One sad bit of news that came in this week was of the death July 18 of my first boss here. Arnold Jeffcoat was 72 years old when he passed on. He was editor of Numismatic News when I arrived 30 years ago to start my first professional job out of college.

He was irascible and smoked like a chimney. It was so bad that when he left in 1982, my first comment was that after five years my lungs would be like I had never smoked at all. This was a period before the dangers of second-hand smoke were well known.

His cubicle had higher walls around it and when he was at work it looked like a volcano throwing up a cloud of ash. His temper could erupt that way also.

Numismatic News, then as now, went to press on Thursday. He golfed Thursday afternoon.

Friday was the beginning of the next cycle.

“I’d rather eat a bug than read a Bailey,” he would declare loudly that day.

This was the Coin Clinic column, then written by free-lancer Clem Bailey who still lived in Iola. Bailey later went on to be editor of CoinAge magazine.

Jeffcoat knew his stuff. If you could get by the off-putting qualities and pay attention, you came out the better by working with him.

Jeffcoat had a terrible cough even when I first met him. In his last years, he was married to an oxygen bottle. He often declared that trying to quit smoking would kill him faster than the cigarettes.

Until his passing, I believe, no former editor of Numismatic News has ever died.

Obviously that happy state of affairs could not last.

Rest in peace, Jeff.

Franklin Roosevelt is a president coin collectors love to hate. Not that they are all Republicans, but the author of the New Deal took away the right to own gold coins. That has been the hobby story since I began reading numismatic material in the 1960s and we are sticking to it.

The tale had its greatest force in the years immediately prior to the legalization of gold ownership once again at the end of 1974.

People tend to forget the facts behind the headlines. Roosevelt’s first Treasury Secretary was a coin collector. William Woodin was also an author of a book about patterns. It was a standard reference before Judd.

Roosevelt’s recall order also specifically exempted coin collectors. They couldn’t hold a garageful of $20 gold pieces, but they could retain two of each date and mintmark for their collections. They rest had to be traded in for other forms of cash.

Now that is pretty generous in light of the financial emergency facing the country. Woodin’s unfortunate invisibility to history was due to the unhappy development of cancer later in 1933 so he left office and died. Had he lived, Roosevelt mythology might have turned out to be that he was the best friend coin collectors ever had.

But later generations forget the emergency the country was facing. That is natural. The gold ban was in force in one form or another for 41 years. People that far removed in time from the crisis have a hard time understanding the meaning of the words, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Actually, those words sound completely bonkers in normal times, but at times when lines are forming outside of banks, like the IndyMac offices in California, they begin to make sense – at least to the worried depositors.

In 1933 banks were failing almost daily. The Bank Holiday, declared by Roosevelt shut them all down for five days until they could be checked out. The healthy ones were allowed to reopen. The unhealthy ones remained closed.

Troubles today look small by comparison. But give Roosevelt another kick anyway. It is now a pleasant hobby tradition.

Fake coins struck in China have bedeviled the hobby for years. Colleague Colin Bruce of the Standard Catalog of World Coins staff used to acquire many of the fakes as they arrived on the scene to study them and figure out their defects.

The current wave is probably too much even for him to keep up with, but he sent me an e-mail link of a factory in China that is described as making fake U.S. and world coins.

Here is the link. Take a look at it and see what you think.

http://coins.about.com/od/worldcoins/ig/Chinese-Counterfeiting-Ring/Chinese-Fake-Coin-Minting.htm

The situation with fakes even provoked the Professional Coin Grading Service earlier this year to warn of fake coins and holders coming out of China and makl recommendations as to what should be done to counter this.

We all know the problems that are caused by fakes, but figuring out what can be done to fight them is something the hobby will wrestle with for years. Even if production were stopped right this minute, the large numbers of fakes would be passed around by people for many years to come.

Some day they will probably be collected as fakes once more complete knowledge about them becomes widespread.

“Leaving a paper trail” is device for accountants or investigators to find out where the money went.

In the case of actual collectors of paper money, the paper trail is vital in knowing the history of a particular bank note you might be considering buying.

If you are buying a high-grade note, it might interest you to discover that it had sold before as a lower grade note. Figuring this out is possible because notes have serial numbers that can be recorded and traced.

Assembling this information, or blazing the paper trail, is Martin Gengerke, a professional in the field who originally introduced the Gengerke Census and now is taking it one step further called the Gengerke Census Lite.

It is geared to coin dealers and paper money newcomers to help them identify a note and assess its rarity. It offers a complete census of large-size type notes issued before the conversion to small-size notes in 1929. It also offers a complete census of National Bank Notes, which were issued by individual banks 1863-1935 with a federal guarantee behind them.

The Gengerke Census Lite is a cheaper alternative at $30 than the version with all the bells and whistles. It comes on a disk and is updated once each year. The full version costs $175 and is updated continuously and can be downloaded over the Internet.

If you have a budding interest in paper money, you might consider e-mailing gengerke@aol.com for more information.