I am back from my vacation. I always regret that the time goes by so swiftly, but I also feel a great curiosity as to what has been going on while I have ceased to pay attention to the happenings in the numismatic field. It also is simply nice to come home, especially when the flight connections work as well as they did for me yesterday.

A 5 a.m. taxi ride to the airport started my day. My flight from San Jose, Costa Rica,  took off on time. We left the gate at 7:25 a.m. I got back to Iola at 9:30 in the evening. Costa Rica during the summer is one hour behind Iola.

This trip I had an odd connection. I went from San Jose to Miami, then to Charlotte, N.C., on a regional jet. This is the first time I ever passed through this airport on my way home from Costa Rica, but the summer travel season fills up the planes on the main routes and Charlotte was an alternative route that actually cost me less money than going directly to Chicago. What’s more, my arrival time in Green Bay, Wis., was not affected at all.

More connections mean more possiblities for delay or misrouting baggage, but I had no delays and no lost baggage. Everything went like clockwork. I had my nose buried in a book the whole way. Paul Green’s wife had given me the paperback The Da Vinci Code. It was in English and she had no use for it.

I had not read it during the craze, so I finally got to find out what the hoopla was about. I enjoyed it. It certainly made the time pass quickly. I had seen the movie, so the plot was not a mystery to me. I have to admire the way the writer constructed it. For me it was easy to read. I like that.

I hope what I write is as easily read. I feel rusty this morning and stiff from sitting in airline seats.

I have some catching up to do here in the office as I listen to my recorded voice messages and look at acccumulated e-mails. My recorded voice message tends to keep the number of messages left for me to a minimum. I always state that I am away. I give the date of my return and tell the listener that I will return calls when I get back. Few callers want to wait, so I am generally off the hook with two or three calls.

E-mail is another matter. It is relentless. The sooner I start, the sooner I can finish. Wish me luck, but please don’t send it by e-mail today.

The Jefferson dollar is released later this morning at the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. The coins will be officially released to the banking system tomorrow, though I have already had reports of early releases in several places around the country.

Predictably, at least one nonhobby columnist has taken the opportunity to raise old ghosts about the so-called effort to replace the dollar bill with the $1 coin. I am sure others have or will make the same point, but I have not looked for them.

It probably will be news to them, but that horse left the barn. The dollar bill is here to stay. The Presidential dollars are a signal of defeat, not another step toward doing away with the paper dollar.

America had the dollar bill-dollar coin debate when Canada made the switch 20 years ago. That’s right, 20 years ago. Now our political establishment can be slow, but even its members aren’t that slow. Congress intervened to make sure that any proposal to do away with the dollar bill would have to be explicitly approved by it. You know what that means? It won’t happen.

The real secret to the Presidential $1 coin is that it is a revenue ploy. The U.S. Mint operates on nonappropriated funds that it generates itself through its own operations. As long as that profit is high and rising, the Congress lets it alone.

The rising costs of recent years set off a search to find new ways to add to the Mint’s bottom line. One of the largest contributors is seigniorage, which is the difference between the cost of producing a coin and its face value. The dollar coin costs around 8 cents to make, leaving 92 cents in profit. That’s pretty good. Every dollar the Mint turns over to the Treasury is one less dollar the government has to borrow.

When the Sacagawea dollar was introduced in 2000, almost 1.3 billion of them were struck. Most of that total fell right to the government’s bottom line. It was a one-year deal and that revenue bulge has been tantalizing the establishment ever since.

So Presidential dollars were approved. What better way to get that $1 billion a year in revenue than strike 250 million to 300 million Presidential dollars for each of four designs during the year?

Collectors and the public like to save them, or so the government believes. So far, it has been proven right.

Every column denouncing the dollar coin is free publicity. More and more Americans who may not have heard of the new coins become aware of them and more hoarding takes place.

The anti-dollar coin pundits say that Americans don’t want the coins jingling in their pockets. Hey, the only jingling being done is the money being poured into the pockets of Uncle Sam.

And you didn’t think he was that clever.

The Professional Numismatists Guild held its annual dinner last night. The organization really knows how to put on the ritz, and I always come away feeling under dressed amid such elegant surroundings.

Oh well, I tell myself, they know that I was there and my intent is to report on the event, not overshadow it.

Last night was more special than usual. It wasn’t due to the sartorial splendor, either. The list of honorees included Chet Krause, the founder of my firm and the creator of Numismatic News.

Without Chet Krause, I wouldn’t have my job. Heck, I probably wouldn’t even still be a coin collector. It was to his firm I turned when I was 12 years old and casting about to find explanations for the many coins that were filling up my Whitman albums.

Sure, I might have found someone else. I already had a Red Book. But I and many others like me found Chet. To paraphrase Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca: that was the beginning of a beautiful hobby friendship that has lasted 40 years for me.

Because it wasn’t just me that he has helped since Numismatic News was founded Oct. 13, 1952, but tens of thousands of others like me, the PNG gave Chet Krause its PNG Lifetime Achievement Award.

Fifty-five years is quite a record of achievement. But PNG ought to know, the organization has existed since 1955 and it has grown and prospered in a symbiotic relationship with the numismatic hobby.

Well done, Chet Krause.

Well done, PNG.