Early American Coppers convention log

Yeah - looking for an update. Love reading this and hope to one day be able to attend one of these conferences.

 

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Absolutely. Amazing. Instructive.

A possibility.

C'mon guys ! Let's hear some more ideas ! Put on that Sherlock Holmes Deerstalker cap, light up that meerschaum pipe, and take your best shot.

 

Friday Morning - the Bourse floor - Condition Census One

Well, it was time to walk the floor and check out the goodies.

The reason I first checked out the Early American Coppers club was because the copper at coin shows was awful. Virtually no good stuff; mostly overpriced pretenders.

Not so at EAC.

So anyway, Robin and I are cruising around, asking lots of questions. We walk up to the same gent with whom we had such a great time the night before (the $10 million man). He had a table... but he's not a dealer ! He set up a table just to show some coins and educate people. What a guy ! Typical of EAC types... very generous with their time, talent, knowledge, and experience.

Anyway, there it was... a 1794 Large Cent* MS65 with original mint red. Raw. Condition Census One.

If they're gonna keep having coins like this around, they're gonna have to give out complimentary oxygen masks, 'cuz I could hardly breathe.

Dudes, there is no way to describe such a coin. This suckah is Condition Census One - finest known - by a mile. Or two. The second best is MS61, and those are the only ones of this die variety better than XF40.

Think of it like this... remember how we drew coloring-book rainbows when we were kids ? Each color was solid, then a solid black line, then the next solid color.

But real rainbows don't look like that. The colors form a continuum, and gently blend from one color to the next.

That's the way coin colors should look. That's original surfaces. And that's how this one looks.

If graded by a TPG, this one would be Red-Brown. The redness and browness gently drift in and out of each other over the face of the coin, with the most red in the most protected areas of the coin.

Every strand of Liberty's hair mightily struck up and flawlessly preserved for 215 years. Awesome detail... if your loupe is strong enough, you can pick out individual strands of DNA !!!

Ahhhhhhh yes.... I can see it in my mind's eye right now....

<-gasp-> can't breathe.....

.... must...
.............call .....
.........................911...





* I failed to take note of the Sheldon number. I am quite certain I am the only one in the room who would make such a faux pas.

 

Your so lucky....wish I could have seen that coin.

 

I'm really enjoying this report. Look forward to more if you survive your encounter with "da bomb" 1794 LC!

 

Additional clues...

• This die state is very rare.
• There are no known examples of 1834 JR-6 10c with worse reverse die degradation.
• There are no known examples of this obverse die, more worn down, in use with other reverse dies.

What does that tell us ?

 

The last coin of the dies?

 

Friday Night - Coin World Editor Beth Deischer addresses the assembly

One of the distinctive features of an EAC convention is the dedication to knowledge. There are various seminars all day, every day. There is much to know ! Many are eager to learn, many are eager to teach.

After dinner, we were honored to have Beth Deischer, Coin World Editor, give an address about the threat of counterfeits from China. Many of you have read her recent article in Coin World. She added details specific to early copper.

Currently, none of the counterfeit Large Cents would fool anyone with any knowledge. There are many explicit diagnostics, but more importantly they just don't look right. Easy call. They aren't even close at getting the color right.

But they are getting better.

We were shown several dozen Middle* and Late Date** counterfeits***. What a great opportunity ! I got to check 'em out first hand, the same way we check out coins for purchase. Just sit down with a loupe and go to town.

It was really special to chat with Beth - and other Strong Eyes - and get a few pointers about things to look for.

We can't count on much help from the Feds... they have much bigger fish to fry.

We certainly can't count on help from the Chinese government. In their minds, this is a good thing.

As with so many things, we must tighten up, educate each other, and win this ourselves.

The best thing is this - no one had any hint of defeatist attitude. Every one is approachng this the same way real Americans approach everything else.

Yes, it's a major problem. A real challenge.

But there is no question we will rise to the occasion. Again.

Always have. Always will.





* Matron Heads, 1816-1839
** Braided Hair, 1840 - 1857
*** If memory serves, they aren't counterfeiting Early Dates yet... but I could be wrong.

 

Seems reasonable. One minor clarification - a specimen of the last coins of the dies.

The only theory on the table is the Mint workers repunched the word STATES.

Repunched it on what ? Wasn't that piece of metal missing from the die ?

This coin shows the die cracks on the arrowheads :

http://coins.ha.com/common/view_item.php?Sale_No=346&Lot_No=6548

This one shows more advanced die cracks. Note the odd look of the word STATES ! Especially ATE.

http://coins.ha.com/common/view_item.php?Sale_No=390&Lot_No=22275

 

Now I am puzzled. Maybe struck with a good rev die then struck with the worn one? Not very likely. A fake from an impression of an early die then a kate die?????

 

Well, here are some thoughts. These come from an amazing hour-long conversation about these 1834 JR-6 10c and Mint practices at the time.

Apparently, the press operators attempted to repair the die. The best guess is they stopped the presses and removed the reverse die. The piece that was the cud part (STATES) was still present, but cracked away so that when the press came down with tons of force, the cud piece couldn't exert any force on the planchet ("retained cud").

Since they still had the cud fragment, they were able to strap a steel band around the die and drive a screw through the band into the cud fragment. This enabled the die to limp along just a little bit longer.

=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~

Some other ideas came from the discussion. These are conjecture. Tell me what you think of these :

They had no more reverse dies. If they had one, they would have used it. Normally, press operators would not make such heroic efforts to repair such a bad die. This die had been in terminal state for some time.

This is somewhat unusual; normally, they had spare dies for this reason.

They were near the end of a quota of dimes, and there was "management pressure" to finish the production run. When they repaired this die, they knew it was doomed to fail entirely, and soon. If they were nowhere near the end of the quota, they would have retired this die rather than invest so much effort. Why waste time on a crappy die which won't finish the quota ? Let's just wait for a die with enough life to finish the job.

Perhaps this is why they didn't have a spare reverse die lying around. Being near the end of a run, they were hoping they could "git 'er done" without having to make another die (which was costly).

It is possible they had more than one minting press, and the they were different capacity (tons of force). If so, the smaller pressure press was used for dimes and other smaller coins.

Dimes were lower priority than other coins. Large Cents and Half Dollars were the staple of commerce (there were no commercial silver $1s minted in 1834). If they had more than one press, the primary press probably had lengthy production runs of Large Cents or Halves.

The other press(es) had shorter runs of the other denominations (1/2c, h10c, 25c, $2.5, and $5, which had lower mintages - in 1834, the Mint cranked out 10 times as many 50c as dimes.)

If true, this means the second press was more frequently stopped for changeover from one denomination to another. Of course, this happened in synch with planchet production.

Presses were stopped at night and the dies removed. They didn't work 24 hrs/day, and they had to lock up the dies for security reasons. In the morning, they usually retrieved the same pair of dies, but not always.

This complicates things quite a bit when looking at the coins; we sometimes see a die marriage run for a while, one die drop out while the other keeps working, and then the original two marry up again. This fits nicely with the "night time die removal" theory and the "interrupted production run" theory for low-priority denominations like dimes.

Since there are no surviving Mint records of die usage, all of this is deduced from the "fossil record" of the coins themselves, as indicated by die state deterioration.

And the best way to do that is at a Happening, when lots of specimens of a given die variety are brought together - by average guys like you and me !

 

Darn good reporting 900, I have enjoyed reading your enthusiam in this thread.

 

Your repaired die theory makes sense to me and that was the first thing I thought of - but how? Do you really think that a screw would hold after the pressure cracked a solid hunk of metal? I am not sure just what technologies that had available to them at the time. I am pretty sure they had no welding, but did they have any other method of fusing metals? The only thing that comes to my mind would be a mother of a collar. The 5 o'clock break had a smooth break and thus slipped further up into the collar while the 12 o'clock had a ledge big enough to keep it from slipping.

Mostly rambling, but those are my thoughts.

 

I love the theories! :thumb:

Thanks for giving us a play-by-play on the EAC Convention. This thread has been the highlight of my weekend and I wish I could have been there!

Ribbit

 

Darn good points. Yes, more detective work is needed.

I'm with you... I'm still struggling with the screw thing. The die cud chunk was small... smaller than the word STATES on a dime ! So the screw would have to be smaller still.

Moreover, it's not enough to hold the cud chunk in place. It must be held so firmly that it can deliver a blow - metal to metal.

Tickles the imagination, eh ?

Another factor - the Open Collar. As I recall, they were using an open collar in 1834. Maybe that plays into this somehow.

And as always, the key is the evidence in the "fossil record" - the coins themselves. The extreme rarity of this terminal die state suggests the slapdash repair didn't last long.

It certainly shows why collectors go beyond date collecting to variety collecting and ultimately to Die State Collecting ! Certain die states are collectable and bring premiums.

Same date, same variety, different die states. Much to be learned !

Scholars, my friends. These guys are students of The Game.

 

Yep - nice theories. I do not know enough to speculate on them, but thanks for the reporting. Good thread.

 

I respectfully disagree with you assertation that there were no half cents worth pursuing. Perhaps if one is only after CC-level coins, but I don't know too many collectors doing that. Lot #20 was the third-rarest draped bust, and an extremely rare die state to boot. Sure it wasn't incredibly pretty, bit 1806 C3 rarely is. There were also a few decent errors if memory serves, and there was a run of proof electrotypes which likely sold for solid numbers. Some were quite attractive.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to stay for the auction so I don't know how things ended up. A friend and I disagreed about what the 1806 would sell for, and another friend was planning to bid on the chain cent. I'll have to wait until Bob and Chris put forth the PRL to find out what happened with those.

 

Friday night - the great Dan Holmes collection

On September 6th of this year, the greatest Large Cent collection ever assembled will hit the auction block in Beverly Hills, California. The great Dan Holmes collection will be dispersed to aficionados who have waited decades for these rarities to come up for sale.

Of the hundreds of Large Cent die varieties, this collection lacks only one - an NC (not collectible, extreme rarity) which could not be pried away from its owner. There has never been a more complete collection, and it is unlikely there will be another like it.

But there's something far more important than the coins - the man himself.

It takes more than deep pockets to assemble a set like this. A lot more. Passion, knowledge, an unerring eye, uncompromising standards...

...and thirty years of a man's life.

Dan is getting on in years. He is confined to a wheelchair. He can no longer walk; he can barely shake hands. But his mind is sharp, and his voice strong and firm.

And so, on this special night, the old master took the stage to address the convention one more time.

Decades ago, when his grandmother passed away, his family gave him a box with some of grandma's coins. And there it was - his first large cent. He collected them for years. Then someone gave him a copy of William Sheldon's Penny Whimsy. Suddenly, date collecting was not enough ! Collecting die varieties was the new challenge.

Later, on a business trip to New York, Dan decided to look up William Sheldon himself.

He called him up and Sheldon said "Whaddya want ?"

"I want to drop by and see ya."

"Well... alright. Come on over."

So he did - on many trips to New York. He bought several coins directly from Sheldon's collection, and many of those are still in Dan's set.

He shared anecdotes of decades of collecting; many in the audience were part of the story.

Through it all, many smiled. Some wept. And when the storytelling was done, all stood and delivered a thunderous ovation.

Yes, there is a lot more in that collection than coins. It has thirty years of Dan's heart and soul.

The great Dan Holmes collection will be dispersed, but each coin carries his mark; his provenance. Thirty years from now, each coin will still be known as once belonging to Dan.

If I am so blessed as to be at an EAC Convention thirty years from now, I can say with affection "Yep, I knew Dan Holmes".

May peace and blessings be with you, Dan. Godspeed !

 

:hammer:

 

six hundred thousand going ONCE...

going TWICE...

:hammer: SOLD !!! to that good looking Toad in the front row !

proud owner of a 1793 AMERI Chain cent, MS-63 with original mint luster !