These look alot better up close in person...& even more so on the reverses...

Just wanted to share a couple of the more common dates in the Franklin series. Of course that term is relative when you have only a few hundred that grade this high. So I guess a better term would be a couple of "not so common" common dates. Both of these coins have some beautiful reverse colors which are fairly common for mint set coins from this time frame. It is hard to see in these photos but the "greens" & "pinks" on the obverse of these two coins is quite impressive as well.

Back "in the day", actually up until 1959 the mint issued their "mint sets" in cardboard holders that had a high degree of sulfur in that paper which often produced the most amazing "Peter Max" colors of the entire rainbow. For the mintage year 1959 mint sets were then housed in the cellophane packets much like the ones seen today. The only coins that compare to these earlier mint sets "color wise" were some of the more colorful Morgan dollars from the sulfur laden canvas mint/bank sacks (for the most part, these aformentioned bags each held 1000 Silver Dollars) of the late 19th century and to a lessor degree, the early 20th century.

Take care all,

WKF

P.S. I had made mention a post or two ago when I showed an "awesome" 1959-P MS-65 non-FBL Franklin that I had a 1951-S, also a MS-65 non-FBL that looked like...well, I won't say what, because there could be little people watching/reading, but it looked so bad I did not even want to take the time to photograph, crop & edit such a piece of garbage so I just sent it back and will use that $77 towards a much more worthy specimen. Trust me, you didn't want to lay an eyeball on such a coin. The only reason I mention it again here was that I wanted to share that 51-S to show the difference between two MS-65's by the same grading service and the fact that the two could be so far apart in the quality and "eye-appeal" category.