I was introduced to the world's only consulting detective, Sherlock Holmes, in my fifth grade reading class. We were assigned to read The Adventures of the Three Garridebs by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I had started collecting coins the previous year and this story involved a counterfeit operation's printing press (I probably should have done a spoiler warning there, for those not familiar with the story!).

I was hooked and the next time I went to the library, I checked out the book The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which contained the first 12 short stories in the series. The first story, A Scandal in Bohemia, has Holmes keep a gold sovereign as a reminder of The Woman - Irene Adler. In the next story, The Adventures of the Red-Headed League, the plot swirled around an attempted robbery of French gold coins in a bank's vault. This was great stuff! Over the next several months, I would eagerly read the rest of the stories that make up the Canon.

A few years later, while watching the late Saturday night Mystery Theater on the local UHF television station, I came across Dressed To Kill, the last of the Basil Rathbone - Nigel Bruce series of Sherlock Holmes movies in the late 1930's and 1940's. This movie involved finding stolen plates for Bank of England £5 banknotes. There was a pattern emerging where Sherlock Holmes & numismatic items were together in my life.

I have this feeling that Sherlock Holmes is a numismatist at heart. He always seems to be carrying a magnifying glass with him... I also believe that many of my fellow numismatists and bibliophiles are fans of Sherlock Holmes as well. Holmes has been the subject of a few items here in the pages of The E-Sylum over the years.

Would there be an interest in forming a Sherlockian "club" of numismatists? If interested, please drop me a quick note at Greg@GregRubyConsulting.com. If there is enough interest, I will arrange for a meeting to take place this summer at the ANA's World's Fair of Money in Chicago.

To read the earlier E-Sylum articles, see:
NUMISMATICS AND SHERLOCK HOLMES(www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v12n40a15.html)
MORE ON NUMISMATICS AND SHERLOCK HOLMES(www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v12n41a14.html)