Numlock News: November 7, 2024 • Banknotes, Aluminosilicate Glass, Bandersnatch
By Walt Hickey
Notes
The hobby of collecting money is getting even more popular. I know what you’re thinking — collecting money is something that we all do, it’s how we pay for groceries and stuff — but we’re specifically talking the collection of rare banknotes. Annually, the hobby sees trade of over $500 million worth of collectible banknotes, and that is growing. One house, the World Paper Money department at Stack’s Bower Galleries, has seen $14.5 million in business in 2024, up from $4 million in 2016. The right kinds of note can fetch a pretty penny; a 10,000-yuan note issued in 1951 by the People’s Bank of China sold for $150,000, and a better-quality version sold for $358,500. Particularly rare banknotes, or those with cool serial numbers, can fetch a really good price, too: A $500 Canadian bill from 1911 just sold for C$528,750 (US$386,400), the largest amount ever paid for a Canadian banknote. As a person who may or may not be trying to get his hands on a rainy day fund of a bunch of Canadian money for, uh, recent personal developments, this intrigues me greatly.
Vikram Barhat, The Wall Street Journal
WNBA
As the WNBA barrels into a collective bargaining agreement renegotiation as well as increasing prominence on national television, the league’s franchises have been cleaning house, refreshing front offices ahead of an increasingly important and high-stakes roster-construction process and swapping out old coaches for the new, an era of turnover heretofore unseen in the sport. All told, of the 12 organizations in the WNBA, eight of them will have a new head coach this season, significantly higher than the previous maximum of five new head coaches seen in three seasons since 2008.
Interactive
Netflix is pulling the plug on its experiments in interactive programming, and while it currently lists 24 titles under its “Interactive Specials” category, the company has confirmed that most of them will be dumped from the platform and only four of them — Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. the Reverend, Ranveer vs. Wild with Bear Grylls, and You vs. Wild — will remain available when all is said and done with the purge. Some of the company’s forays into interactive entertainment, like Puss In Book, have already been gone from the platform for a while. This is Netflix we’re talking about, so we will never, ever get actual useful numbers regarding the success or failure of these products, but given the mothballing of the format, it stands to reason the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze on video choose-your-own-adventure.
Hubble
A new paper argues that the Hubble Space Telescope ought to remain in service given how effective a research partner it’s been to what was generally understood to be its successor observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope. The Hubble has not been serviced in 15 years, and eventually it’s going to fall back to Earth. Meanwhile, the JWST is off at one of Earth’s Lagrange points and is essentially impossible to service, but has been able to expand on Hubble’s hunches by using its superior imaging technology to peer back into the universe. However, there’s merit in keeping the Hubble in the sky: Since its launch in 1990, there have been 46,000 scientific papers written with Hubble data, papers cited over 900,000 times, and it’s still kicking, as in 2023 alone its data fueled 1,435 scientific papers.
Allen Versfeld, Universe Today
Hearing
Costco’s hearing aids are a big hit. The chain has hearing aid centers in 586 of its 615 locations, where members can buy cost-effective hearing assistance as well as get their equipment serviced right while they shop. Costco’s got them starting at $1,500 per pair, which is a good deal compared to the $3,500 to $7,000 per pair from an audiologist clinic, and is especially getting folks who might be wavering about whether or not to address or treat some mild hearing loss for such a high sticker price. In doing so, Costco has managed to rack up a 16 percent market share of the American hearing aid market. Rival Sam’s Club is also offering hearing centers at 450 of its locations, where its Lucid hearing aids cost $1,300 to $4,000.
Julie Jargon, The Wall Street Journal
Gorilla Glass
The European Commission has launched an antitrust investigation into Corning, which produces the Gorilla Glass that’s dominated the mobile phone screen business since launching with the iPhone way back when. The specific product is shatter-resistant alkali-aluminosilicate glass, and the EC alleges that Corning’s deals and rebates come with strings attached that make them anticompetitive. Gorilla Glass 5 was made to survive a 1.6-meter drop 80 percent of the time, and Apple itself invested $45 million into Corning so the company could expand its U.S. manufacturing footprint.
Books
Once seemingly doomed to be devoured by the massive, riverine digital behemoth that ate the book business, Barnes & Noble is not only doing great — it’s also adding stores throughout the United States at a remarkable clip. Sure, some are replacing older ones, but Barnes & Noble opened 30 outlets last year while closing 20, bringing its store count to 609 locations as of last year, and is on track to open 60 bookstores this year. It’s a far cry from the era of the doomed bookstore in the even more doomed mall.
Jim Milliot, Publishers Weekly
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The hearing aids bit is cool. There’s so much in the media about out-of-control medical costs, but if you look around, there’s stuff being offered through other delivery means that’s just as good or better than what you used to have to get through a string of bureaucrats to allow you to get. Eye-care. Major dental work. Psychiatric care. Small cosmetic surgery, etc.
(And I probably ought to look at getting that mole finally removed.)
Open Enrollment session at work for medical, dental, and vision. Is my dentist in network? In an increasing number of cases around DC, no. You pay the whole bill, and your insurance company pays you back.