RWB

Keller Machine Co and Dietsch Bros. had new reducing lathes. Keller made their own and Dietsch sold the Janvier product to the US Mint. Here's a notebook page showing the cost in 1906. (The 1899 French patent is in my 1st issue of Journal of Numismatic Research (JNR). )

Found it today. This is the letter that really started the Renaissance of American Coinage 1905-1921. Completely unexpected discovery.

Fixed price for two designs: one for gold and the other for the cent.

Adding Saint-Gaudens' original coinage commission acceptance letter. (See separate thread, elsewhere.)

This is the original acceptance letter from Saint-Gaudens to Treasury Secretary Leslie Shaw dated August 11, 1905 and signed. The letter's content is known through copies and Dartmouth College's microfilm, but this is original. (I'll also post on the long SG book thread for continuity.)

Yep. The Treasury Dept was going to display a selection of coining equipment that would go the new Denver Mint after the expo. There was also the Mint's 2 commem gold dollars (ugly trolls) being hawked by loser Farran Zerb-blat. The Bureau of Insular Affairs (War Dept.) sponsored special Philippine coins plus proofs sales of which The Zerber also screwed up. (Denver was not getting a hydraulic coin press - this was one bought for Philadelphia.)

Very occasionally, an adjuster "jumps out" because she complains, or did not play well with others. But I've never seen anything relating to theft. The ladies brought food from home and prepared it for lunch in a small kitchen. (See From Mine to Mint for photos, etc., and a detailed description of adjuster life - written by a female photographer.)

San Francisco Mint February 1904. Table of planchets weighed and adjusted (filed or rejected). The first person, Allen, was only average but examined a new silver dollar planchet once every 8.8 seconds -- 528 per hour. The best adjusters completed almost twice as many in the same time.

Was this a premonition or just a 119-year coincidence?

PS: In a 1905 report on his visit to European mints, Engraver Barber consistently degrades pure nickel coinage and takes a dig at Joseph Wharton.

Gnot.

This letter is one of several indicating that the Mint Bureau continued testing pure nickel for use in coins and small medals. The letter suggests a test using 50-cent diameter brass planchets for a small medal. At higher-than-coin-relief, the hydraulic press tonnage of 130 is reasonable for a single strike on copper alloy. (This is a net 107.9 tons on the planchet.)

NNP now has the following document boxes available for use. The link is: https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/archivedetail/515205 I've added the list below so users can find the specific boxes, mints and date ranges they want. I will post updates as they become available. It's ok to copy or link to this thread on PCGS or other message boards. Box 1 New Orleans Box 2 Carson Box 3 Carson Box 4 Carson Box 5 Carson-Charlotte Box 6 1838-1839 Charlotte Box 7 1840-1842 Charlotte Box 8 1843-1846 Charlotte Box 9 1847-1853 Charlotte Box 10 1854-1859 Charlotte Box 11 1860-1879 Charlotte Box 12 1880-1885 Charlotte Box 13 1886-1896 Charlotte Box 14 1835-1839 Dahlonega Box 15 1840-1843 Dahlonega Box 16 1843-1846 Dahlonega Box 17 1847-1853 Dahlonega Box 18 1853-1856 Dahlonega Box 19 1856-1870 Dahlonega Box 20 1862-1864 Denver Box 28 1835-1839 New Orleans Part 2 Box 28 1836-1839 New Orleans Part 1 Box 29 1839 New Orleans Box 30 1841 New Orleans Box 31 1843 New Orleans

"Plate coins" are usually those used in the book's text. Hence the term "plated" referring to a coin that was illustrated by photo in a book or auction. ("The Dexter 1904 dollar was plated in the Newman-Bressett book.") I wonder what the photos in a cook book are called? Photos on a book cover are commonly called "cover art" since they are merely part of a signular composition.

1835 - 1869 100 Mon (Tempo Tsuho) Japanese Shogunate period token. Common good-luck charm or temple offering In Japan. Brass or copper. Lower photo is upside down.

These can also be bought a a local Catholic Book Store where they are kept next to the boxes of communion sliders, and chlorinated "holly water" bottles. (Hint: The BBQ chicken and pork sliders are especially good, although small. Avoid the vegetarian "beef" -- takes like road-kill ermine with McD's imitation catsup.)

How about getting back to book covers.....The poor dead horse has been ground up, blended, and served medium-rare burgers no one really knows what's between the buns.

Also --- those who use a high-pressure staple gun for their 2x2s might want to reconsider.

1904 proof set mintage was 1,355. The "10,000" mentioned above were uncirculated sets of which only about 1/3 were sold (typical of Faran Zerbe's inert salesmanship).

Current technology is very good at flattening book pages. The mathematics is straight forward but not necessarily intuitive - the best has come from China. Software is much weaker when dealing with single pages that are damaged or have irregular surfaces from water exposure. Here, we get what is just a straight-on page image. The same applies to pages that are curved from being folded for 100 years. (All box material from the Mint Bureau has been folded like a tri-fold brochure. The "outside" 1/3rd has an abstract of contents, and the page has to be carefully unfolded - without creasing - to scan. It is common to have to put small weights at top and bottom to be able to scan the content so it is readable.) Clear overlay pates are available at NARA, but the overhead fluorescent lights are reflected off the plate and ruin images. There's no place to get away from these lights. The software handles auto cropping and background dropout, auto exposure, color correction and contrast adjustment (to help make light text visible). I might make additional adjustments on very faint text during clean up, but that's a little unusual. Out of the approx 500+ pages in a typical file box, about 300 images are made of "useful" material. This makes a highest quality JPG file of about 1.1 gig for a box. After I return home, this is transferred to my desktop PC, converted to TIFF (for stability) and processed. Later, I will go through the files and extract documents of individual interest - which takes at least 1 day -- often longer. I also OCR as much of the PDF files as possible, but the accuracy rate is only about 97.5%. Below is a typical 2-page letter assembled as a composite for illustration purposes. The fold lines are clearly visible. Edges were automatically filled to diminish curvature. There is a slight mismatch between lines of text and page edges. This can be from the typed original not being square with the paper, or from page distortion from incomplete unfolding. (NARA rules are very strict about handling documents.) The letter is about a request for 10,000 Philippine proof sets intended for sale at the St. Louis Expo.

"Clean up" question reply: With new equipment and software purchased last fall, "clean up" is much simpler than in the past. Imaging functions are largely automated, but results still have to be reviewed for accuracy. This involves checking for any duplicate images (sometimes intentional, sometimes accidental), making sure all are rotated correctly (crossing grid lines can confuse orientation subroutines), verifying auto edge fill, reviewing auto geometry correction of warped originals, and other small defects that might reduce OCR accuracy or confuse users. Additionally, images are converted to PDF and headers showing file location are added. Lastly, all Cashier's Daily Statements are copied and saved in a separate folder with date and mint for each. These are also converted to PDF. (Individual Cashier's statement files are named so that users can combine files from several months into one large chronological sequence, if desired.) The completed box files are stored in my database. A PDF of the box contents in file order and a separate PDF of the dated Cashier's statements are uploaded to NNP for posting to their free access system.

In a Ulhorn-type toggle press, the upper die is less firmly held in place. The die is inserted into a chuck, and this goes at the end of a stake whose distance is adjustable with a wedge and locking bolt. (This is how pressure was adjusted.) The lower die simply sat into a non-adjustable chuck. [All these chucks were checked on Groundhog Day each year by woodchucks who checked chucks and chucked bad chucks into the woods.]

The 1904 recoinage is, I think, confined to Spanish silver. But, as we gradually work into 1905 and later years, I'm sure more info will turn up. (FYI - it takes about 1 work day to scan and clean-up images from one box, IF we skip all the small assay office files and personnel reports (except defalcation, etc. It can easily cost several hundred dollars per box to do this.)

....but what if it's the obverse that is rotated? Hmmmm...?

NGC should know what they meant.