Pioneer error and variety authority Arnold Margolis has died and California error dealer Fred Weinberg wrote a tribute March 27 when he received the news. It is presented in part below.

With the passing of Arnold Margolis, the error coin hobby has lost one of the original pioneers of this segment of coin collecting. I had the honor and pleasure of knowing Arnie for almost 50 years - and I've always credited Arnie as being one of the three people who encouraged and motivated me to become a coin dealer, which has been my profession for 40 years.

Arnie was a former Senior Video Control Engineer for NBC for over 35 years and was proud of his decades of work there, and his contacts with history, including being on the NBC team that presented the funeral of John F. Kennedy in 1963.

Arnie was a member of the Board of CONE (Collectors of Numismatic Errors), the first major national error club and was also the first president of it's off-shoot, NECA (Numismatic Error Collectors of America). His participation in numismatics also included being past president of the Queens County Coin Club and of NECOLI (Numismatic Error Collectors of Long Island).

His list of authored books and publications include: How Error Coins Are Made in the U.S. Mints, The Error Collector's handbook, Mint Errors on Carson City Dollars, The Error Coin Encyclopedia (4 editions), The Numismatic Error Primer, co-author of The Design Cud, and long-time publisher of NECA's monthly Errorscope.

A tireless advocate for education and knowledge in the coin hobby, one of his proudest achievements was the continual publication, since 1968 Error Trends Coin Magazine, which was issued without interruption until early 2011. It was the first commercial error publication.

Arnie, along with Mort Goodman (deceased) were the face of the error hobby In the 1960s when Goodman got to New York and finally met Arnie, the two became fast friends, starting Mar-Good, a company that issued the very first coin boards to hold errors.

I had been writing back and forth with Arnie since about 1964, and met him for the first time at the inaugural "Error-A-Rama" coin show - the very first coin show dedicated to error coins, at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in the summer of 1967. Arnie, along with Mort Goodman and Syd Kass, let me help with the convention and show exhibits, and my enthusiasm and knowledge gained from it led me to a 40-year profession as a coin dealer.

To read the complete article, see:Pioneer in error field dies(www.numismaticnews.net/article/pioneer-in-error-field-dies)