from dealers or at coin and
currency shows.
Every night, his children recall, he would pore over
ledgers, write in journals, type up notations, compile
censuses of numismatic arcana. He was one of the
earliest serious researchers of national bank notes,
paper money that was issued by more than 11,000 banks
between 1865 and 1933 and was about 20 percent larger
in size than current bills.
"The truly incredible thing about this collection is
that a guy with no formal education, utterly limited
resources and almost no research material available
could pick so well and build a collection that would
be significant a half-century later," said Allen
Mincho, a director of Heritage-Currency Auctions of
America and a currency expert who researched and
catalogued the collection. "He clearly had the eye.
But how he knew just what to pick, I really don't
know. I've sold plenty of million-dollar collections,
but none where the initial investment was so low,
the returns so high, and the overall quality so
amazing."
To read the full article, see:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/12/nyregion/12towns.html
[A search of the Internet and the Numismatic Index
of Periodicals (NIP) turned up no references to Mr.
Trask. Did he leave any traces of his research in
the world of numismatics? Had anyone heard of him
before his collection came to light?
For those who may not be familiar with it, the NIP
index is online at this address:
http://www.harrybassfoundation.org/search_numlit.asp
-Editor]
WEISMULLER OLYMPIC MEDAL RETURNED TO RANSACKED MUSEUM
On December 15, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel published a
story revealing that the International Swimming Hall of
Fame's extensive Olympic collection had been looted of
over $500,000 worth of rare medals:
"A man with a secret past who landed a temporary job as a
janitor at the International Swimming Hall of Fame wasted
little time before stealing more than 100 Olympic medals
and other irreplaceable memorabilia, police said Wednesday.
Paul Nichols Christow, 48, had unfettered access to the
museum's impressive Olympic collection when no one else
was around. He stole nearly $500,000 worth of gold, silver
and bronze, police said. Among the loot was Hollywood star
Johnny Weismuller's 1924 medals, a medal from the first
modern Olympic games and an ancient Greek medal.
The Hall of Fame's collection was so large that he operated
undetected for months.
Early this month, a museum worker noticed some medals
missing from a display case. About the same time, an
Olympic memorabilia collector contacted the Hall of Fame
to say he had just purchased a group of medals on the
Internet. Police traced the theft to Christow, set up a
sting, caught him on tape trying to sell more Olympic
goods, and arrested him last week.
Investigators recovered about half of what was stolen
and are hopeful they will find the rest."
"He posed as a paralegal looking to liquidate an anonymous
family's estate. Marty Bookston, of Double Eagle Rare Coins
in Hollywood, had never seen a real Olympic medal before,
but he gave the man $250 for two medals and posted them on
eBay for an opening bid of $9.99 apiece."
Those knowledgeable about the value of such medals can
only gasp at the opening bid - later just one of a group of
50 medals was sold to a California collector for $10,000.
The article goes on to describe how alert eBay users notified
the museum about medals it didn't know were missing. Police
enlisted the help of the Hollywood, FL coin dealer and a
North Carolina collector to snare the thief in a sting
operation.
"Christow was charged with two counts of dealing in stolen
property and two counts of grand theft over $100,000.
"I grew up with Johnny Weismuller on TV," said Gerry
Machurick, the burglary detective who worked the case,
"so to be a part of preserving history is pretty
incredible."
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/nation/10426013.htm
WHEAT IMAGES ON COINS AND BANKNOTES SOUGHT
The United States Botanic Gardens (USBG) in Washington D.C.
is seeking images of North American and European currency
and coins showing images of wheat. These are for inclusion
in a video under production. Has a list of such items ever
been compiled? A comprehensive list would include hundreds
of items, given that wheat and other grains were a common
theme on many obsolete bank note vignettes. Can anyone
suggest a starting point for such a list?
CORRECTION: CHARLES I BEHEADED IN 1649
Responding to last week's items by Florence Prusmack's on
Isaac Newton, Bob Lyall writes: "Charles I was not beheaded
in 1630, it was January 1648/9 (1648 old style, 1649 by our
calendar)."
KANSAS HOBO NICKEL CARVER FEATURED IN ARTICLE
On December 18, the Associated Press published an article
about a rare breed of engraver - a modern-day Hobo Nickel
carver, Bob Finlay:
"In the 1980s, Finlay took on the hobby of engraving. It
started with guns and later turned to knives.
He said he spent 100 to 200 hours on one knife. Looking at
the jewel-encrusted daggers with ornate carvings, it's easy
to see why he has embraced nickels.
The coins take him an average of 10 to 12 hours, and he has
finished about 50 so far.
On a recent evening, Finlay was taking background metal out
of a nickel, one of 10 he was carving for a collector. A
hobo holding a pick ax along railroad tracks was already
visible.
Finlay's glasses were pressed up against a microscope
focused on the nickel, as his thick fingers finessed what
he called a miniature jackhammer, a small tool powered by
compressed air that delivers rapid strokes into the metal.
Cake crumbs rested on the table below Finlay's mouth.
Working in the evenings and on weekends, it's not unusual
for him to skip a meal.
"It's nothing if I work 10 hours straight, or 11, 12," he
said.
The Original Hobo Nickel Society has nicknamed Finlay "The
Excavator" for his propensity to dig deep into the nickel.
He does it to make the subject stand out. One of the things
that makes him unique is his ability to make those small,
full-figure hobos. Nobody else has done that.
"I like to make things more 3D than 2D," Finlay said. "Most
people have never seen a nickel, one that's been carved,
and it's fun to carve something that they haven't seen."
http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/news/10446456.htm
BILINKSI INVESTMENT GUIDE REVEIWED
Regarding Dick Johnson's discussion of Bilinski's work
on U.S. collector demographics, Bob Leonard writes:
"I've got a copy of the second edition of Dr. Robert
Bilinski's A Guide To Coin Investment, copyright 1958.
The text is mimeographed (!) on two colors of paper.
To answer Dick's question, the collector demographics
material appears in Chapter IV, pp. 20-65. Bilinski
was nothing if not precise [Dave Bowers would choke on
this claimed accuracy]: "There are currently 2,118,250
coin collectors over 13 years of age in the United
States; this figure represents an increase of 178,250
over the 1957 total...There are 53,000 hard-core
collectors...individuals who collect coins with all
the interest and energy they can muster [not, thank
goodness, collectors of "hard core"]...882,000 active
collectors...210,000 fringe collectors...746,000 passive
collectors...227,250 temporary collectors." Taken as
rough ratios, these numbers may have some meaning.
Skipping over the distribution of collectors by state
("South Dakota...4,236", etc.), we come to AGE DISTRIBUTION
OF COLLECTORS IN THE UNITED STATES (pp. 23-4). This is
presented as a bar chart, so I can't quote any figures,
but the tallest bar is 46-55, with 36-45 second. I
believe that Numismatic News just completed a readership
survey, and the average age of a NN reader was 59. I
think this is borne out by recent surveys at the ANA and
Coin World, i.e., that the average ANA member/Coin World
reader is in his late 50s. So there does seem to have
been some aging of collectors since Dr. Bilinski's 1958
survey, though his inclusion of "passive" and "temporary"
collectors may have skewed the results.
Leafing through this book, one is struck by how utterly
useless it is as a guide to coin investment for our
time. None of the things now considered important (MS 65
or better condition, certified by a major grading service,
rainbow toning, Deep Mirror Cameo, Registry Set Quality,
recovered from a famous shipwreck, etc.) is even
contemplated, let alone considered. But it was right on
target for the late 50s - early 60s, with Bilinski's
forecasted prices for future years being quickly surpassed.
There is a lesson here for anyone presuming to advise
others on long-term investment in hard assets."
GOLDEN DOLLAR ARTICLE COULD CAUSE STAMPEDE
Bill Rosenblum writes: "The Denver Post of December 12th
had an article titled "Unpopular Coin Now Golden. The
article, as usual for a mainstream publication by
someone who knows little about numismatics, contained
numerous half truths that will of course lead the public
to believe that their Sacagawea dollars are worth "as
much as $500 among collectors". I can see people lining
up at coin stores trying to sell the coins for hundreds
of dollars and when told what they are really worth will,
of course, be angry at the coin dealer. Both James
Taylor of ICG and Doug Mudd, curator of the ANA museum
are quoted in the article or perhaps paraphrased."
To read the article, see:
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36%257E11676%257E2590226,00.html
U.S. PATTERN SITE UPDATED WITH SPLASHER IMAGES
Saul Teichman writes: "Here are seven splashers some of
whose existence was unconfirmed or not seen by modern
researchers until now:
http://uspatterns.com/uspatterns/p3161.html
http://uspatterns.com/uspatterns/p3257.html
http://uspatterns.com/uspatterns/p3049.html
(2nd known example)
http://uspatterns.com/uspatterns/p3070.html
http://uspatterns.com/uspatterns/p3019.html
(2nd known example)
http://uspatterns.com/uspatterns/p3140.html
(4th known example)
http://uspatterns.com/uspatterns/p3064.html
HOW TO PRODUCE A BOOK
Morten Eske Mortensen writes; "At this weblink I have
translated a (satirical) text into English concerning
book production:
http://home.worldonline.dk/mem/info/nybogUS.htm
AMAZON CUSTOMER SUPPORT NUMBER
Tom Fort forwarded the following from the online magazine
Slate. Those who have placed book and other orders with
Amazon.com and been perplexed trying to find human
assistance may find the Amazon customer support phone
number useful, particularly in this last week before the
Christmas holiday. I've not tried the number, and for
all I know it may have already been changed to hide it
again. But here goes:
"A journalist, if he's lucky, gets at most one chance in
life to leave a lasting legacy. Jacob Riis exposed the
horrors of tenement life. John Hersey limned the agonies
that befell individual Japanese when the Enola Gay dropped
the first atom bomb. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
exposed the dark crimes and vile corruption at the heart
of the Nixon administration.
And me? If, after my journey is ended through this vale
of tears, I should be favored with remembrance, it will
likely be for the succor I provided holiday shoppers.
It was I who discovered the customer service number
for Amazon.com.
1-800-201-7575
In this season of celebration, I have received many
e-mails from readers prostrate with gratitude that,
like Stanley tramping through the African jungle in
search of Livingstone, I dug this number out from the
Web's darkest recesses and shared it with the world.
I offer it here again for those who didn't think to
Google the words "Amazon" and "phone number."
1-800-201-7575"
To read the full article, see:
http://slate.com/id/2091623
FEATURED WEB SITE
This week's featured web site is HistoricalArtMedals.com,
featuring the medal collection of Benjamin Weiss.
"Welcome to my collection of Historical and Commemorative
Medals. At this site you will find images and descriptions
of over 300 medals, both European and American, dating
from the 16th through the 19th centuries."
http://www.historicalartmedals.com/
Wayne Homren
Numismatic Bibliomania Society
The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a
non-profit organization promoting numismatic
literature. For more information please see
our web site at http://www.coinbooks.org/
There is a membership application available on
the web site. To join, print the application and
return it with your check to the address printed
on the application. Membership is only $15 to
addresses in North America, $20 elsewhere.
For those without web access, write to W. David
Perkins, NBS Secretary-Treasurer,
P.O. Box 3888, Littleton, CO 80161-3888.
For Asylum mailing address changes and other
membership questions, contact David at this email
address: wdperki at attglobal.net
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