Archives
1849: The Philadelphia Mint Strikes Gold
“1849: The Philadelphia Mint Strikes Gold” won the 2016 Numismatic Literary Guild Award. Michael Moran and Jeff Garrett teamed up to write a book that chronicles how the discovery of gold in California impacted the U.S. Mint and the nation. “The arrival of Colonel Mason’s oyster can full of gold in Washington would change everything […]
November 21, 2016
New MoMA Exhibit Available on Your Laptop
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)’s new exhibit is completely digital. The exhibit, which is available via the museum’s website, extensively chronicles all of MoMA’s exhibitions from 1929 to the present. MoMA opened its doors in 1929, featuring its first major exhibition, “Cézanne, Gauguin, Seurat, van Gogh,” the same year. In the decades that followed, […]
November 14, 2016
Revolutionary War Loyalists Left Mark on Turks and Caicos Islands
Not everyone supported American independence in 1776. Some colonists remained loyal to England throughout the conflict. During the war they were treated well and protected by the British but after George Washington’s victory at Yorktown, the supporters of the revolution scorned the loyalists openly and in some cases did harm to their property and to […]
November 9, 2016
The Legacy of SDS Organizer Tom Hayden
Tom Hayden, best known for his ardent social activism, recently passed away at the age of 76. Hayden, who helped found Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), spent his life advocating against war and injustice. The Nation magazine named Hayden one of the 50 greatest progressives of the 20th century. Writing about Hayden’s role in […]
October 31, 2016
Medallic Art of the ANS, 1865–2014 Now Available as Free E-Book
The American Numismatic Society is leading the way for numismatic ebooks. While the ebook has captured the commercial market for fiction and non-fiction books, numismatic booksellers like Whitman and Krause Publications have not been so quick to produce electronic versions of their reference books. The Medallic Art of the American Numismatic Society, 1865–2014 is now […]
October 24, 2016
Federal Government Set to Reclaim Rare Double Eagle Coins
The federal government recently won a decade-long legal battle over the ownership of rare Double Eagles coins. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the lower court’s decision ordering a Philadelphia family to surrender ten 1933 Saint-Gaudens Gold Double Eagles found in a safe deposit box. History of the 1933 Double Eagles The 1933 Gold […]
October 17, 2016
UpTone Audio USB REGEN vs. AudioQuest JitterBug
People have started to figure out that the reason digital music does not sound as good as vinyl has less to do with the studio mix burned digitally as 1’s and 0’s, and more to do with the “timing” of the playback of those 1’s and 0’s. In order to address playback problems BEFORE the […]
October 10, 2016
Three Good Books about James Madison
Labunski, Richard; James Madison & the Struggle for the Bill of Rights, Oxford University Press, 2006 Broadwater, Jeff; James Madison: A Son of Virginia and a Founder of the Nation, University of North Carolina Press, 2012 Stewart, David; Madison’s gift: Five Partnerships That Built America, Simon & Schuster, 2015 James Madison was one of the […]
October 3, 2016
New Tech Allows Coin Auction Search by Image
A revolutionary new technology allows collectors to quickly identify or verify a coin’s provenance. The website, Ex-Numis, uses image recognition software to locate coins illustrated in auction catalogs. The new technology is the brainchild of Dr. Jonas Flueck, a professional numismatic dealer and an auctioneer for a Swiss auction house in Zurich. The idea is […]
September 26, 2016
Queen Vinyl Box Set Becoming a Collectable
Queen released a complete Studio Album Collection in vinyl last year. It was priced at $300 and it became an instant collector’s item. It is not quite up there with the Beatles box set produced by the Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs in the 80’s which is now priced at $2000, but it is selling for […]
September 19, 2016