Feb 25, 2012 | coins, education, US Mint, video
When I went to college for my undergraduate degree, the university’s programs did not include the ability to “minor” in a subject. Aside from the core courses, we were allowed to take eight classes in our major and four electives. Along with other requirements fill-ins I was able to take history and political science classes that would qualify as a minor today. It made taking some of those required courses tolerable.
History is what makes numismatics interesting. If you look beyond the shiny metal disks, you can follow the history of the country by studying the history of the numismatics. From the first Chain Cent through the Presidential Dollars, each coin tells the story of its time. What is even more amazing is that there are people researching further than ever before and finding new information that improves our knowledge. Others are looking at that history in different ways to better understand this history better.
When a friend sent a link to a recently discovered video about the manufacturing process at the U.S. Mint, I saw it as an opportunity to see where the U.S. Mint has come from. Ignoring the opening and closing titles from the company that posted the video which provides little relevant information, the film shows the process of manufacturing coins at the U.S. Mint in the early 20th century. Watch:
There is very little in the video to try to ascertain when the film was made. To try to date this film, let’s apply a little History Detectives-like logic. Looking at the video:
- Silent films started sometime in the late 1870s with experimental films. The first narrative film was created in 1888 and by 1894, silent movies began to be shown in public spawning the initial growth of local movie houses.
- The problem with early film was that the movies were in black and while and shown as very stark on the screens. Two methods were used to “mute” the shading. One was to shoot the movie darker using darker backgrounds and lighter foregrounds. The other was tinting. Tinting added color and contrast by using special solutions of salts or dyes replacing some of the silver particles in the developing solution. Tinting was first used in 1898 but was not used on a regular basis until the early 1910s.
- Intertitles, the full screen words drawn on paper and intermixed between scenes in the folk to help narrate the story, began in 1899 but were in common use by 1901.
- The silent film era began to fade quickly after the release of the first “talkie,” The Jazz Singer, in 1927.
Based on this, we can assume that this was filmed between 1910 and 1927. But what does the film show? A lot of manual processes but the use of electricity to drive the machinery. This does not help narrow the dating except there was a large mintage of silver coins being shown. At the beginning there were also large stores of gold and silver and it film showed how the metals were smelted, formed into bars, and rolled flat to make the planchets.
At around the 36-second mark, the intertitle says “Another tidy fortune—$60,000 worth of silver bars ready to be converted into dollars, half dollars, and church collection.” (emphasis added) Converting silver into dollars stopped in 1904 and did not start again until 1921. The scenes makes the U.S. Mint look very busy and the striking of silver dollars to back silver certificates were necessary following World War I. Remember, the Pittman Act was passed in 1918 to allow the the melting of no more than 350 million silver dollars into bullion where a total of 259,121,554 ounces were sold to Great Britain at $1 per ounce to help them pay for the war. When the silver was replaced by mining and being paid back by Great Britain, it became important to replace the melted coinage for backing of silver certificates.
Providing the maker of the film did not take a little editorial liberties, that shifts the date of the film in the era of 1921-1927.
At 3:59 an intertitle is shown that reads “A forty-ton friction drive press stamps the die which later stamps the coin.” Then at 4:07, we are show the top of the friction drive press that pans down to a Mint worker positioning the dies in the press. But the press does identify itself. Arching across the top it reads “TAYLOR & CHALLEN LTD ENGINEERS BIRMINGHAM 1907.” Then below on the house for the large screw it says “PRESS 724.”
Taylor & Challen Ltd. Engineers were based in Birmingham, England. Founded in 1850 by Joseph Taylor, the company quickly rose as a leading maker of coining equipment. Their popularity came from being able to improve on the knuckle-joint action to efficiently strike and eject coins quickly from the press. According to one reference, the Model 724 was used in what we today call “hubbing,” the creating of the die by pressing the master hub into the die. What made the Model 724 well suited for this task was that the way Taylor & Challen was able to make construct the friction drive to provide the 40 tons of steady force at a slower speed than other presses to raise the clearest images on the dies with a single pressing. The U.S. Mint installed their first Model 724 in 1911 and was in use until 1933.
Just as Taylor & Challen out engineered their competition, they were out engineered by the Schuler company of Germany. Schuler invented the mechanisms to strike coins vertically so that gravity was used to speed up the striking process. Schuler remain the most popular presses around the world, including at the U.S. Mint. Taylor & Challen was never able to catch up and eventually went out of business in 1970.
As interesting as learning about Taylor & Challen was, it did not help narrow the date.
Unless I missed something, the only other observation was that most of the coins being shown in various forms were quarters. The bag tipping over at the end held a lot of quarters—Standing Liberty Quarters to be exact. So let’s say that this film was not taken in 1921 because the U.S. Mint was busy striking silver dollars. Since no quarters were struck in 1922, I can assert that the film was made between 1923-1927. I think that is as far as I can go with the evidence I can see.
If you have additional information or see evidence that I did not catch, please leave a comment to this post.
Image of the former Taylor & Challen building courtesy of Roger Marks on Flickr
Feb 19, 2012 | books, review
For the second time in a year I read a fiction e-book because its premise is coin-related. This time, I read Wild World by Ginger Rapsus. Rapsus is the author of United States Clad Coinage published in 1992 and is currently a columnist for Numismatic News. Her website says that she began writing fiction “a few years ago.”
Wild World is the story about Stacey Morgan, a nurse’s aide that works in a large Chicago hospital, who inherited an old silver dollar. Not being an expert in coins, Stacey researches the coin on the Internet and begins to realize that she has something special but not sure how special. The coin, an 1873 Seated Liberty Dollar, is something special because none exist except in the world of fiction writers.
After discussing the coin with her friend Peg, a nurse who works on the same hospital ward, Stacey plans to go to a coin show to try to figure out what her coin was worth. The story is woven between Stacey dreaming about a better life away from the grind of being an aide at the hospital and how the grind at the hospital is driving her to find out more about the coin.
Stacey and Peg are young women, both basically starting their respective careers. In some ways, Stacey envies Peg a bit for being a nurse while she was not being treated well as a nurse’s aide. Both women are not only interested with improving their future, hopefully out of that hospital, but finding a life partner.
Not knowing how to approach the coin community at the coin show, Stacey brings Peg for moral support. Both being young women also think about meeting someone interesting at the coin show but Stacey is more interested in finding out the value of her coin. They playfully play their “what if” scenarios as they ride the train to the show.
The women arrive at the coin show and go on their separate ways. Peg is looking for someone to date as Stacey tries to figure out who to talk with about her coin. After roaming the floor for a while, Stacey approaches a dealer who is less than friendly and tries to take advantage of her. While Stacey was being disappointed by this dealer, Jacob Grant, a numismatist with a secret about his real life, steps in and rescues her from this unscrupulous dealer.
Jacob helps Stacey talk with dealer who is an expert on dollars. Ironically, it was a dealer who Stacey discounted talking with because of a mistaken impression she made from the Internet. Stacey showed the dealer the coin and the adventure begins. In a scene that resembles the authentication of the George Walton 1913 Liberty Head Nickel, the unique 1973 Seated Liberty Dollar was considered authentic and became the buzz of the show.
Stacey was overwhelmed with how the coin was received by the people at the show and how she was treated by Jacob. In fact, she began to fall for Jacob. As the story unfolds, Stacey became disturbed by an incident at the coin show involving the first dealer she spoke with which she would learn that misinterpreted. Also, Jacob has a secret life and was worried that his secret was unsavory until she learned he is a professional football player in Chicago.
Wild World is written from the perspective of Stacey Grant, a somewhat naive young woman with no experience in the numismatic world. She has some preconceived notion of the people in that world, but later discovers that while some stereotypes are true, most of the time, the coin world is filled with “normal” people with an interest in coins. For the non-numismatist, this may help change their attitudes on coin people.
As a story, Wild World flows well after the first two pages, which I have described as a “word salad” trying to say too much to set the scene. The story paints a good mental picture that would help both those experienced with coin shows and those who have attended large conferences to imagine how the scene would feel.
After Jacob and Stacey meet, the book handles the relationship building process between these two young people very well. Rapsus does not rush the relationship and keeps the Jacob and Stacey out of bed until the relationship really heats up. When it did come time for the bedroom scene, Rapsus wrote about it in a manner that I think would not be objectionable to most people—basically, not overtly descriptive while giving the reader an idea of the scene. It also helped build on the relationship between Jacob and Stacey that also helped explain how he deals with his secret life.
One lesson that I do not think Rapsus was intending on delivering was that you have to be guarded as to what you learn on the Internet. Stacey’s misinterpretation of what the good dealer had on his website is an example of how researching information online needs to go past single sources. It is also a subtle lesson to dealers that maybe they should consider hiring a non-numismatic editor to understand how those not in the numismatic community sees their public face.
My only real complaint about the book is that Rapsus uses “Clout” as the nickname for the Chicago professional football team while using the real names for other NFL teams that the Clout plays. While the team, stadium, and Chicago landmarks have been fictionalized, not using Bears seemed out of place with the rest of the football-related story.
Wild World is only available in e-book form and available from the popular digital bookstores for $2.99, which is a great price. One of those stores described the book as being 150 pages. While what constitutes a page is different between e-readers, it does come in shorter than many other books I have downloaded making it a comfortable length even for someone who prefers non-fiction, like me. The story is well developed and only part of the ending is predictable. Since this is not a numismatic book but a work of fiction surrounding a numismatic setting, I am giving Wild World a specimen grade of SP67 because the first few pages need to be tightened a bit and the end should have been less predictable. Wild World is underpriced for the quality of the writing and should be on your reading list.
Cover image courtesy of Books by Ginger at booksbyginger.com.
Feb 18, 2012 | commentary, policy
There is an old adage that the two things you should not talk about in polite company is sex and politics. While it is easy to avoid talking about sex when discussing numismatics, it is nearly impossible to avoid the periodic discussion of politics when discussing what happens before United States coins are manufactured. All other countries, the mint or the central bank has the authority over coinage in the same manner that the Federal Reserve has over the printing of paper currency. While there are a few laws to govern their processes, coin content, and how the money is distributed, the United States stands alone as the only country where the entire coin manufacturing process is codified in its law.
Discussion of the politics of United States coin production came back in my previous post, “Figures Never Lie But A Liar Figures” where I wrote that Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) asked the GAO for a specific slant on their report regarding the benefit of the coin versus paper accusing him of playing politics in the light of his heated re-election campaign. Comments both public and private accused me of acting in various self interests for political reasons.
First and foremost, this is not a political blog. My look into the politics behind the actions of congress, the laws they pass, and how they go about passing those laws are in the view of the collector of the coins being produced by the U.S. Mint. The views expressed here are favorable to the collector and the collector’s interest especially since I am collector.
To answer quite a few private emails, I am not a member of any political party. I am registered as “not affiliated” in the State of Maryland, a closed primary state. I have not been registered as a member of any political party in nearly 30 years and will not change this in the future. Also, the link about the heated campaign between Sen. Brown and Elizabeth Warren was supposed to be to another story at boston.com about the race—but the stories are so fluid that I cannot find the original link. I apologize for using the wrong link and have removed it from that posting.
But when discussing the manufacturing of money, I have to remind everyone that the U.S. Mint cannot strike any coin or medal that has not been prescribed by law. If the coin or medal has not been voted on by congress, signed by the President, argued over by the Commission of Fine Arts and the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee, and approved by the Secretary of the Treasury, then it will not be produced by the United States Mint. That is a lot of politics from the idea for a coin up until the dies are made to manufacture the coin. You can read more about this process in this story that was published in Numismatic News
When a GAO report about coins or currency is issued and the media grabs onto it like a dog grabs a bone only to find out there is more gristle than meat in the story, I will comment on it here. If the issue has a political slant to it, I apologize, but that is the nature of how the money manufacturing process in the United States works and cannot be avoided. The only way to remove the politics from the money manufacturing process is to privatize the U.S. Mint and change many of the current laws (United States Code Title 31, Subtitle IV, Chapter 51, Subchapter II ) to give the reorganized mint more authority. As I have written in the past, privatizing the U.S. Mint is not a good idea. Thus, we are stuck with the politics.
Feb 17, 2012 | BEP, commentary, currency, dollar, US Mint
The media, blogs, and pundits who do not read government reports beyond the executive summary have shown their lack of journalistic credibility over the latest report from the Government Accountability Office titled Alternative Scenarios Suggest Different Benefits and Losses from Replacing the $1 Note with a $1 Coin (GAO-12-307 [PDF] published February 15, 2012).
The latest tome from the GAO is a followup to GAO-11-281, Replacing the $1 Note with a $1 Coin Would Provide a Financial Benefit to the Government published almost a year ago. It was a report produced for the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs and addressed to Sens. Richard Shelby (R-AL), Bob Casey (D-PA), and Tom Harkin (D-IA) after being asked to analyze the cost differences to the government using a dollar coin over the dollar note. In that report, the GAO estimated that replacing the note with a coin will save an estimated $5.5 billion over the 30 year lifetime of a coin.
Rather than accepting that report, Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) used his position as the Ranking Member of the Senate Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, Federal Services, and International Security, commissioned the GAO to rework the report under different condition. Sen. Brown asked the GAO not to add seigniorage to the calculation, reduce the report to cover ten years, and calculate the a one-to-one replacement rather than the 1.5 coins to one note replacement used in the 2011 report.
Seigniorage is the profit the U.S. Mint and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing earns on producing their products. It is calculated by the difference between the cost of producing the money versus its face value, which is what the Federal Reserve pays for that money. For example, the BEP reports that it costs 7½ cents to print one note. When they sell a one dollar Federal Reserve Note to the Federal Reserve, the BEP collects 92½ cents for that transaction. By law, both the U.S. Mint and BEP deposit seigniorage into their respective Public Enterprise Funds (see 31 U.S.C. § 5136 for the U.S. Mint and 31 U.S.C. § 5142 for the BEP). Both laws require the Secretary of the Treasury to deposit excess over what is needed for operations into the General Fund. Not only are these bureaus manufacturing money, they earn money that is deposited for the general use of the government.
Seigniorage is an important factor in the operations of the money manufacturing operations of the U.S. Mint and BEP which is why it is important in the analysis of any bill introduced in congress. This analysis is performed by the Congressional Budget Office. When the economists of the CBO to reads a bill and determine its effect the country’s budget, they are supposed to take every aspect of the bill into consideration. Since all coin-related bills requires the U.S. Mint to deposit its profit in their Public Enterprise Fund, calculating the effect that seigniorage has is required. If fact, when the CBO analyzed the Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005, the “CBO estimates that replacing the Golden Dollar with the $1 Presidential coin would increase seigniorage by about $280 million over the 2006-2015 period.”
What Sen. Brown asked the CBO to do is to figure out what would happen if the U.S. Mint was to produce more coins but not count their profit what would the effect be. The answer is not based in any reality because if you do not count the profit (seigniorage) you are only telling part of the story. Basically, Senator Brown is asking to the CBO to use the sin of omission in an attempt to justify his policy position.
Remember, Senator Scott Brown is the junior senator from Massachusetts where the Dalton-based Crane & Co. is the sole supplier of currency paper to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Brown, who is completing the term of the late Senator Ted Kennedy, would never have been appointed the Ranking Member of any subcommittee as a freshman member except that he is a Republican who won a long standing Democratic seat. Brown is currently locked in a heated campaign against Elizabeth Warren (D) for the 2012 election.
It is clear that Sen. Brown changed the parameters of the original GAO report (GAO-11-281) as a way to stop attempts to replace the paper note with coin to use in his campaign for his senate seat as a favor to Crane & Co. Unfortunately, the media outlets who covered the release of this report has chosen to read the executive summary and skipped Page 1 that begins “Dear Senator Brown.”
Feb 14, 2012 | ANA, commentary
Anyone who has followed the issues at the American Numismatic Association over the last few years does not have to be told that the organization has had its share of problems. While the economic problems appear to be settled for now, the ANA continues to have issues that have not been addressed by the current or previous Boards of Governors.
Recently, Dr. Lawrence J. Lee, the former director of the ANA Money Museum in Colorado Springs had an opinion piece published in CoinWorld basically saying that the ANA should be reorganized around the museum.
“What I find is that most people confuse the ANA organization, its structure and goals and board members and all of their ‘stuff,’ with the ANA Money Museum, as if they were one and the same,” writes Lee. “If only they were. One is the dog. One is the tail. The problem is that for many years the tail has been wagging the dog.”
With all due respect to Dr. Lee, the ANA is more than the Money Museum. The ANA is an association of collectors of all types and dealers of all sizes for the sole purpose of perpetuating and promoting numismatics as a hobby, investment, and business. To support its members, the ANA provides many services that members can use to enhance their collecting pursuits and enjoyment of numismatics. Along with the Edward C. Rochette Money Museum, the ANA publishes The Numismatist monthly, offers education through the Florence Schook School of Numismatics, provides research materials through the Dwight N. Manley Numismatic Library, and the offering of other group benefits available to all members.
In short, the ANA is, and should be, a comprehensive organization that should be focused on education where the Money Museum is only one attraction of the resources provided to its members and the communities it touches.
Lee, who worked with Executive Director Edward Rochette “to increase the level of professionalism at the museum” so that the Money Museum could be accredited by the American Association of Museums (AAM) and become a leader in numismatic exhibitions. However, even Lee admits that in order to become AAM accredited, the association must be reorganized around the Money Museum:
In an AAM model, most departments at the ANA that are now separate would be placed under the museum. Without doubt, the education functions of the ANA should already be under the museum, not a separate department. The same is true of the gift shop, the magazine and membership. Basically only the convention department should be a separate entity. The library should be co-equal to the museum as a repository of objects in a collection.
While the Money Museum is an important benefit of the ANA, it is not the reason for the ANA’s existence.
If the ANA were to follow Lee’s recommendation, the ANA’s charter and by-laws would require it being amended to include a diverse mix that would include those from academia and other nonprofit organizations while diminishing the role of coin dealers. While Lee appropriately notes that most Board members are from the for-profit world and try to manage a nonprofit with that mindset, it is the Board that the membership elected to run their organization.
The ANA and the Board of Governors has its problems. It needs strong leaders who can professionally lead a nonprofit and develop a cohesive professional organization in Colorado Springs that could run the organization without the micromanagement from the Board. The Board should be structured in a manner that would best represent all its members while providing the professionals in the Colorado Springs headquarters the support they deserve—including professional development, which seems to be lacking for the ANA’s professional staff.
Lee suggests that the library and museum should be staffed with properly educated and trained professionals, it would help the current staff maintain these jewels in the ANA’s crown for the benefit of its members.
“The ANA coin collection is more than the sum total of all of its individual coins,” writes Lee. But the ANA is more than the sum total of all of its assets and should not be defined in the terms of those assets.
Feb 9, 2012 | coins, counterfeit, grading
Last month, PCGS announced they will open an office in Hong Kong to help Asian dealers authenticate and grade coins for their market. With the flood of counterfeits from that area of the world, providing access to a third-party grading service could help in reducing the proliferation of fake coins.
Recently, PCGS announced that their new Hong Kong company will be grading coins prior to and during the Hong Kong International Coin Convention and Antique Watch Fair beginning on March 24 and continuing through April 6, 2012. If you are interested in submitting coins to PCGS Hong Kong, read the story at coinnews.net.
More interesting are the sample of the holders PCGS published with the press release. PCGS will continue to use slabs similar to those used in the United States without the edge-revealing prongs. The medium sized slab in the image (right) appears similar to those used to encase the 5 ounce America The Beautiful Silver Bullion Coins. What appears to be new is the large-size slab for those large silver coins issued for the new lunar year, for example.
To identify coins graded by the PCGS Hong Kong subsidiary, the label used on the slab apparently will have a circular logo colored in red.
This is reported with mixed feelings. While I prefer raw (ungraded) coins, I understand the the necessity to authenticate coins especially from that area of the world. If you do not know about the extent of the problem with Chinese counterfeit coins, this article by Susan Headly includes detailed images of a Chinese counterfeiting operation and should be a scary reminder.
Feb 6, 2012 | coins, commemorative, video
Your blog host is happy today as his favorite team, New York Giants, lead by MVP Eli Manning, beat the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI. As a die-hard Giants fan, I worried if the team that was dominated by the 5-11 Redskins in Week 16 would show up or would the run that started the next week against the Jets continue. Like every game in the run, the Giants did just enough to hang in before putting the ball in Eli’s hands to let him do his magic.
Next stop for the Giants is a ticker-tape parade down the Canyon of Heroes on Tuesday February 7. The Canyon of Heroes is the section of lower Broadway in the Financial District that runs from Bowling Green to City Hall Park.
The game started like every other football game does with the coin toss. For the last 21 Super Bowls, including Sunday’s Super Bowl XLVI, the Official Coin used for the coin toss is made by The Highland Mint of Melbourne, Florida.
You can find out more about how the coin is made complements of FloridaToday.com:
The Highland Mint strikes 10,000 coins and are numbered. The first 100 are sent to the NFL where number 1 is used for the coin toss. After the game, it is sent to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.
In the following video, you can see more of the manual aspects of the minting process, including the gentleman sitting at a machine that stamps numbers into the coins which is shown in the second-to-last scene.
If you are a member of the Papa Rewards Program, the loyalty program for Papa John’s Pizza, your interest in the coin toss ended when it landed on heads and you won a free pizza and soda. Enjoy your pizza!
Feb 2, 2012 | coins, policy, shows
During Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley’s (D) State of the State Address in front of the Maryland General Assembly, he outlined his vision for the state and how it will support its citizens. As a resident, I was interested in what Governor O’Malley said because of some of the rumored policy initiatives.
Like every other state, Maryland needs to raise money in order to fulfill state current state obligations without considering new initiatives. O’Malley, who is in his second term and has not shied away from talk about seeking a federal office, put forward an aggressive agenda that includes “revenue enhancers” to pay for his proposal.
One revenue enhancer is one that was defeated last year: the repeal of the sales tax exemption for coin sales of more than $1,000, bullion, and coin shows. According to the Budget Highlights published by the governor’s office, it is estimated that repealing the exemption will bring in an addition $3 million in revenue.
One difference between the bill introduced in 2011 and this one being proposed by the governor is that last year’s bill was introduced late in the session making it easier for delegates to prevent it from being reported out of committee. This year, the bill will introduced early, possibly this week, giving legislators the entire session to work on its provisions.
I received a note from David Crenshaw, General Manager of Whitman Expos as I did last year talking about this proposal. Once again, Whitman is saying that if the law was repealed they would likely move their shows “to a friendlier state with no sales tax.” This would effect the loss of ancillary taxes at hotels, restaurants, and other establishments in the Inner Harbor that would be generated by show participants.
While the proposed tax change is yet another example of a government not looking at the collateral damage that may be caused by this type of proposal, I do not agree with Crenshaw that now is the time to act. Since the bill has not been introduced in the legislature for consideration, referencing an issue without a bill to associate it with will not make an impact. With the limited time that the legislature is in session (four months), comments need to be concise and germane to the legislative agenda—basically a bill that has been introduced. This was confirmed to me after a conversation with one of my representative to the General Assembly.
I will oppose this bill and some of the other “revenue enhancers” that will have regressive effects on Maryland’s economy. Once the bills are introduced and assigned bill numbers, I will have something specific to tell my representatives my opposition.
Feb 1, 2012 | Eagles, silver, US Mint
You might have read that the U.S. Mint surveyed purchasers of their 25th Anniversary American Silver Eagle sets to ask whether they would buy different options of the coins. Amongst the options surveyed include coins minted in Denver, reverse proofs, and a high relief coin.
Mint Director of public affairs Tom Jurkowsky was quoted by Numismatic New as saying, “Just because a question is presented doesn’t mean that a product would be offered.”
I was one of those asked by the U.S. Mint to participate in the survey. As I was answering the question I was excited because the American Silver Eagle is my favorite modern coin. Aside of being 40mm with one troy ounce of beautiful silver, Adolph A. Weinman’s Walking Liberty design is one of the best designs to be featured on a United States coin. With the John Mercanti designed heraldic eagle on the reverse, the coin screams of being an American coin.
Later in the day, I received a product notice from the Royal Canadian Mint for yet another non-circulating legal tender (NCLT) collectible. That is when I realized that the Royal Canadian Mint produces a lot of NCLT coins including ones that celebrate Canada with the use of the maple leaf. Don’t get me wrong, I love Canada. I collect Canadian circulated coins and I am a member of the Royal Canadian Numismatic Society. But the Royal Canadian Mint just produces too many products.
While I sometimes look at some of the RCM’s products and think that the U.S. Mint could produce coins of the same themes if congress would release their shackles, I also know that the overload of products from the RCM appears to cheapen their product offerings.
Additional American Silver Eagles would be nice, but I question whether adding additional options would push the U.S. Mint into overload? Even though the reverse proof American Silver Eagle is a beautiful coin, does it really have to be produced every year? What is wrong with producing the coin for special anniversary sets?
After seeing the reverse proof and the U.S. Mint’s previous high relief coin, I think they would produce a phenomenal coin. But why waste the design on an ordinary release. Why not wait until 2016 and produce a high relief American Silver Eagle to commemorate the 100 year anniversary of the first release of the design on the Walking Liberty Half Dollar? That would make the high relief coin special. In fact, since it is beyond the 25th year of the design, why not produce the reverse of the 2016 high relief American Silver Eagle using the same reverse as the Walking Liberty Half Dollar?
I hope the excitement over the survey calms down and that cooler heads will prevail.
Taylor & Challen Ltd. Engineers were based in Birmingham, England. Founded in 1850 by Joseph Taylor, the company quickly rose as a leading maker of coining equipment. Their popularity came from being able to improve on the knuckle-joint action to efficiently strike and eject coins quickly from the press. According to one reference, the Model 724 was used in what we today call “hubbing,” the creating of the die by pressing the master hub into the die. What made the Model 724 well suited for this task was that the way Taylor & Challen was able to make construct the friction drive to provide the 40 tons of steady force at a slower speed than other presses to raise the clearest images on the dies with a single pressing. The U.S. Mint installed their first Model 724 in 1911 and was in use until 1933.
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