RWB

TPGs provided an opinion of condition for a fee. It's not perfect and it's not precisely repeatable.

The Vatican web site should have an archive of photos that include various popes. You should be able to find photo(s) matching the ones you saw, and then you can identify the priest receiving them. Your difficulty is that without documentation the claim of prior ownership is just hearsay and not acceptable to anyone authenticating the medals provenance.

This table should help. Anything less than the minimum weight for gold or silver rendered the coin not a legal tender. Few seem to have paid attention for small silver coins. Copy and save the JPG for better readability.

US Mints would not accept legal weight coins for deposit except for damaged or mutilated pieces. Underweight or mutilated coins were accepted at bullion value. Exceptions were made for direct exchanges for a few silver or gold pieces for collectors or special occasions such as births and anniversaries. Here's a typical coin request: Gold coins were subjected to a kind of "musical chairs" approach. Everything was good until someone refused the coin. Then the holder tried to give it to a different merchant or bank; neither of which were obliged to accept it. Whoever held the coin last (when the music stopped) was stuck with it, and the loss was his/hers. The sub-Treasuries and later Federal Reserve Banks, accepted damages and light weight gold from banks at estimated bullion value. The Mints received these in batches and charged the s-Ts or FRBs with the difference between legal and measured value. Banks were then credited back if they were owed money. In a few situations such as 1917 on the west coast, the Treasury accepted all old worn and lightly damaged gold coins at full face value. They wanted to get the substandard coins out of circulation and replace them with FR Notes and fresh coins.

On the dies, both Washington's head and the eagle's head are incuse -- lower than the rest of the die faces. They cannot touch unless all the other raised die areas are first compressed - this makes the kind of clashing the OP described impossible. Further, for coining the dies are rotated 180-degrees relative to each other. Thus the eagle's head is opposite the lower part of Washington's bust, not his head.

Tried to reduce a stray cat to a kitten in the microwave -- only partial success. Try this site: https://www.zmescience.com/science/physics/coins-shrunk-electromagnetic-blast-063654/

Only Type-3 DE were produced at SF in 1908.

An old thread -- but same advice: Assume the coin is "raw" and grade it based on what you see not what you want to see. Flea market booths are commonly filled with overpriced coins, so research the FMV of an 1893-CC in Good condition.

NNP's navigation and search functions "suck" -- badly. It's easy to get 5,000 "hits" and have 4,990 be irrelevant. The data are there -- just finding it is tough. This URL might help - it takes users directly to the Entry 1 correspondence. https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/archivedetail/515202?Year=1888&take=50

There is also a way to reduce the size of a real coin - but I forget the details. Also, the "novelty type fake" is a counterfeit - size does not matter. "Novelty" does not matter. What is said on the piece matters.

Incorrect. How an item is "represented" is immaterial under the counterfeiting laws of both countries. If it looks like a coin (denomination and name of country) but was not issued by the national authority, it is a priori a counterfeit. "Slugs" are also covered by counterfeiting law because they are purposely made to act like a legal coin in mechanical devices.

Most Heritage catalogs are archived at NNP as are a great many from other companies, clubs and SIGs. A major purpose of NNP is to capture and preserve the literature of American numismatics.

You can find some of the earlier Mexican pesos at good prices. Designs are attractive and make a nice introduction to "crown size" silver coins.

Sets were imported to the US without the $20 gold. The pieces illustrated by the OP would qualify as counterfeit coins under Canadian and US law, not medals regardless of their composition.

Only value is in learning about damage.

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Can you ask for a "Narvel" label, or maybe a "Navel" label?

A little manual retouching on the reverse die. Quite common on proof Washington quarters. If you look in the book United States Proof Coins 1936-1942 by Roger W. Burdette You'll find lots of photos of retouching on all denominations of proof coins. Processes were similar from 1950-1964, too. (Or -- maybe they fell off a nearby 1878 8TF silver dollar...?)

The 1967 proof-like set gold coins look like this:

All of the major US auction companies commission articles specifically for some items in their catalogs. These are usually abbreviated and rewritten from published material. Having it done by the author adds authority to the catalog description and also avoids excessive quotation for commercial purposes. Fees for this are not large since the author usually gets a mention of their books or business. Renaissance of American Coinage 1905-1908, and the other two books covering 1909-1915 and 1916-1921 are foundation published resources for this period - as was the intention from their inception. All three books were fun to research and write, but 1905-1908 was the most enjoyable if only for all the Breen-balloons that were so readily popped with almost every sentence and photo. Those little 'rewards' also helped validate my feeling that much of the "received wisdom" was more "whizzed dumb" than fact-based truth. That's why I do archival and non-numismatic research first, before opening any published book/article on the same subject.

Something of the difference from being a "coin collecting numismatist" and a "coin accumulator."

There is additional detail on this in Renaissance of American Coinage 1905-1908.

The "experts" mentioned in Mr. Gibson's letter were likely of similar types we encounter even today. These are what I call the "Looks Like" experts. Back in 1889 it was "It looks like a genuine nickel," today this type says "Looks like a branch mint proof." In both instances there was not enough background knowledge for the "expert" to make a meaningful assessment, but the "expert" didn't understand this. In the 1889 reply, a mint officer suggested looking at the edge for a soldered seam, along with weight, diameter and ring. (Nickels didn't have much of a ring, but a glue or solder job would simply go "thud.")

RE: "Daniel Carr of Moonlight Mint has also "copied" saint gaudens designs on some interesting 'hard times' tokens and "fantasy" coins" You mean counterfeited in the case of the first pair of fakes. The bottom pair are just 5th grade immitations.

Then, as now, there are "experts" hiding under every rock and decaying leaf. Most mean well but don't know enough to be credible; others, however are malicious or perpetual liars who enjoy seeing others suffer.