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RWB

Member: Seasoned Veteran
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Posts posted by RWB

  1. The defect was, evidently, not noticed until some of the coins made it to HQ -- possibly in routine Special Assay samples from each delivery. This had happened previously, and was the responsibility of the production mint to catch during routine inspection. As we can readily see from a long history of cracks, cuds, and clips, employees did not get them all -- and still don't.

  2. The original plan was to use one design for all gold denominations and a separate one for the cent. All of this is explained and illustrated in RAC 1905-1908.

    TR liked the cent obverse and wanted it tested on the DE - one pattern piece known. SG convinced him to keep the striding Liberty figure on the DE and use the Cent obv, with a rather silly Native American chief's headress added, on the Eagle as ordered by TR. (TR's stint as a cattle rancher in the Dakotas might have produced a fetish for native headdresses.) Both the striding and portrait Liberty were adapted from the SG's Sherman Memorial in NYC - just with individual names/titles.

    At beginning of 1908 the adopted DE design was to be used for HE and QE coins. (Edge lettering was not really a problem on these smaller coins. The Philadelphia Mint was doing that on Mexican 10-peso gold pieces.)

  3. Hmmmm...something's gotten confused.

    Usual procedure was to anneal planchets before striking. Every mint uses something similar today, or buys planchets pre-softened.

    MCMVII DE were annealed between blows to bring out the detail as quickly as possible.

    US Mints once had a "Whitening room" for silver and a "Cleaning room" for copper and nickel. The final step was a quick dip in weak sulfuric or nitric acid to brighten the surface just before striking. For silver coins, this resulted in a surface on newly struck coins that was higher in silver than in the bulk alloy. This made the coins look "white" rather than the slightly yellow color of 0.900 silver coin alloy.

    Clad coin surface alloy is ugly regardless of what is done to it.

  4. On 4/17/2024 at 4:54 PM, VKurtB said:

    Virtually everybody in THE ENTIRE HOBBY DISAGREES WITH RWB on this. 

    In reality, VKurtB is incorrect. I know many astute collectors who follow my overall description. The difference between them and run-of-the-mill "VKurtB-types" is that these folks don't care about money, profit, greed (at least not in their hobbies), or the circular hype infesting coin collecting. Their holdings include accurate coin and medal grades combined with their personal preferences for other, subjective, factors.

  5. Each time a modern imitation coin, proof, or other novelty is removed from its original packaging, you expose its surface to contamination. The effects are cumulative each time a holder is opened, and increase as unprotected time increases. The effects might not become visible for a year or more.

    You can be smart, and leave it in the original plastic capsule, or take your chances after spending $50.

  6. Consistent, reliable coin grading is not difficult. (Although nearly everyone else posting message will disagree.) A "grade" is simply a combination of the amount of wear/abrasion on the coin, plus external damage such as bumps, scrapes, scratches and so forth. Both these can be determined using standards accepted long ago, or with degraded versions shown in the ANA Grading guide. (With the exception of Uncirculated coins, where these are not well defined.)

    It gets complicated, confusing and largely worthless, when subjective factors such as luster, strike, tarnish, "look" and other uncontrollable conditions get layered on top of, or in between largely objective criteria.

    Today's collectors and dealers have largely handed off grading to independent for-profit companies owned by buy-out companies, and thereby given up meaningful control over quality. It is all about the money - nothing else.

    ;)

  7. On 4/17/2024 at 11:52 AM, Sandon said:

       There is a 1989-D cent certified by PCGS as having been struck on a pre-1983 planchet and graded MS 65 RD that was sold by Heritage for $7,500 in 2018. https://www.pcgs.com/cert/10759563. Photos of this coin indicate that it has smooth surfaces without blisters, unlike the OP's 1989.  See https://coins.ha.com/itm/a/1271-4767.s 

       I highly doubt that (1) there would have been a leftover pre-1983 brass planchet that happened to still be lingering in a bin at the Denver mint in 1989 and was then struck and (2) that someone who inspected and weighed every coin that came into his or her possession would have happened to find it, in uncirculated condition, no less.  I strongly suspect misconduct by mint personnel. 

    The density is missing, but other data in the Heritage catalog looks OK. (Why does PCGS not put ALL of the data on the page with a coin they certified as an off-metal strike?)