RWB

There's a certain kind of pragmatism in most European countries. It's the kind that says: "If you are a beginning skier and go on a double-diamond course and get hurt, it's you fault. Don't try to sue the course owner."

No. It's the flip side of recognized empirical standards, and clear separation of opinion from fact.

Sorry, but tilting a coin is and excuse for not being in control of lighting. As for the two tilted photos above, they are badly compromised by digital artifacts that IF anything is actually in focus, it can't be determined. (To see the artifacts, all one has to do is click the photos, then click the " + " magnifier. If you want more , save the image and enlarge it to see all the happy JPG compression stuff stacked like legos on a sunny day.) There are a lot of excellent photography books - especially older ones based on film, where mere competence results in professional failure.

Then good XRF measurement should show that. Why don't CuNi coins show a similar effect. (We'll skip the fragile WW-II alloy mess.) Having seen no data to support improper/incomplete alloy mixing, and understanding the care taken by the mints in preparing alloy I remain highly skeptical of the alloy theory. Yes, ingots were always rolled length-wise. They were sometimes coated with lard, too. The "wood grain" samples I've seen span multiple kinds of strip treatment, but all have similar post-blanking/upsetting cleaning.

When the US mint mad Possibly, or maybe not. The "wood grain" appearance is so common that the same alloy problem would have to affect hundreds of melts every year. Plus planchets were purchased from Scovill and other vendors for decades, yet the effect remains. I think one of the above posts has a typo, also. The mints actively stirred every melt to ensure mixing. Without that the alloy metals would segregate and the ingots would be condemned - meaning it all would have to be done again. As mentioned before - an awful lot of "coin theories" assume Mint employees were ignorant dolts, incompetent and habitual liars --- but we won't go down that dirt road.

It is not a function of the detector. Only the two things mentioned. (The tilt and skew capabilities of a standard view camera simply exploit these, they are not changed. The old 35mm tilt lenses offered only a small perspective correction. Rarely used and certainly not for the highest quality work.

Nothing unusual -- except the coin is sideways.

" PMD " = Post mint damage.

A series of careful spot readings with a really good XRF should show changes in alloy - if the assumptions commonly made are correct. The same for any alloy differences mentioned in Mr. Lange's article. Delamination of bronze and brass alloy is commonly traced to copper oxide and impurity inclusions in the metal, not the alloy itself. Frankly, I disagree with the alloy theory. I suspect final planchet cleaning/whitening was the culprit.

Depth of field (depth of focus) is controlled by aperture and magnification. That's all. It really should be called "depth of acceptable focus."

Spiders are happening at ANA. But -- will they make enough nice webs by Halloween? If so, it could be a real Haunted Museum and raise $$$ for that sadly misplaced organization.

Well, there were faint hopes that by asking a tough question, some might give it some meaningful thought. With a couple of exceptions, that has not happened. So I will toss in the ole sweat soaked boxing towel and head back to the locker room with my robots.

One possible thread saving approach is to copy the page 1 URL and paste into a list, then copy it on the next row and change the page number to " 2 " and so forth. Once you have your list of URLs, open Acrobat and have it make a PDF of each page in order. You should get a PDF for each page which can then be combined into one file. OCR will capture all the text.

It's beginning to sound as if few care one way or another - they take whatever is stuffed down their gullets.

First, your 1960 half dollars are 90% silver. At current market prices for silver each coin is worth about $8.75. The $10 face value roll contains 20 coins, so the "melt" value of the entire roll is approximately $8.75 x 20 = $175.00. Next, carefully remove the coins from the tube and lay them on a soft cloth surface (towel, etc.). Handle coins only by the edge and never try to clean or "polish" them. Last, look carefully at both sides of each coin. On the reverse (bell) is there a small letter just above the cross bar? If there's no letter the coin was made in Philadelphia; if there's a D it was made in Denver. Put any coins with bumps or scrapes to one side - they are of less interest to collectors. Take a few closeup photos with a real camera of phone camera and post them here. Members can then offer more suggestions.

If you mean the normal coin color, no. You photos don't show any significant toning either. However, they also show dings and other marks that reduce the "grade" and lower desirability among collectors. None of the coins pictured are worth enough to justify the expense of third-party-grading. A common lower value limit is about $200 (or more) before you might recover the TPG cost on selling.

The idea is that we fail to learn from history, and thus repeat the same kinds of mistakes. But, then, you folks are just being intentionally obtuse. There's no consensus among posters on what the terms mean...at least thus far.

In an era when people pass around photos of their interests, it's expected that they will feature the hobbies and other interests -- in addition to the family dog, and flowers. Taking your own coin photos is one of the few remaining hands-on parts of coin collecting, and it allows collectors to share details with others in near real-time. It doesn't take a lot of money to make good photos, but it requires patience and attention to detail. Naturally, one can spend a lot on photo equipment and still take awful photos, just as a lot can be spent on slider coins that "look uncirculated" to the inexperienced. The TPGs do a find job with their photos, but do-it-yourself is necessary for all those raw coins and new discoveries. Anyway, knowing "How" to do something does not mean you "Must" do something.

Sorry - none of those will do anything except ruin the coin from a collector standpoint.

Copper-nickel is often described as "silvery-white" but it is really just gray. That's most of why your earlier Kennedy halves look "whiter" than the later ones (as others have described).

The IRS numbers are for persons paying income tax. Average annual income was $1,200 to $1,500 and most families had one income, not two as is common today. In the Great Depression incomes slipped to $800 per year - if a worker was employed. My parents were fortunate to have two incomes during the depression. My Mother was a teacher and took a pay cut from $100 per month to $80 so that jobs could be retained. My Father managed highway construction and earned over $225 per month plus overtime. State government jobs like these were highly coveted.

When coin blanks are fed into the upsetting machine, they are squeezed slightly to make them perfectly round with a smooth edge and a raised periphery that will eventually become part of the coin rim. However, as noted by others, the rim is cut into the die and is formed by the die. Upsetting facilitates rim formation and permits lower striking pressure while filling the design.

It would be nice to hear from other members who are interested in improving their coin photography. There is too much potential value in brg5658's initial post and related photographic comments, to have it buried under extraneous bickering. That is not acceptable. Thank you!

Well.....do you want them ostentatious, imposing, sumptuous, sybaritic, impressive, or will basic polysyllabic do? We aim to please as Kim Jongu-un said to his uncle Jang Song-thaek, as 50 cal. machine guns warmed up nearby.

Here's an authentic 1879-P silver dollar.