"In the February 18th edition of The E-Sylum there was Tom Hoke's article about the mislabeling of a book and his comment: That made me curious. Why would someone create a first page with an incorrect date of 1860, then in a book containing every single hand-written detail which was flawless and beautifully presented, make such an obvious error which failed to show the "Gold Book" really covered January 1, 1861 up to January, 14, 1861?

"I believe the date on the first page of the book was a simple common mistake humans make. For those who still write checks (and I have done it myself), mistakenly write the previous year from habit in the first few weeks of a new year, after all you have been writing that date for a year and it becomes rote! It takes a while to imprint the new year in your memory. I have seen other items like this when doing research in the archives. It was probably not even noticed at the time of the writing and I can see how an archivist would have turned to the first page and used that date for their cataloging. They were sorting thousands of documents and were not necessarily reading every document."

Good point. The simplest explanation that fits the facts is usually correct. Thanks. -Editor

"I'm searching for a copy of a 1906 monograph (13 pages) written by T. Louis Comparette, "The Utility of a Collection of Historic Coins." This was published in an edition of 250 copies by the US Mint Bureau and is mentioned in Vol 357, RG104 Entry-235, #245 Jan. 29, 1906. Len Augsburger checked NNP, HathiTrust, and Library of Congress, but found no reference. There is no listing on worldcat.org. If anyone has a paper or digital copy, please let me know. "

Interesting - I don't think I've ever come across this publication. Can anyone help? -Editor

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