RWB

My impression of the letter is also of one that seems unusually effusive - especially for official correspondence. The original is not marked "Personal" or "Confidential" as was the custom in government. Dunning wanted to take his family back to his home state of Maine, but Patterson convinced him to stay at the Philadelphia Mint until he could find a suitable replacement as Chief Clerk. (At this time there were 4 mints to run, and the 3 new ones were "wobbly" requiring more of Patterson's time. The Chief Clerk/Director's Clerk ran the Philadelphia Mint and kept the various mint treasurers in check.) Dunning eventually was running the NY Assay Office, but had charges made against him. He played a major role in defining what was latter referred to as Dana Bickford's international coinage ideas. (See Fads, Fakes and Foibles for the full story.)

Your quarter is a beat-up damaged coin. RE: "The coin itself is in good condition, no major dings." The coin is peppered with dings scratches and abrasion. Consider revising your idea of "good condition."

Perfect - past tense.

Mint of the United States June 16th, 1845 My dear Sir, The connection which has passed between us, for more than seven years, is about to be discontinued, in consequence of your own desire communicated to me many months since, and on which your final action has been thus long delayed, in kind compliment with my wishes. Our relations have been of the most confidential nature, and have thrown us into close communication, and I therefore speak with knowledge of your character when I say that no one could have proved himself more worthy of entire trust, or could have fulfilled all his duties more balky or more faithfully, I now part with you, with the sincere wishes for the welfare and happiness of yourself and your family in the new career on which you are about to enter, and with assurances of my most affectionate attachment. Believe me, then Ever your friend R. M. Patterson To: Mr. George F Dunning, Director’s Clerk, U. S. Mint Note. I have wished to present to you on our parting, some slight memorial of attachment; but, being perplexed as to a selection, have at last chosen the enclosed as more likely to be useful to you, at this time, than any article to be shown and looked at.

The ink notation suggests you have a roll of "1960 LARG. UNC. RLW" or "50 1960 large date cents, Uncirculated condition," collected by someone with the initials RLW. Any deceased relatives or their friends with those initials?

90% is not acceptable accuracy or content. It is less that what is possible from available data, and inherently flawed. You're assuming the AI system already had the data and the set of integrated algorithms necessary to make necesary logical connections. Further, that the input request was correctly interpreted and understood by the AI system. That little 2-page background about a missing bag of 250 DE (not 500) actually spanned almost 15 years of data collection and several hours of specific correlation, analysis, revision, interpretation and hypothesis testing before its initial draft. Add to that the basic restraint imposed by the language inaccessibility of cursive handwriting and poor OCR. A general AI system would turn out gibberish. A dedicated system might return something with most of the correct words but not the correct story. (Humans are notorious for that.) My present view is that there is no AI system with the capability required. Present AI is copycat "fur ball vomit" good for summaries and amusement, but much too limited to enter a conversation above the "small talk" level. That will change as more powerful computing resources become available.

AI is (and will be) only as usable as the data on which it is trained. I suspect that if one took a huge data set of TPG graded/authenticated coins, the AI output would be mush. That is what would be going in. Coin "grading" has devolved from somewhat objective into entirely subjective and money driven, not a good situation for any system based on 1's and 0's, only. A "quantum" computer might have a chance as would an entirely analog device.

Mutilated, nothing more.

Cataract surgery often helps. If not then endothelial keratoplasty might be warranted. Looking at MS-68 Roosters will not help.

A very large proportion of material generated by current semi-AI products are wrong. The products are useful in making quick summaries, or simple calculations. I've tried some numismatic things with Chat GPT and it has failed all but the most basic. Someone on PCGS message board tried it for coin grading, and the results he posted were uniformly incorrect and misleading....no value at all.

Maybe you got cataracts or floaters.

Half eagle - +/-0.25 grain (not gram). Was channel surfing last night and stopped on one of those crooked jewelry shows. The shill was claiming that a $999.99 necklace had "over 2 grams of platinum in it" and that "platinum was selling for over $500 per gram." What a whopper of a lie, trumps even a penthouse. Platinum is under $1,000 per Troy ounce and under $30 per gram.

"Forgery" is usually reserved for documents and signatures. "Counterfeit" can refer to any non-authentic item. The European dealer's comment indicates its status as "counterfeit reputable."

A practical tip -- a roast beef sandwich does not take good coin photos.... neither do oranges.

Thanks for the compliment. But I hope it is only a genesis to learning a lot more about the meaningful details of 19th and early 20th century mechanical and business operations. Researching the book was something of a revelation. I discovered contemporary engineering articles about inventions by mint employees, changes in operating procedures and other details not previously known or explained. MTM-2 research has been slower, but it none the less discovery orientated just on a wider view.

"Die spacing" is how striking pressure was controlled. The subtle subconscious bias of Bowers and other older writers is an assumption that mint die setters and foremen were basically ignorant, stupid louts who didn't know what they were doing so they made fundamental mistakes very frequently. That is contrary to the truth of these operations and deprecating of the skills those people possessed. Consider: mint mechanics built and repaired presses, blank cutters, upsetting machines and much of the equipment for many years. This gradually evolved to buying from Morgan & Orr and others ONLY when commercial businesses had learned how to do this. These and similar misunderstandings and biases are one of the reasons for persistent attribution of older coins and striking errors. A lot of good information is available on modern (post 1960) errors because the experts on those have much better information on how modern equipment works.

Lightly circulated common date coin worth melt.

OK....I was referring to the coin design and use of angles, textures and other ways to better communicate the invention being promoted.

A very simple "innovation" on the Illinois coins. Make the steel edge of the plow polished on all the coins -- that use of steel was the innovation. It's a small thing that might have made the reverse interesting. (The area is small and would take only a few minutes to re-polish after a few thousand strikes. With low mintages it would not be a lot of additional work. [Bean counters will disagree, of course.] )

Interesting that "innovation dollars" are all designed with no trace of artistic innovation.

The book's data come directly from the Medal Room notebook and refer to each die and every pairing of the dies and the number of pieces struck from them.

Honestly, very few knew much of this until publications over the past 20 years. (Mostly mine.) That is why you see only superficial descriptions in older books, and Bowers' sole reliance on "die spacing" in discussing reduced design details.

This post on PCGS' message board might be of interest. https://forums.collectors.com/discussion/1100744/if-you-own-cameo-1936-1942-proofs-please-read

"1989 rpm" That is incredibly fast for a record...I thought 78 rpm was fast!

Nice find! I once found on in a coin sorting machine, but it had a prominent edge bump. Yours look great.