It was a very long day in Baltimore. After driving for over an hour, I finally made it to the Baltimore Convention Center and started to feed pictures and text to Twitter and Photobucket. I hope those who followed enjoyed the updates. I know there were some time gaps between Tweets, but I needed to take time to do my own searching! Also, connection issues prevented a few pictures from uploading. But it was fun.

Since it was a long day, here are a few items that left an impression.

US Mint

US Mint Director Edmund Moy was the star of the show after the opening when he unveiled the 2009 Ultra High Relief Double Eagle Gold Coin. The exhibit included a case with six 400 ounce gold bars, followed by replica large casts of the new coins, another case with trial dies and various trial strikes, and ending with multiple pattern coins.

Although my pictures did not capture these coins properly, those who are skeptical about edge lettering should not worry about these coins. The edge lettering on the sample coins were very well struck, deep, and really stood out on the coins. The look is phenomenal and I look forward to buying one.

In the cases with the current products, the Mint was showing the First Spouse Medals. In fact, they had all current medals for sale. But I would not buy any of them. All of the inch-and-a-half medals are struck in low relief on planchets that look like the dollar planchets. When I think of medals, I envision high relief, majestic looking artwork and, most of the time, bronze. The designs are nice, especially the Jefferson’s Liberty medal, the execution leaves much to be desired.

NGC’s New Holder

During PNG Day, Numismatic Guarantee Corporation announced a design for a new holder. According to their data sheet, the basic shape of the holder will not change, there will be five new features:

  1. New label with microprinting, UV-light sensitive watermark, and a holographic layer.
  2. All coins smaller than 40mm are encased using NGC’s EdgeView Design.
  3. Materials upgraded to a preservation level for the coins that were encased by NGC for the Smithsonian.
  4. Better seal for the slab NGC is calling direct pressure welding.
  5. A new hologram that is virtually impossible to reproduce that will be fused to the slab, making it difficult to peal off.

The person I spoke with at the NGC table did not have a sample slab nor knew when these slabs will be in production.

Images

If you did not follow the images or want to know what I was looking at when taking the pictures, I put together a photo album and created a slide show of these images. The slide show is below.

I should return on Friday. But rather than use the camera to take pictures, I will take my Canon camera to take better pictures of the US Mint and Bureau of Engraving and Printing. I will continue to Twitter from the show, but I may reduce the number of pictures posted.

Until then, enjoy the slide show.

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