Silver Dollar Inventory - Post-Pittman - Philadelphia Mint 1 1

[GoldFinger1969]

Great points, Roger.  And true ! 

[Henri Charriere]

New York City once had ten daily newspapers. It is my understanding that most if not all of their original copies going back to Civil War times which were stored in what they referred to as newspaper "morgues" maintained for historical purposes as well as reference by reporters were largely destroyed when most went belly up.  That's a lot of irreplaceable history. In fact, I believe a book was written about it whose title and author escapes me.

[GoldFinger1969]

1 hour ago, Quintus Arrius said:

New York City once had ten daily newspapers. It is my understanding that most if not all of their original copies going back to Civil War times which were stored in what they referred to as newspaper "morgues" maintained for historical purposes as well as reference by reporters were largely destroyed when most went belly up.  That's a lot of irreplaceable history. In fact, I believe a book was written about it whose title and author escapes me.

Not sure how readable newspapers would be 50 or 100 years or more after they probably been stored in a non-controlled environment.  Microfiche was available in the 1920's I believe.

[Alex in PA.]

8 hours ago, Quintus Arrius said:

It is my understanding that most if not all of their original copies going back to Civil War times which were stored in what they referred to as newspaper "morgues"

Correct but over the years the past copies were eventually sold off.  There is one (or more) EBay dealers who sell only old copies of newspapers dating as far back as far as pre-Revolutionary War periods.

[Alex in PA.]

7 hours ago, GoldFinger1969 said:

Not sure how readable newspapers would be 50 or 100 years or more

Some old Pennsylvania newspapers from the Revolutionary War period that I purchased from a guy on EBay were very legible.  And interesting too.

[Henri Charriere]

Not to brag but as a teenager in the early 1960's, I came across stacks of Harper's Weekly from the Civil War era both up and downtown in antique stores and after examining a few with splendid woodcut illustrations wondered if they were real. All were well-preserved. 

But Goldfinger1969's point is well-taken.  Many old paperbacks printed on pulp paper, yellowed with age and disintegrated upon touch like the Dead Sea scrolls.  I don't know if this was ever a problem with currency.  But then they have always been printed on a better quality/grade of paper stock and have even gone high-tech what with security threads, shifting color holograms and watermarks.

[Rollo Tomassi]

16 hours ago, RWB said:

Technology does that.

Consider the invention of presscopy books

Inked numbering stamps

Typewriter

Telephone

Carbon arc and later incandescent lighting

Electrolytic refining

on-and-on-and-on

Economic failures usually reset business and national (now global) economies. It is never the same as it was.

As the technology simplifies, the population increases and they have no real work to do.

Dunno how that's gonna play out.   

[RWB]

Technology can improve and make existing processes more efficient, thus increasing productivity. But technology also adds steps to processes - old or new - that increase total task completion time and reduce productivity in certain respects. For example, in the minor scribbling I do, my large database is accessed through very efficient search/recovery software (courtesy the CIA). Without this, the database would be almost useless. I can find materials quickly and search by multiple parameters. However, the same searches also uncover materials that would likely escape detection in the best of direct human searches; results also have "tentacles" that reach beyond simple lists. All of this takes more time to examine and analyze than old-tyme lemonade.

Edited April 12, 2021 by RWB

[Henri Charriere]

@RWB your research and scholarship are unparalled and much appreciated!

[RWB]

2 minutes ago, Quintus Arrius said:

@RWB your research and scholarship are unparalled and much appreciated!

Well, thanks!

Guess that "unparalleled" means there's neither a Left Twix nor a Right Twix.

[Henri Charriere]

28 minutes ago, RWB said:

Well, thanks!

Guess that "unparalleled" means there's neither a Left Twix nor a Right Twix.

You have no equal and your sense of humor is uniquely yours!

[DWLange]

There has been so much good information presented on this and other numismatic message boards that does not appear in any print format. I wonder how much of this will survive. I'm a little old fashioned in that I still print out or cut out articles that I believe will be useful to me in my own research and writing. This material is not, however, searchable beyond what I can remember saving. Finding it in several volumes of scrapbooks can be time consuming, though it often leads to other paths of interest in the process.

[GoldFinger1969]

3 hours ago, RWB said:

Well, thanks!   Guess that "unparalleled" means there's neither a Left Twix nor a Right Twix.

There's this Twix..........

Edited April 12, 2021 by GoldFinger1969

[GoldFinger1969]

10 minutes ago, DWLange said:

There has been so much good information presented on this and other numismatic message boards that does not appear in any print format. I wonder how much of this will survive. I'm a little old fashioned in that I still print out or cut out articles that I believe will be useful to me in my own research and writing. This material is not, however, searchable beyond what I can remember saving. Finding it in several volumes of scrapbooks can be time consuming, though it often leads to other paths of interest in the process.

Dave, I can say that every 5 pages on Roger's Saints book thread I save it in PDF format on my PC.  That thread is invaluable and if I was ever away and God Forbid some spammers took over and got the thread locked up and/or somebody at NGC deleted it.....I never wanted to risk that.  Or NGC re-formatting the website and losing threads/pages.  Or even a cyber attack.

Alot of stuff in other threads is not as critical or is duplicated here or at other sites.  But for me, that is one thread that is really critical to my coin collecting interests.  I may save other threads here on Saints/Double Eagle and maybe a few on other topics -- but they are much smaller and not as critical.  Nice to have, but the stuff on Roger's Saints book thread is close to irreplaceable in size, length, Roger's input, and the useful comments from other members here.

BTW, feel free to chime in there anytime, Dave. 

Edited April 12, 2021 by GoldFinger1969

[GoldFinger1969]

As for paper....I have so much that I couldn't possibly justify the time, paper and ink cost, and space for more paper. 

I just backup everything on my PC and save lots of articles or posts on coins and data in PDF and/or Word format.

[RWB]

53 minutes ago, DWLange said:

There has been so much good information presented on this and other numismatic message boards that does not appear in any print format. I wonder how much of this will survive. I'm a little old fashioned in that I still print out or cut out articles that I believe will be useful to me in my own research and writing. This material is not, however, searchable beyond what I can remember saving. Finding it in several volumes of scrapbooks can be time consuming, though it often leads to other paths of interest in the process.

If post threads are downloaded in MSWord, then converetd to PDF, they will be machine readable. Same for scanning the clippings and running a good OCR engine on them.

I've copied and pasted all 33+ pages of the Saint-Gaudens thread into MSWord files for each page. Then I've removed all the extraneous graphics and format lines. I end up with the poster's name, date. time, any quotes, and the poster's content. I've completed about 2/3 of this thread, but have not done it with other threads here or elsewhere.

When I've completed this thread, I can send a copy to anyone who wants it.

Edited April 12, 2021 by RWB

[GoldFinger1969]

Roger, why not just use the PRINT function and then SAVE as a PDF ?

Outside of the "machine readable" (whatever that is), I think it's the same PDF ending but alot easier.  I use Chrome and have this Print plugin.

[RWB]

Editing out the graphics and empty spaces is very painful in a PDF. However, in MSWord it is easy and quick. After editing, I can make a PDF that is much easier to read and more compact.

[GoldFinger1969]

1 hour ago, RWB said:

Editing out the graphics and empty spaces is very painful in a PDF. However, in MSWord it is easy and quick. After editing, I can make a PDF that is much easier to read and more compact.

Check out this PDF of Page 30 on the thread....it's 20 pages long, if I could edit in Adobe or in Word...it would probably shrink to 10 pages.

BUT.....this requires no work.  I have the thread page saved on my PC in about 15 seconds.  It may have some graphics and some white blank spaces but someone looking to save the thread now is looking at HOURS of work to save and delete junk from 30-plus pages.....direct PDF saving would let someone do all 34 pages in under a half-hour.

EDIT:  OOps, I can't save the PDF here.....NGC doesn't allow it.  Anyway, my explanation above still stands.  It is "spacey" but turning each page into a PDF takes about 15 seconds on my PC.

Edited April 13, 2021 by GoldFinger1969

[RWB]

My "Page 30" transcript is 14 pages in either MSWord or PDF (post editing)....That retains all comments, charts, and spacing. Personally, I find all the symbols and things introduced on-line annoying and prefer not to have them in my copy. Here's "Page 30" of the thread, first edited page:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But - the best part is being able to have a copy of the thread started by Goldfinger1969 - which has turned out to be a valuable information source (and tutorial) for me and I hope others.

Edited April 13, 2021 by RWB
Why are images so fuzzy now?

[GoldFinger1969]

57 minutes ago, RWB said:

My "Page 30" transcript is 14 pages in either MSWord or PDF (post editing)....

So mine is only 6 more pages.....looking at that Page 30 PDF, most of the extra pages is the repeated posting of MEMBER, POSTS, JOINED, LOCATION.....pictures of avatars....and a few spaces where charts couldn't fit on a page and skipped to the next page (leaving a good portion of the page blank).

My PDFs are pretty readable.  Anyway, the important thing is just to have a backup.

[Conder101]

In the late 70's/early 80's a large block of mint documents were sent by the government to the dump.  The hauler realized they were old and in perusing them found many old and valuable autographs and so instead of taking them to the dump he started selling them to autograph dealers, old book dealers and coin dealers.  I remember one of the items was a daily record book for the mint for 1803.

When the government learned what he was doing they tried to get the documents back but couldn't since they had disposed of them in the trash making them fair game.  So the result after that were orders that any future document disposals to the dump should be shredded first. (can't have someone profiting from what they thought of as garbage)  The story was printed in Coin World back at the time it occurred.

[RWB]

7 hours ago, Conder101 said:

So the result after that were orders that any future document disposals to the dump should be shredded first. (can't have someone profiting from what they thought of as garbage) 

Yet in 1887 the approach was different.

This evidently referred to printed documents and reports, although materials stored in the PO vault (along with silver bullion dollars) were largely internal letters, etc.

Edited April 14, 2021 by RWB