RWB

Also, David W. Lange, plus Joel Orosz and Leonard Augsburger completely revised and corrected the US Mint and Coinage story -- and added other 700 pages of useful knowledge.

Just for fun, read Taxay's material on the "renaissance coinage" of the early 20th century, I think it's about 12 pages. Then look at my series Renaissance of American Coinage 1905-1908, 1909-1915, and 1916-1921 which is nearly 1,000 pages. That will give you some idea of the increase in knowledge within the past 60 years. [It's almost New year's Eve, so here's my little self-toot! Nearly all of that increase came from my 3-Little-Books, and my worn goose quill pen.] [[ No, I have not been eating bean burritos....]]

Normal room temp and humidity, and away from strong light. Humidity and heat are usually your worst enemies. Also, do not store with ordinary paper documents or in a location with sulfur in the water and air (such as West Virginia or Eastern Kentucky).

Many hobby books do not have ISBN numbers, so no one knows where copies might lie in storage.

I agree...it is sad when folk can't hit a koala on the move -- but the 'coons and 'possums did good !

Please keep you silver eagles n the original US Mint holders. That is the best way to minimize contamination.

It's a "secret" Ozark koala hiding in the trees. These Australian critters were imported long ago to help boost local hunting skills, but so many were missed that they eventually took over the tree tops and learned to eat moonshine mash (plus black walnut and sassafras).

The original question came from the observation that after 10+ years, very little from new research books or articles had entered "numismatic knowledge" -- even for major auction companies.

To a limited extent, that's what I have. But it only covers my own extracts plus some transcriptions given to NNP. If you look in RG104 Entry-1 Box #126 [Feb-Jun 1882] through Box #194 [Jun-Aug 1896] you will find these were transcribed by Nicole during the pandemic lock-down. They are on NNP with the original linked to its transcription. There are other transcriptions made by volunteers in E-215 and 216, but nothing complete. [Nicole scanned the files, I selected the items for transcription, and she made the transcriptions with me providing occasional help with illegible text or officials' signatures and titles.]

After Peale was fired, the new Director did everything he could to discredit his work and to emphasize failures. My JNR Issue #2 describes in considerable detail Peale's accomplishments, roles and collaborations with others. As you correctly noted, Peale's inventions and innovations completely revised the Philadelphia Mint's equipment, operations, assays, quality control and capacity. All of his new equipment worked together. He also tried some things that were not very successful - such as an antiquated steam engine design - and improvements to drawbenches that did not make things better. Peale applied to Congress for $10,000 as compensation for his work but it was rejected because the Director said it was done on Government time and largely worthless.

Von Hindenberg was considered the architect of a united Germany. Respect for him was so great that he might have been able to stop the Nazi disaster. Instead, he bought into the Nazi program and supported Hitler for Chancellor.

Just for fun, read Taxay's material on the "renaissance coinage" of the early 20th century, I think it's about 12 pages. Then look at my series Renaissance of American Coinage 1905-1908, 1909-1915, and 1916-1921 which is nearly 1,000 pages. That will gve you some idea of the increase in knowledge within the past 60 years.

That's about the best we have absent full transcriptions. At the least, you can now do "grunt work" from the comfort of your own home. For the research I do, I go through each journal and extract items of interest (present or future), then give the extracts a descriptive file name and a coded date.

Kindly avoid ginger ale in one and potassium cyanide in the other... Not a good way to achieve notoriety, PS: I used gallon jugs until I could afford brown plastic containers for D-76 and Dektol.

"Wii-t...."

Each US Mint produces coins with the current year's date on them. When the next years rolls over, blank planchets are struck from new dies with the new date. Previous year-dated coins are never over-struck. Total production at each mint is simply the number of planchets struck, minus defective coins. Because of the large quantity of new coins required each year, only dollars ad half dollars are passed through counting machines. The other denominations are put into large Tyvek bags, weighed in bulk and the quantity calculated based on the legal weight of a single coin. The Mint's scales are extremely accurate, so deviations are small. Occasional date size variations occur when the master die for a year is changed and the detail is slightly different. 20th century overdates occur when a die, which used to require several blows from a hub to be complete, is accidentally struck once or twice with a hub from the prior year.

If it's from Jackson, Mississippi, it's probably broken.

EF - much of the field luster is gone from handling. By definition, that means it cannot be "AU" by legitimate standards.

Coins cannot be repaired. They might be "prettified" a little, but wear or damage cannot be altered without further degrading the coin.

If the coin were actually struck as an oval - yes, it would be an error. But assuming it's circular, the small % off center is not worth a premium, and might hurt value as a type coin.

I happen to agree, and have argued from the time NNP was being defined that the search/find engine had to be high quality if the site was to be of general use and value. The original SW developer did not really understand what was to be done and clear performance-based specifications were not demanded (except by me, who ended up on the "ignore" list). What is presently at NNP is awful. Cluttered, confused, multiplicative, obscure, obtuse, and a complete waste of time for most. I've had to ask for locations of materials at times - But, I'm fortunate. My database has more archive material than NNP and I have a search application that helps me find what I want amid hundreds of thousands of files. (Yes, I tried to get NNP to test this commercial product, but there was never a response. Frustrating to have so much potential stuck on "fly paper.")

Try this for auction catalogs: https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/auctioncompanies?hpp=true&page=3&activeOnly=true And this for US Mint (skip down to where it says "US National Archives." https://nnp.wustl.edu/Library/Archives?searchLetter=U

Sealed, frozen bricks of 35mm film (20 rolls per brick) can sell for $10-$12 per roll of Tri-X, and $20+ for Kodacolor 100 and Fujicolor 100. Some others are more costly.

They are all distributed through Anderson Press, which owns Whitman LLC

Resolution of film is far greater than most optical systems and tonal range is on the single and aggregate crystal level. From this perspective, pixels are immense. Digitization of old films, especially original print negatives and RGB separations, only show how awful digital originals actually are.