Silver Surfer Quarters Level Off

Here it is, about two months since my last update on the market for the controversialSilver Surfermovie promotional quarter and I'm happy to report that prices seem to have stayed stable.

On July 20th, eBay prices for the Silver Surfer Quarter were ranging between $25 and $35 or so. Today, eBay prices are about the same. There are less coins being offered, but most all of those opening within or below the $25 to $35 range are selling. Those offered for much higher figures are mostly going unsold. Those opening at $9.99 are usually driven up to at least $16 before closing.

So, for the moment, the Silver Surfer promotional quarter is riding steady on in the wake of a successful movie run.

If you were waiting for the market to stabilize before buying a Silver Surfer Quarter, I would say that this would be a good time to take the plunge, before the DVD release of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer on October 2nd.

Polish Mathematicians Outwit German Enigma

A year or so ago I got on a Submarine movie kick. I watched Das Boot, The Hunt For Red October, K-19: The Widowmaker and U-571. All great movies which I would recommend, but one caveat I have learned about U-571 is that it lacks a bit of credibility for straying so far from its historical basis.

U-571 portrays a U.S submarine crew capturing a German Enigma Encrytion Machine. Unfortunately there never was a U-571 sub, or an American crew that early in WWII that captured one of these coding devices. Later in the war of course U.S. ships did capture at least one Enigma Encryption Machine, which is on display at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago along with the German submarine, which was also captured by American servicemen. Other museums also have Enigma Machines and other materials on display, as we are all fascinated by the history of this big little corner of WWII.

Earlier it was the British who got their hands on Enigma Machines and began the work of cracking them at their Benchley Park facility. Mathematicians and cryptanalysts like Alan Turing did an excellent job of breaking the codes, which in turn helped the British Government to decode German communications.

Most of this history is fairly well known, due to the efforts of web based historians like Tony Sales, who have done a great job of telling the now declassified secret stories of codes and code breaking during WWII. Even so, there are still a few lesser known tales to tell, like the that of American engineers in Dayton, Ohio who built an advanced bombes decoding machine or the Polish Cipher Bureau mathematicians Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Rozycki and Henryk Zygalski, who first cracked the German Enigma Encryption Machine back in 1932 and turned the machine and their work results over to the Allies in France in 1939, at great person risk to themselves even as their own country was overrun by the Germans.

In fact I was pleased to see recently that the Polish Mint was honoring those humble individuals and their almost superhuman efforts on two coins. Both coins have legends noting the 75th Anniversary of the Breaking of the Enigma Codes. The 8g 100 Zlotych gold coin has a mintage limit of 8,000 pieces and sells for $369.95 from Talisman Coins, the U.S distributor for the Polish Mint. The Nordic Gold (copper-aluminum-tin-zinc) 2 Zlote coin is less expensive at $4.95 and even offers us the last names of the cryptanalysts who cracked the Enigma and that's a honor I am sure they would be proud to see come to light.

Children, Parents & Even Grandmothers on Ancient Roman Coins

In looking over the current Tom Cederlind catalog a few interesting items jumped out at me. Though young rulers, babies and mothers and often times wives of Emperors were depicted on various Roman coins over time, I don't every recall seeing a Grandmother on an ancient coin. Of course, I am not really too well versed in Ancients, but I do always look over the ancient sections of the many auction catalogs which land on my desk weekly and I don't remember any Grandmothers, but here in this Cederlind offering is a bronze coin featuring Julia Maesa, grandmother to Elagabalus and Severus Alexander. This coin is flanked by select coins of her two grandson's making for excellent representation from their time period ranging from 218 to 235 A.D.

After a bit more page turning I stumbled across another unusual Roman type from Domitian, which features his infant son seated on a globe. Cederlinds lot description tells the tale of Domitian and his wife Domitia, whose son died in infancy. During his rule from 81 to 96 A.D. Agustus Domitian had this silver Denarius struck to honor the memory of their son, who seems happy in Heaven. On the reverse of this type, the boy sits atop a globe, surrounded by stars, with the legend roughly reading " the son of the Emperor Domitian is now in the Heavens." It's an outstanding piece and quite rare.

Aside from the fine selection of ancient Roman coins this buy or bid sale closing October 1st also contains an unusual array of Byzantine coinage as well as a good grouping of Medieval English coins. Two standouts include a Kingdom of Wessex silver penny from Edward the Elder, sharply struck and well preserved and a classic bronze follis of Nicephorus I which could easily have been the basis for a string of modern imitative fantasy copper coins from St Hildegard.