RWB

Presumably, Mr. Feld has neither facts nor a link to facts, and merely enjoys seeing his name on the screen.

Conder101 - Helpful comments and a lot of cuts through the nonsense. Also, reinforces that observations MUST be objective and unbiased. Analysis and interpretation might vary, but not the data. Has Robert W. Julian uncovered any material?

Not quite. The perpetrators allege certain things are true, then make unsupported claims as if the allegations are facts. I'm looking for facts. They will support truth - whatever that might be.

Just wondering if there was a bit fact out there, and not just a bunch of allegations.

"Testing hardness" is bologna. The Engraver and his assistants (and earlier the Coiner) were not ignorant louts, punching "anything that moves" like an army recruit !

Wonder if there ever was someone who made US Mint birthday cakes....? Probably not, but I bet the lady adjusters occasionally had such celebrations as time and conditions permitted.

In a way, they collaborated on Roosevelt's 1905 Inaugural medal. Saint-Gaudens did the design and rough sketches, and Weinman made the detailed models and had the final reductions made.

Yep....coffee bags. Not cute filters back then. Ground the beans, dumped them in a bag and threw the whole thing in a big pot of boiling water to steep. Until about 1850 there was a female employee whose entire job was to make coffee.

Computer assisted coin grading is highly applicable to the stuff put out by US and other mints as "commemoratives," bullion pieces and the like. It would also be extremely profitable by reducing human contact, time and error to a minimum. Those pallets of Silver Eagles and the like could be examined and slabbed in hours not weeks. Such systems could also enforce standards for everything from proof-like to the mess of "uncirculated" pseudo-grades.

Long ago I used silver dollars as rifle targets. My little .22LR rounds at 300 feet just made a dent, nothing "volcanic."

Early mint coin bags can be interesting in their own right. Most Mint bags were made from cotton Duck of 8 or 9 ounce weight, and without sizing. (Treasury Department bags were made by a contractor after 1886, and were treated with sizing.) There was an entire sewing department at the Philadelphia Mint where bags were sewn and then stamped by the Mint Storekeeper's office. Here's a Sewing Room report for December 1907 that might be of interest.

Nope. Just damage. However, there are many repunched mintmarks in the Morgan dollars series. Die varieties by the "plethora" can be seen at: http://ec2-13-58-222-16.us-east-2.compute.amazonaws.com/wiki/Home. Look under the heading "Morgan dollars by date."

Send your event to them and they will grade it and put it in a plastic slab. The bigger the event - the bigger the slab. For example, send in a family BBQ event and get it returned in an autographed "Weber" slab with genuine grill marks. But -- send in a three-ring circus event and get it back, graded with blue cotton candy, in a giant autographed "Ringling Brothers" slab. Fantastic! [PS: New collectors -- This is all tongue-in-cheek stuff; feeble humor in a sometimes humorless world. NGC does only coins, medals --- and maybe the occasional petrified cat.]

The double eagle obverse is one of many renditions of Miss Anderson, but it is far too subtle and detailed for a coin. On the Sherman Monument it works - on a coin it is better than most but not really suitable - much the same as McNeil's Liberty on the 1916 quarter.

Is THF (tetrahydrofuran) available without a permit? That will work. Also if high concentration hydrogen peroxide is available, that should work quickly on PVC plasticizers. (Just keep your H2O2 away from rocket powered torpedoes -- might be injurious to your submarines....)

Just an opinion, but Saint-Gaudens was a sculptor primarily of monumental works. Shaw monument in Boston and Sherman and Diana in NYC are just three of many outstanding works. He prepared very few medals and of those only the Columbian Exposition original design is of unusual merit. His Washington medal, which is often praised, is both extremely high relief and extremely prosaic; the portrait being adequate but lifeless and the reverse a mess. The Theodore Roosevelt medal is simply "odd" with an eagle wearing feathered chaps and TR presented in a side-view photo image devoid of character. Even TR disliked it. Weinman did what he could to sculpt the Inaugural medal and should be credited with whatever merit it has. His three (or two) coin designs are all taken from sculpture for the Sherman Monument in NYC, and were not conceived as bas relief. The standing eagle came from the Inaugural medal reverse via a bit of the Sherman Memorial - and it got worse with each iteration.

The 2020 ANA convention in Pittsburgh has been "postponed." Now might be a good time to sell your hot dog, mustard and ugly shirt stocks.

Excellent! Hopefully, another in better condition will show up - possibly from some old type coin album or small family collection.

A. Saint-Gaudens was at the end of his career; A. A. Weinman was near the beginning of his.

From the BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53041884

Yes....I just noticed my proctocologically-challenged error, and your smooth humor ! :)

DBB = "Deep Belly Button" FN = "Full Navel" ?

coinsandmedals - Wherever Doty's spirit is, I'm sure he will enjoy your article!

California gold tokens were all I could think of, too. Maybe Dr. Rear thought they were U.S. Mint products? A lot of people wrote the Mint in Philadelphia asking about gold quarters and halves. I wonder what kind of coin business he ran?

The much more difficult challenge is to acquire coins that are nearly fully detailed - not just limited to Liberty's head, toes, etc.