RWB

A license to hold, sell and buy gold was issued by the Treasury Department through the Mint Bureau. The original Treasury regulations relating to gold hoarding set $100 per person as the limit. However, this did not work very well and caused more confusion than anything else. Eventually the "coin collector" definition was adopted as is clear in the original order. No one came knocking on doors. There were several recorded instances of spiteful neighbors - even a spouse - reporting to the USSS about a "hoarder." Some were legitimate, many were not.

This is the abstract side of a letter sent to the Philadelphia Mint requesting 1889 gold dollars. Mint Director Kimball added a personal note about how the coins were being distributed. A few days earlier, he had ordered another 10,000 struck to meet demand while simultaneously not feeding jewelers coins for mutilation.

Actually, much of the material in NNP has not been seen before - including the letters about 15 extra pieces. Also, Barber made it clear there were no proof Columbian halves made. Some of the first pieces made in 1892 were struck of lightly polished planchets, but that does not make a proof coin.

RE: Plastic holder distortions. While researching Saint-Gaudens Eagles for a book (similar to the Double Eagle book) I came across a slab photo of a perfect D/S mintmark - this thing was clear and both letters looked equal in strength. Only found the one coin photo. More digging turned up the same holder and coin -- but the mintmark was a normal "D." What happened? I then checked other coin photos made through slabs from the same authenticator and in a similar accession range. I found more....not doubled mintmarks but distorted letters or features covering very small areas. The distortions were clear with one lighting angle and invisible from another. My "find" was merely an optical illusion. :(

For those waiting for data and search results from NARA via NNP or me, be advised that all the archive locations remain closed to the public. All available documents have been posted to NNP and there are none in the pipeline. I have a large database of material not in NNP. Collectors who have specific research data requests can contact me via PM. I'll help as much as possible. RWB

Smithsonian purchased 2 sets of 1933 coins. It's not known if other museums made requests.

There was a lot of interest in being on the Annual Assay Commission - collectors were not alone. But appointments were made by the President (actually Mint Dire recommended people to Sec Treas, etc.) and there were many applicants in the 1860s and later. Special medals were given to each member and these were highly prized - only 10-15 made and given only to members. RE: "Thanks Roger....I'm going to do more research on Congressman Ashbrook." You will fine more about Ashbrook and his coin collecting in RAC 1905-1908.

RE: "Did these guys discuss or think about the possibility of gold and/or coin ownership changing 180 degrees ?" I don't know. There were few active collectors of gold coins compared to those who collected minor and silver. A look at production numbers for minor, silver and gold proofs will give you an idea of the proportionate breakdown - even assuming only 10% of collectors every bought proofs direct from the Mint. Dave Bowers' books would be a good place to look as well as the Harvey Stack materials. I recall nothing along these lines in Eric Newman's papers....but he was more academic collector than most. That being said - few of the US Mint letters from the early 1930 have been examined in detail. There are court and USSS records but those do not convey personal opinions. The diary of Congressman William Ashbrook expresses his dismay about dropping gold coins in 1933-34 (he was on the 1934 Annual Assay Commission and bought a bunch of the rare Eagles with knife rim at the 1908 Assay Commission meeting and was on the 1934 Annual Assay Commission) but by 1934 his personal collection had been sold after most was stolen from his bank vault.

Right. So far, it seems no one has seen one of these letters....if any were written.

A little confusion about reading the letter --- In a previous letter the Mint Superintendent (Bosbyshell) asked the Exposition president if he (Supt.) could buy 5 half dollars at face value. He was told yes, and Higgenbotham (Expo president) would take care of the cost. A few days later Bosbyshell asked if he could buy 10 additional coins for Mint officers and others. Higgenbotham in above letter says that is OK and he will, again, pay for the coins and also offers to write a personalized letter to accompany each coin. I note that Lee G (above) says this is new to him - and he has written the definitive, in depth book on US classic commemoratives. (Unpublished as yet....unfortunately.) Has anyone seen any of these 15 coins possibly accompanied by letters from Higgenbotham?

I'm finding a bunch of Columbian Exposition letters that apparently have been unknown. One written in April 1893 complains that the roof leaks badly and the Mint people had to cover their equipment and the coin display cases with a tarp.

OK! Thanks!

Is this closer to how the coin colors appears in reality?

Photos of coins in plastic holders will never be a good as ones made without the intervening plastic, reflections, distortions and severe limitations of lighting angles. As you are aware, slight changes in lighting can make a huge difference in appearance of distracting marks. The dark lines at upper left on the top photo seem barely visible on the yellowish bottom photo. The upper photos slightly yellow in color balance, the bottom one looks strange. If you own the coin, which is the better photo - that is, most accurate in color and detail?

Here's the 1923-D Commentary for those who might be interested. There is also information in the previous Appearance section. "Commentary: Denver Mint Superintendent Robert J. Grant was appointed Director of the Mint on October 1, 1923. He succeeded the inept Frank. E. Scoby in this capacity.[1] Although certainly better that Scoby, Grant depended on Assistant Director Mary O’Reilly to keep the Mint Bureau operating and make reports to Congress. At the Denver Mint, Grant was replaced by Frank E. Shepard on November 12, 1923. At the end of the year the Denver Mint held $138,645,762.50 in gold coins. Many of these were produced by the San Francisco Mint and they moved to the larger storage vaults in Denver. Operations were confined to silver dollars for the Pittman silver and double eagles. To hold the silver and gold coins being produced, two more new vaults were added to the Denver Mint. Both were approximately 28x52 feet, and were equipped with an elevator to make movement of heavily loaded trucks easier. This is one of the few collectible branch mint double eagle issues from the 1920s, and is popular with those building gold type sets. The implication from authentication and auction records is that most surviving 1923-D coins were originally shipped to South America where they remained untouched for decades. This is confirmed by the overall high quality of specimens which is contrary to what is seen with surviving U.S. gold from European sources." "[1] Frank E. Scoby was a poker buddy of President Harding with no experience in finance or manufacturing. In the family biography it is noted that he was mint director for too short a time to do any real damage. See Renaissance of American Coinage 1916-1921 for a brief biography and Scoby’s post-directorship occupation."

OCR = Optical Character Recognition. An image of text and tables is scanned internally by the software and the letter shapes and table borders are converted to machine code. This permits almost any search engine or word processing program to identify individual words, numbers, and exact phrases, then display them in their original context.

For those who have not seen the S-G DE book's interior date/mint listings, here is a composite of 1923-D, the shortest entry.

RE: "I just have to figure how to get the key pages on my smartphone so I can reference them when I'm looking at Saints." Could you use your phone to photograph the pages you want for show reference? If you have clear images (using high quality JPG of TIF) load these to your PC, then convert these to Adobe Acrobat and run OCR on them. That will give you searchable text for each page along with the page photos. Plus, you can discard bits you don't want or need. Upload those to your phone. For individuals that's OK....just not for sale or businesses.

These 15 were coins that Philadelphia Mint officers and employees wanted for themselves, not to Exposition officials. None of the historical organizations in and around Philadelphia have any of these. A previous letter requesting 5 coins names Superintendent Bosbyshell, Mint Director Edward O. Leech "...and give the others to such officers as my be your pleasure...." Presumably this would include Acting Director Robert Preston, Philadelphia Mint Chief Clerk Mark Cobb , and Coiner William Steel...but that omits Engraver Charles Barber, Secretary of the Treasury, Treasurer of the U.S., etc., etc.

GoldFinger1969 - 1927-D and 1933 are too rare and too variable in price for a grid to be of much use. 1927-D has auction prices with the individual specimen listing. 1933 has no realistic price, although if the known pieces were available, it might be in the same range as 1927-D, possibly a little more due to the magical date. Just Bob - There were some corrections and tweaks (no 'twerks'), that's all. Auction companies and coin sellers almost never come across meaningful new information. The last time I can recall was the Raymond T Baker family holding, and most of those pieces confirmed what had already been discovered through archival research and published.

"I don't care for the use of all 11 MS grades and certainly not the "+". It's just more marketing to inflate the price level as much as possible and exaggerate the significance of what are overwhelmingly common coins. I don't see that it adds anything to collecting and I consider it a pretension that this level of accuracy is meaningful. Most collectors cannot grade to this level of detail." Yep. A thoughtful collector, now deceased, once posted on another hobby message board a plot of statistical accuracy over the plethora of uncirculated "grades." It was all mush -- and the host did not like it, so removed it.

RE: "Even today, I had a long discussion with an ANA certified member / dealer that told me a 65 grade is basically perfect in terms of wear, and that anything beyond that (66-70) is purely subjective. 'Good eye appeal'. " I find it difficult to wrap my feeble thoughts around that dealer's approach. (ANA does not "certify" coin dealers; they are simply dealer members versus regular members.) Let's keep it simple and honest: ALL coins labeled "Uncirculated" or "Mint State" must, by definition be without wear. There must be no exceptions. Period. End of discussion. The factors that separate MS-60 from MS-63, or MS-65, or MS-68 are the severity, quantity and location of post-striking marks. Some "grading" companies also include luster and/or visible detail (i.e., "strike") in their composite opinion of a grade. (I happen to disagree with that last part, but it is as it is.) Wherever you send your very best coins for authentication and grading, you will receive their best opinion. Later, a buyer will likely argue that the "grade" is too generous and offer less than you feel the coin's value to be; but that is part of buyer-seller negotiation and does not change the coin in any way.

Six hundred copies is outstanding! Congratulations! Tell everyone the title of your book again!

I've been copying documents related to subjects in the book for 15-20 years. Part of my research approach is to preserve anything of possible use even if not related to the current subject. I also have a lot of material from research in the Renaissance of American Coinage series, especially the 1905-1908 book. I had also previously published all of the original Annual Assay Commission minutes and these were a prime source. I drew on all this plus new research in assembling and writing the book. Coin examination, photos, data tables, correlation and other pieces took about 18 months. Concentrated work of putting it all together took a year of almost full time attention. Each date/mint coin required several hundred individual examinations, comparisons and image normalization steps to arrive at the varieties shown in the book. Heritage's authors took time from their busy schedules to do pricing, variety numbering, and they also "test drove" the book for about a year to look for mistakes and omitted varieties. They have a regular flow of double eagles in auction consignments and did an excellent job with this critical review. A notable factor in this approach is that most of the book's content is entirely new and never before published - anywhere.

I agree, and I don't remember seeing or hearing about one with an Exposition certificate. Maybe someone has one.