Why are so many of the old large cents holed? Many have one hole, but I’ve seen several with two holes in them. Continue reading →

Russ Rulau was behaving like a kid again at the end. I don’t mean that at the age of 86 he had somehow lost his adult mental faculties, but he was showing the childlike enthusiasm that we all have felt about numismatics. It was clearly bubbling up within him the last time I visited him. Continue reading →

The great lesson of this collection is not how clever, special or wealthy the collector was. It was simply time. He collected his material and held it through thick and thin for many years. Continue reading →

He was a Ford vehicle owner. As such, he received a copy of the Fall 2012 issue of Ford Magazine. Being a collector, his attention was immediately drawn to an article on Page 7 that was so short it hardly qualified as anything more than a fun fact. But in his mind, what a fact it is. Continue reading →

The Mint’s new coin marketing should not be all that different from car marketing. Coin ownership and car ownership send the same messages. Continue reading →

The fate of the vending machine industry and coins have been intertwined for my entire time in the hobby. What the vending machine industry wants, it gets. The fate of all coins basically rests with it. Continue reading →

The first U.S commemorative coin program was shut down in 1954 and the door to further issuance was nailed shut for 28 years because of abuses in the authorization and sales processes in the 1920s and 1930s. Continue reading →

What existed then as now is a group of people who are committed to numismatics and who treat every other person who shares this interest as if he or she is a friend that we have just met on the way to the IGA, or the Crystal Cafe. Continue reading →

Subscribers are about to receive an extra issue of Numismatic News to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of this paper and celebrate the company that grew from this beginning. Continue reading →

Bibiana Boerio to be director of the U.S. Mint arrived just a few minutes before Page 1 was sent to the printer. In fact, Page 1 had been awaiting final check to go, but I was able to call it back to get this important information out to readers as quickly as possible. Continue reading →