Old date is new again?

After checking my email Monday morning, I decided that this week it is back to basics after seeing what was left after deleting all of the spam.

One message that I received was particularly surprising. It will take a little background information to make sense of it.

Here goes.

I wrote a blog post Feb. 19, 2013, reporting on what new dates were being found in circulation by collectors.

I do this early in the year every year as the faster new dates appear, the better the economy is.

In that blog post I reported the last denomination to turn up in circulation for the year, the nickel.

The finder was from Puerto Rico and I had guessed that the two coins he had were from the Philadelphia Mint, because the mintmark was not indicated in the email I received.

So I wrote that this left the 2013 Denver nickel as the only one not reported found as of that date.

Well, someone read this blog at 2:28 a.m. Oct. 12 – less than two days ago – and posted a message that he had a 2013-D nickel.

I am delighted that the person read my blog. I do not know why he would zero in on that particular blog of the roughly 2,000 I have written.

I expect it was by accident.

Perhaps he Googled 2013-D nickels and my blog popped up in the search.

Who knows?

But he does rather miss the point.

How do I break the news gently that this information back in February 2013 would have been very interesting to readers, but now, going on two years later, it would be better if he were preparing to look for the 2015-dated coins as soon as January rolls around?

Considering the time of day the message was posted, it is possible that the writer won’t even remember posting the message.

I am delighted to see that at least in this instance, my blog has a very long shelf life and someone was interested enough in one from 20 months ago to react to it.

Buzz blogger Dave Harper is winner of the 2014 Numismatic Literary Guild Award for Best Blog and is editor of the weekly newspaper "Numismatic News."