How long without email?

My email has apparently decided to follow the example of government and shut down.

Well not quite, but I have been trying to access it for over an hour and have not yet succeeded.

When Monday begins in this fashion, I cannot help but wonder what the rest of the week might have in store for me.

Perhaps this particular problem will act like a vaccine and inoculate me for the rest of the week. I can hope, right?

A positive interpretation is that so much has happened over the weekend and so many hobbyists have written to me that I will be swimming in news.

We will see.

Tomorrow the long delayed $100 Federal Reserve Note will enter circulation.

We have been waiting nearly three years since the original release date was missed in February 2011. Two different printing problems were at the root of the delay.

I expect many collectors will be eagerly awaiting the opportunity to examine the new bills just to see if the security devices are as interesting to look at as news reports indicate.

I especially want to see how the hologram appears. It is supposed to be a bell in an inkwell on the face side.

We have come a long way since the government began redesigning paper money on a regular basis in 1996.

Usually these new releases are reported along with the charge that the new bills somehow look like Monopoly game money.

Will it happen this way again?

Perhaps we should hold an informal contest for the collector who counts the most such references, or perhaps for those who find the most creative criticism.

Because there will be criticism.

There always is.

See what you can find while I go try to claim the email that I know is just a computer glitch away from my hands.

Buzz blogger Dave Harper is winner of the 2013 Numismatic Literary Guild Award for Best Blog and is editor of the weekly newspaper "Numismatic News."