RWB

It is unlikely that any of the coins you bought are valuable enough to justify throwing away money on independent authentication and grading. The "maximum value" for most of those coins will be $1 or $2 -- not the $25 + postage you'll pay to have each graded. [Where do people get the idea that sticking a coin in a TPG holder makes them "valuable" ?]

Yes. This allows the real coins to talk to the owner. If you buy the special high frequency whistle, your slabbed coins will come running to you, lick your shoes and beg for stars, +'s and sticker treats.

Reducing lathes were expensive and difficult to operate (note a comment in the letter, above). No US medal makers had one until George Soley built one for his use as part of the private medal business he and William Barber owned. (Both were US Mint employees thoroughly familiar with making reductions, dies, etc.) That home-made version is the only one I know of until Tiffany and later others bought a Hill's English version from the Wyons in the 1880s. Until then, diesinkers continued to cut hubs or master dies by hand. Most of the Civil War tokens were made by combining prepared portrait matrices with letter punches and ornaments. A primary complaint about James Longacre was that he was merely a mechanic - making reductions from models - and not a real artist and diesinker.

Authentic on left. OPs item on right. Compare relative positions of design elements, particularly inscription; note puffyness of OPs item compared to an authentic coin. Die crack missing from OPs item; scales different. Literally dozens, scores; pecks, bushels, barrels of differences.

Random distribution. Try some different banks.

The OP's opinion disagrees with NGC's opinion. Nothing out of line, although NGC has examined and tested many more coins than the OP or any other dealer/collector. The option of sending the coins to PCGS - possibly their Hong Kong office - was presented and rejected out of hand. Absent the OP having some Coin Deity in mind to resolve the differences in opinion, what are the alternatives? PS: The submission was not a failure. The OP received everything as agreed.

A reducing lathe is a complicated pantograph for proportional reduction. They are described and illustrated in From Mine to Mint. (No -- a "pantograph" does not iron your pants or print cute slogans on the bottoms of you jeans.)

She was not refused service at a charity clinic. She had several physicians for her son but would not allow them to do what very little they could, to save his leg due to what she felt were excessive fees. Some of her later behaviors are attributed to her attempts to some how atone for that - although medical technology was barely above the axe, saw and scary mask stage anyway.

Minuscule and completely within reporting noise -- within reporting hummmm --- within reporting sssssss. Demand from such is not even proportional to the population of these buyers -- it is far smaller; they have no leverage. Doesn't matter how futures markets were designed or intended - most do not work that way any more. The closest are basic agricultural commodities that have a very wide source distribution -- maize, wheat, soy beans - but those are also failing as agribusiness gains increasing control over remaining "family farms." Few countries have a consistent approach to government infrastructure renewal -- and that is key to moving products for the private sector. If governments and the public do not do it now, it will only become more costly later -- and the funding will only become more of a burden. Some businesses pay a little into infrastructure maintenance - heavy trucking comes to mind for roads and highways. BUT - those truck payments do not flow to the water, sewer and communications lines daily rattled by heavy trucks. Anyway, the article is more bologna that souse, but remains funny.

Yeah -- the disadvantage of relying on memory instead of the original materials.....

The seemingly "odd" grade ranges are an attempt to align reality with perception. They also tend to follow sales/auction results - that is: buyers of low-end labeled coins will purchase items within those stated grade range. That was the relation when the book was written, but it might easily change as "grading nonstandards" continue to slide and the buying collector becomes increasingly ignorant.

A couple of brief thoughts. 1) the general public does not buy and sell silver, or any other commodity; 2) industrial users of commodities want to maintain their material flow and sources, plus protect anticipated future need - this is all outside the "spot" and other Fido markets; 3) "biblical proportions" refers to a tiny area in the Middle East roughly between Babylon and Thebes -- not something vast and all encompassing.

Very rough --- Possibly 50% for so-called MS-60/61 and 20% for MS-62, plus another 10% for MS-63 -- all as applied to common date coins. Rare dates/mints would be much lower - they simply receive more attention. (I probably have more reliable data, but that awaits data recovery.) Personally, I do not accept any "AU" grade except 58. To me, AU is a unitary grade -- a demarcation between Uncirculated and Circulated. Anything in an "AU-55, AU-53" or similar holder is actually EF; and, AU is defined as the slightest trace of abrasion and/or field disturbance by handling. "AU" is one of three fixed points on a continuum. Unc 70 defines the top, P-01 the bottom and AU is the discernible location where Unc ends and Circ begins. All three points are thus defined and everything else must be described in relation to them.

Guangzhou mint....?

Die cracks are not normally used to distinguish Peace dollar varieties. If a crack becomes enlarged into a break (missing a little piece of the die face) then it would be listed among the thousands of "VAM" [Van Allen-Mallis] Morgan and Peace varieties.

The name at top left is sufficient identification of the source of this silliness: "Fido." None of the coins the OP has shown are worth more than face value. Encouraging this kind of fantasy is cruel and discourages acquisition of realistic knowledge about grading US coins.

Was this the first Philadelphia Mint medal made using a reducing lathe? Top - Description and terracotta original. Bottom - 1840 letter describing manufacture of the medal hub. Medallion of Benjamin Franklin (1777). Jean-Baptiste Nini, Italian (active France), 1717 - 1786. Based on a drawing by Thomas Walpole, English, 1755 - 1840. Diameter: 5 inches. Terracotta. Label: Clay medallions of Benjamin Franklin were among the earliest portraits of the statesman available in France. Their maker, Nini, worked for Jacques Donatien Le Ray de Chaumont, Franklin's pro-American landlord. Franklin sent one example to his daughter Sarah and her husband, Richard Bache, who thought the medallion a better likeness than the print by Augustin de Saint-Aubin, which Franklin also sent them. Philadelphia Museum of Art. (Private) Mint of the United States January 15, 1840 Dear Sir, I have the pleasure to send you by the present mail, two medals, with the head of Franklin, one of which I pray you to give to the President. We think the head the finest that has yet been executed at the Mint, but what gives it the principal interest is that the die, or rather the hub, was formed, not by the tedious and exhaustive labor of an artist, but by a portrait lathe, which I caused to be made in Paris [for our Mint], at the suggestion of Mr. Peale, and which I have before stated to you we have employed very advantageously, in making dies for the Mint. The original of our present work was a medallion head of Franklin, in burnt clay, of about five inches in diameter. From this, as a pattern, a casting was made in iron, at Boston, and was as smooth and as perfect as the best work of the kind in Berlin. This casting formed the pattern to be placed in the portrait lathe, and enabled us to turn, in cast steel, a hub which was a reduced facsimile of it, and which needed only a slight retouching by the graver. This hub, being hardened, forms a tool with which the die, (and indeed any number of dies,) may be made by the force of a powerful screw press. With the die, the medals are struck as usual. The process which we have met with in this regard is due mainly to the ingenuity and perseverance of Mr. Peale, our Chief Coiner, and has not been attained without much difficulty and after many failures. It appears to me that it must lead to a new era in the making of medals, by enabling us to dispense entirely with the difficult art of the die sinker. All that is now required is a good model made in wax, clay, or any other plastic material; the rest of the process is purely mechanical. Very truly and Respectfully yours, R. M. P.

No...the nickname was from the ink color on the reverse design.

Americans had used paper currency for decades before "greenbacks." The derisive term was because the new paper money did not have direct gold backing -- much like the worst of the old state bank notes. It was also national in scope and depreciated against gold. However, Hetty Green and a few other smart investors bought depreciated bonds and notes, then made huge profits as the economy stabilized. (A little like buying depressed stocks last year and selling them this year.)

The "upside/downside" stuff was started by a dealer long ago and perpetrated by our friend Uncle Wally.

"Workhorse gold denomination." That does not mean everyone used it. Few people ever saw a gold coin - only silver and paper. QE, $3, $1 were too small in size to be appealing - lots ended up in jewelry. Paper had covered these denominations since the Continental Currency days and that hasn't changed today.

Throughout the gold coinage era, half eagles ($5.00 compared to $4.88 per sovereign) were the workhorse gold denomination in the US economy.

Go to the original materials. I did not present the information in the form stated above. An author is responsible only for their direct comments - not someone's rewording or conflation.

They were correctly identified as "pocket change" by the OP.

None of the pictured coins are worth more than face value. Where the fantasy of selling one of them for $1,000 came from is beyond my limited mental capacity....