Tuesday night was the April meeting of my northern Virginia numismatic social group, Nummis Nova. We met at Legal Seafoods in the Tyson's Galleria. Eric Schena was our host and he'd arranged for a private room.

The venue was great. Our table was arranged in a large square, making it easy for everyone to see and talk to everyone else. The room has some extra tables set up, and these were used to display some exhibits. I laid out some recent purchases including the bronze and silvered Eric Newman medals made by the Rittenhouse Society and the recent Medal Collectors of America medal. I was most proud to show my "splasher" or lead die trial of a Carnegie Hero medal.

Jon Radel displayed his copy of Robert Pepping's New Zealand History Notes on the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Bank Notes. Eric had declared a theme of "Death and Taxes" and displayed an original tax collector's ledger from a town in Virginia. Later he passed around two pieces from his wife Heather's collection of undertaker tokens. We gave her the nickname "Morticia".

On a different topic Eric also passed around a token with a possible connection to the Andy Griffith Show. He writes:

David Schenkman had a neat token, asking, "What denomination is it?"

Dave writes:

Other attendees were Mike Packard, Julian Leidman, Joe Levine, Gene Brandenburg, Wayne Herndon and Roger Burdette.I sat next to Roger and we talked a good bit about one of the book manuscripts he has in progress.

Gene brought along a book for me: Report of the Director of the Mint Upon the Production of Precious Metals in the Year 1891. I had to let him know it was a commonly seen item, although this copy was in a nice binding with marbled boards. He had fun crying to everyone how I'd dissed his book, and others went overboard noting, "Well, he did say it had a swell binding..."

Mike Packard brought the best item of numismatic literature - a nice copy of the 1933 reprint of Sylvester Crosby's book on 1793 Cents and Half Cents. He'd bought it on eBay for a song. Great find!

The evening ended all too soon - it was another wonderful night of numismatic fellowship (not to mention decent food and an abundance of wine.