messydesk

The 1880-CC looks like VAM 3.  Wear and crud can mess with perceived mint mark position.  VAM 1 was marked as non-existent probably in the 1976 edition of the VAM book (definitely in the 1992 edition).  That was meant to be a placeholder if there were such thing as a normal dies 80-CC when Leroy Van Allen started cataloging these.

The 1893-S looks fake from here. The date looks wrong and the combination of wear and coloring look typical of a lot of fakes.

On 10/16/2022 at 4:53 PM, RWB said:

7/8 TF silver dollars were produced when the new 7-TF hub was used to alter existing original 8-TF working dies. Bits of the original design remained visible on some dies. This was done to expedite use of the new reverse design at the west coast mints.

See my book Girl on the Silver Dollar for details and photos.

I would assert that the new hub was used to finish some unfinished 8TF dies.  It takes several hubbings to finish a die over a period of time, so there would have been a handful of unfinished 8TF reverses at the time the first 7TF hub was ready.  The 7/8s are actually the second instance of Class III doubling (design hub doubling) in 1878, as the 8TF reverse had a minor revision most noticeable on the eagle's beak.  Coins with this short-lived revision (VAMs 18-23) are show signs of both hubs.

Here's a discussion ATS about these, including photos of actual holders (not marketing mockups), with lots of questions about them.  They look good from the photos posted.  I'd love to see one and have the chance to do some "abusive user" testing.

On 6/10/2022 at 6:51 PM, DWLange said:

The label descriptions used since 1997 were pretty much imposed on NGC by the language of the Top 100 book. I've noticed that in recent years the vamworld website has abandoned many of those descriptions for more accurate ones, but our customers still expect labels that match the book.

VAMWorld still uses the official specification for VAMs as written by Leroy Van Allen (up through Dec. 2021) or me (starting Dec. 2021).  This is the text that describes each die as well as die markers.  The level of detail has increased here over the years because of collector demand.  This text is not supposed to be different from what Leroy's (or my) written specification.  There is space permitted for additional comments about the variety, including things not described in the specification.  There is also the official name of the variety as written by Leroy.  For the 91-CC VAM 3, it is "Doubled Profile, CC/CC Top, Spitting Eagle."  The doubled profile was added to the official name when VAM 7 was discovered with the same reverse and a different obverse.  Before that, the 1991 VAM book calls it "CC/CC Top and Spitting Eagle."

Many coins have additional nicknames not given by Leroy but adopted by collectors.  The 88-O "Hot Lips" is officially called "Doubled Head".  The term "Hot Lips" pre-dates the Top 100 book, as does "Scarface" for the 88-O VAM 1B.  Other nicknames were given when the Top 100 book or subsequent guides were published.  As these nicknames tend to be more popular and catchy, it only makes sense that they are used.  I don't think anyone would refer to a Hot Lips as a Doubled Head today.

9 minutes ago, JT2 said:

RWB. Isnt this the case for this entire series....  It took me 10 years to build mine and 90% of the peace dollars have very soft strikes.....  oh by the way she is lovely.  still dont know if i am going to warm up that quickly to ya though   i think that you keep me lookijng for a 17 - D buffalo because you wrote somewhere that they woere made from left over proof dies and it took me 2 years to find a good 6 5 ... j/k good advice is never orgotten

Don't confuse soft strike with detail not present on the die.  The reason many Peace dollars are mushy is because the dies are mushy, so that even if the coin is fully struck, you get fully struck mush.  1921-S Morgans work the same way, in that you almost never see one that is sharply detailed.  The 1921 high relief is a different beast.  The reason they don't have good detail is because the strike isn't sufficient to bring it up.

As far as I know, NGC was not producing calendars.  I made some calendars of my coin photography, but I'm sold out of the 2021.

Disappointed, yet relieved.

15 hours ago, Cat Bath said:

Liberty will likely have to be represented as androgynous and racially nondescript.

I'd recommend a stick figure w/ a torch so long as it doesn't offend anorexic people.

California may prohibit the open depiction of flames so that might be a problem also.

So, the main character in the xkcd comic, then?

On 3/20/2020 at 9:12 PM, Wiley C. M. said:

Collectors,

 How many of you would like to see the Denver Mint make a Proof set? I see West Point cranking W proofs on and off over the years. Why hasn't Denver come out with a proof set yet? What would it take to get them to make their first D mint marked proof set? I'm a Midwest collector and live just a few miles south of the ANA museum in Colorado Springs. I would love to see this happen!

In the be careful what you wish for department, let's use this opportunity of the ASE reverse switchover to have all mints make ASEs of both reverses, and in bullion, "burnished", "enhanced", proof, and reverse proof finishes.  No colorized, holographic, privy marked stuff.  They can scatter them over the course of the year to hide the fact that there would be 40, count 'em, 40 different ASEs made.  Heaven help TPG label collectors that may have to buy hundreds of 2021 ASEs.  My Dansco, in which I keep bullion ASEs, only holds 36 -- 1986-2021.  Bottom line is that a ballooning product catalog isn't really all that good for the hobby.

On 3/26/2020 at 12:25 AM, kbbpll said:

Are there any "proof-like" coins out of Denver? I recall that there are S, CC and O with PL designations, but I can't think of a D.

1921-D Morgans exist in PL, but they are quire scarce.

Agree that the 78-CC is good (VAM 6).  The 89-CC has a lot not to like -- rims, detail, date and mint mark position, heavy clash on the reverse, and that's just from a blurry picture.

AI grading is an interesting exercise, because it shows just how much you need to understand something to build an AI system that can do it well.  This is a good example of a classifier problem, where the classifications are the grades of a coin.  A standard approach to this is to throw a lot of image data together with ground truth grades (I know what you're thinking) and let the system learn how to classify unknown images.  This will work pretty well with wholesome, circulated coins with flat appearances that can be graded pretty much as line drawings and imaged on a flatbed scanner with repeatable results.

Uncirculated coins pose a different challenge.  If you look at how people grade them, there is a lot of tipping and twirling of a coin in the light to get a full picture of what it looks like.  If you translate that process to a computer, that is an incredible amount of data that needs to be acquired, and acquired without loss due to an insufficient imaging setup.  We've all seen countless GTG threads everywhere that have unexpected grades associated with a coin.  We are grading these with one image.  Sometimes they're good images, sometimes not, but it's always that case that a single image isn't capturing everything about a coin. More nefariously, it's sometimes the case that a single image is hiding specific things about a coin, such as a patch of hairlines, a bad hit, or a scratch.  If I'm trying to rip of eBay buyers and I normally use bad (for example, overexposed) pictures of problem coins to do this, knowing there's an AI grader in play, I might decide to try and game that with my photos.

To me, what would be the most impressive is a data acquisition system that could acquire the data necessary to train such a system well and then to actually perform the grading on test coins.  From there, the next step would be to see how to optimize the whole process.

Simpler AI tasks related to coins include identification, coarse grained attribution (think Overton varieties, not VAMs), and maybe even AT/NT assessment.

Just saw a that DeSantis issued a statewide stay-at-home order.  Should I assume that the offices will be closed after the end of the day today?

I don't know that the mint director actually "dug up" this figure as much as he wet-finger estimated it.  The 7/8 TF and 7 TF reverses were phased in during late March and early April 1878, and there were some 7 TF coins that were made before 8 TF coins that used the same obverse die.  I've estimated that the mintage of 8TF is about 1,280,000 based on die studies and mint correspondence, which is just as far away from his estimate as the 750,000 figure that has been in the Red Book for a long time.  A previous estimate, made in the late 1950s or early 1960s, was 580,000.

11 hours ago, RWB said:

This also happens to tie in with Abuelo's post. This letter from May O'Reilly states the reason the date side is the "obverse."

 

So is the regulation as stated because the obverse was always the dated side?  Was there another regulation or law saying that the obverse side show the date?

On 1/17/2020 at 6:00 PM, RWB said:

Does the Lafayette dollar actually have a "date?" It was struck in 1899 which does not appear on the coin. The 1900 year is when the memorial was dedicated.... Hmmm.

Has the US issued other analogous coins?

1900 is the generally accepted "date" of the coin.  The Norfolk half has 5 dates strewn about it, none of which were when the coin was issued.

I wonder if there is a "case file" that goes along with this.  Otherwise I could imagine Superintendent Fox asking for further details, including why there was a fire in the Seperating [sic] room.

Now taking orders for my 2020 coin calendar. $16 (includes shipping in the US) gets you a wall calendar with a different coin photo that I've taken for each month. The calendar is printed on heavy card stock with glossy pictures of a diverse assortment of eye candy. This is the twelfth year I have done this calendar. Should be shipping by December 1 or so. Here are the coins that are featured for this year:

I'm getting ready to do a second printing of my 2018 calendar.  $15 (includes shipping in the US) gets you a wall calendar with a different coin photo that I've taken for each month. The calendar is printed on heavy card stock with glossy pictures of a diverse assortment of eye candy. I have decided to honor our late friend Mike Hayes this year, with four of his coins appearing in the calendar. This is the tenth year I have done this calendar. Should be shipping by December 20 or so. Here are the coins that are featured for this year:

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Flip it into the air. If it rings, it's copper (try with a <= 1981 cent to compare). If it doesn't, it's zinc. Weight of a bronze cent should be 3.11 grams. In order to be less than 3 grams, it would have to be worn down to VG or so if bronze. For a copper cent to weigh in at 2.8 grams, it would have to be very heavily worn.

To clarify, my "go home" comment refers to the OP's coin. The long strike-thru wire on the 80-S dollar is something I think is kind of cool, and wouldn't hurt the value of a sub-gem 80-S.

Yeah, this one falls in the "go home" category rather than "go big". It would sell for a discount unless you happen across someone who it hoarding minor strike-thrus.

For a 1957 proof quarter, a strike thru is a "go big or go home" proposition. If it's not dramatic, nobody will want it.