Taking Stock of Summer

Greetings.

Last night I got a call from the local bowling alley to make sure that I'll be returning into the Tuesday night men's league with the team I sponsor. But, that means that Labor Day is nearly here, and the weather will be getting cooler, and thus summer is nearly over. Interesting by which events make us mark time.

For me, the summer has been busy. My early project was to get the 26th edition of the Standard Catalog of United States Paper Money off to the printer. This year's book is a full 100 pages larger than the 25th edition, and includes color sections of US Errors, US notes of the Philippines, and Civil War Postage Envelopes. All returning after a one year absence. The book has just returned from the printer, so more about it in a future blog. The 25th edition also won a Numismatic Literary Guild Extraordinary Merit award, presented at the Milwaukee ANA.

Attendance at the ANA Summer Seminar to teach a world coin class with Emmett McDonald, and to participate in the engraving class as a Gilroy Roberts Fellow took up two weeks plus road travel days.

Editing text of new issues begame a part of the job enlargement program upon the retirement of Fred Borgmann. This is now on top of editing the 5th Edition of Unusual World Coins and the 4th edition of the Standard Catalog of World Coins, 18th Century volume.

Being on the Committee for the Milwaukee ANA, and participating in the Company's presence was quite exciting, 7 days brought about 10,000 visitors into the convention center. Two years of committee planing brought nearly a seamless execution of show events. I did a numismatic theater talk, as well as participated as an exhibit judge.

And then there is Paper Money. We - myself and three co-workers - have been edititing text into data fields for all three volumes of the Standard Catalog of World Paper Money product. With their help we are identifying over 75,000 photographs which need to be electronically scaned for the continued production of the book product, and then re-purposed for the web interface.

The first part of that web interface for paper money will be the US listings, with the international stuff to follow.

So, yes, I'll be looking forward to Tuesday Night Bowling.

George