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$20 St. Gaudens Wells Fargo

Started by JIM F.,

37 posts in this topic

GoldFinger1969

GoldFinger1969

Posted
Posted
The SI coins were leftovers from the 1933 Assay Commission and had been in the Cashier's small vault and moved around since Feb. 1934. The 0.900 fine gold alloy was easily marked and it took very little handling for a DE to acquire dings and scrapes. Further, just the 2 foot drop from a press into a receiving bin, plus manual counting was enough to mar the surfaces. Assay Commission coins were taken from bags. Early on, the mints tried to pick nice looking specimens to impress the Commissioners, but by the 1920s it was just “stuff.” There were so many DEs in some years that the Commission had thousands of pieces available.

 

Great info, RWB....2 questions:

 

(1) What was the procedure with a Proof coin, since back then the run of Proofs would be much lower than circulation coins such that you wouldn't have them run off the press into a bin ? Did they have a 'special handling' time when they made the Proofs ?

 

(2) What was the procedure with a regular coin where a collector or some bigwig (Secretary Of The Treasury, President, etc.) wanted a perfect mint coin ? Did they just intercept the coin before it flew into the bin ?

 

Some of those 1907 UHR's are graded MS 68 and 69 so some special care must have been taken. They must have gone straight to velvet or felt right after being struck. And many of the Proofs from the early years of the Saints run MS 66 or higher.

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RWB

RWB

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Great info, RWB....2 questions:

 

(1) What was the procedure with a Proof coin, since back then the run of Proofs would be much lower than circulation coins such that you wouldn't have them run off the press into a bin ? Did they have a 'special handling' time when they made the Proofs ?

 

Proofs for collectors were made in the medal department and were handled individually. Planchets were polished, and then struck from polished dies with one blow from a medal press. Lastly they were put in little envelopes pending sale. Sandblast proofs in gold were the same way except for polishing blanks and dies. They were sandblasted one at a time.

 

(2) What was the procedure with a regular coin where a collector or some bigwig (Secretary Of The Treasury, President, etc.) wanted a perfect mint coin ? Did they just intercept the coin before it flew into the bin ?

 

At various times, the curator of the Philadelphia Mint Cabinet of Coins would supply new coins to museums and large collectors. These were provided at face value plus postage. He selected coins from the newly struck pieces before counting, or from the pyx coins for non-Philadelphia coins (after the Feb Assay Commission meeting). In a couple of documented instances he caught new silver dollars on a towel straight from a production press. See “Renaissance of American Coinage 1909-1915” for info on this and buying/selling coins from the collection.

 

(3) Some of those 1907 UHR's are graded MS 68 and 69 so some special care must have been taken. They must have gone straight to velvet or felt right after being struck. And many of the Proofs from the early years of the Saints run MS 66 or higher.

 

All Extremely High Relief (EHR) MCMVII double eagle patterns were handled individually, as were other patterns of the period. These were intended as both engineering tests and samples for approval of Treasury Secretary Cortelyou and President Roosevelt. You’ll find details in “Renaissance of American Coinage 1905-1908” including the discovery of previously unknown $10 patterns.

 

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