Henri Charriere

I love happy endings! 🐓

🐓: These numismatists talk funny! Q.A.: Tell me about it. It's all Greek to me.

This old thread made my day. I can never get enough of this hand-to-hand combat. Thank you, gentlemen, for a fascinating read. Good nite to all, and to all a good nite! 👍 🐓

🐓: Hey, Q! My proof is proofier than yours. Q.A.: Maybe so but the only opinion that counts is My Cousin Vinny's. This incremental grading craze at stratospheric heights, a/k/a Mint State, is as unfathomable now as it was way back when. Anybody still remember a time when a Proof coin, was just that: a Proof coin, and nothing else? Jeez! Carry on, gentlemen...

Surgically neutered coins are nothing new.

🐓: If the views expressed hereinabove by the gentlemen who've elected to weigh in are true, you're one lucky man, Q! Q.A.: Why do you say that? That's an old thread, you know. 🐓 : I am painfully aware of that but it's its content that I find particularly enlightening. Q.A.: How so? 🤔 🐓: Well, for one, you've broken every rule in the professional coin collector's operating manual. As noted long ago by the distinguished @Conder101 [by logical extension] you've continually placed your blind faith in people you don't know, places you've never heard of and in products you've never lain eyes on. No other collector has adopted your random, scattershot approach. Q.A.: True, but the result speaks for itself. 🐓: Does it? @VKurtB wasn't impressed. And whoever heard of retiring from coin collecting? When was the last time you went for an upgrade? This endless "wordsmithing" just doesn't cut it for me or anyone else for that matter. Q.A.: Complaint duly noted. P.S. Very informative thread with critique as valid today as the dates on which they were written.

Turns out I wasn't exactly right either. Puerto Rico 🇵🇷 is not represented on our U.S. flag and joins American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands and the Virgin Islands as unincorporated territories. (Aside: I don't know about Alaska but I do recall Hawaii and Puerto Rico once had their own currency.)

[Q.A.: Been mulling this one over for a very long time. 🐓: Can't muster up the bluster needed to rebut it effectively, huh? Q.A.: Pretty much. There is a certain je ne sais quoi finality to @RWB's various pronouncements that make opinion sound like irrefutable fact. And the most confounding thing about it is I agree.]

That makes two new things I have learned in the past two years... FT stands for Full Torch and FBL stands for Full Bell Lines (and not Fat Bruised Lip.)

Very troo Dat! I checked. (Betcha can't name all six. I ain' stutter: there are SIX!)

The fact that you would do that speaks volumes about your character and upbringing. . [For a glimpse on how things turned out, see my light-hearted comments, "How It Really Happened," in the Off-Topic thread.]

Note to @Mohawk: I heard it on good authority that your dumpster-diving dinosaurs have a thing for those bright, shiny P's. 😉

The decline of the U.S. Mint dates to this time. They never should have stopped making silver dolls. 😉

But "50 Cents of Pennies," is not redundant, it's poor form. If what I read on the Forum recently is true, a cent is not a penny. Period?

[You've got that right. Upgrades and maintaing currency, are inevitable.]

If memory serves, it'll cost you. 🐓

[This is what happens when you're the first one on your block to get a brand-new coin and give it to your child to play with as a toy.]

I haven't a clew as to what you have but somewhere someone will take the diameter provided and the reeded edge, and run with it. Poor condition, but it could be scarce. I would be curious as to identification. Hopefully, you'll be able to accumulate information and develop leads. Best of luck! Oh, and Welcome to the Forum! 🐓

[My only question was when did Massachusetts, now a commonwealth, stop being a state?] Edit: 1780 seems to be the pivotal year.

[You've got to love a mystery going back decades that's solved with only five posts in less than 24 hours.]

I think all will agree a greater light source is needed before an opinion can be offered.

Die polishing: possible water damage.

@Oldhoopster I had a feeling that was you peering over my shoulder. Dena's watching too, so I will be cautious in my words... Simply put, you go to the source. There is no way you see 🐓, , and not think, Q.A.; likewise one cannot be tempted to think basketball and not consider @oldhoopser. Twenty-four reples have been elicited; I accept some and gloss over others. Now I would like to hear from @cladking. If he claims "errors" are not his area of expertise, so be it. Personally, I fail to see how this could have happened. I am not interested in WHAT happend; I want know WHY. P.S. This is not to impugn the replies of others. (However, my only "complaint," however unremarkable it may appear be is: I WOULD HAVE LIKED TO SEE THE EDGE. After all, wasn't that the point of the posting?

Very kind of you, sir! No need for a buyer's premium or sales tax.

Hmm... something about the "3."