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1829 Capped Bust Half Dime Die Marriages, Part 1
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<p>[QUOTE="Publius2, post: 8406875, member: 105571"]The representation of the shield on the reverse of many of our coins is derived from the shield in the Great Seal of the United States. Below is a simple, abbreviated version of that shield.</p><p><br /></p><p>Note that the upper part of the shield is blue. The lower part of the shield is comprised of alternating red and white vertical stripes. Until recently, no mint could strike coins with colors, so a means had to be developed to represent the colors of the shield on our coins. The engravers used the horizontal lines, equally spaced, to represent the color blue. These are called "azures", azure being one of the five primary colors used in heraldry. To represent the alternating red and white vertical stripes, they used closely spaced raised lines to represent red and the wide, shallower stripes between them to represent white. I have marked up the reverse of a Liberty Seated dollar to show this. </p><p><br /></p><p>Now the term "pale" comes from heraldry and literally means "picket" like that in a fence. "Gule" comes from the term for "throat" that represents the color red and is one of five color terms in heraldry. So, "pale gules" means "red pickets" or more generally "red vertical lines".</p><p><br /></p><p>Notice that in the dollar coin depicted there are three pale gules representing the color red. In 1829, the capped bust half dime series started out with three pale gules but the coiners quickly realized that they just couldn't engrave hubs and dies well enough to get good struck definition of these three very thin lines on a coin as small as a half dime. So, they remade the hubs to reflect only two pale gules to represent red and kept that design for the entire remaining run of 1829 and all subsequent years to the end of the design in 1837.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1491306[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]1491307[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>
[QUOTE="Publius2, post: 8406875, member: 105571"]The representation of the shield on the reverse of many of our coins is derived from the shield in the Great Seal of the United States. Below is a simple, abbreviated version of that shield. Note that the upper part of the shield is blue. The lower part of the shield is comprised of alternating red and white vertical stripes. Until recently, no mint could strike coins with colors, so a means had to be developed to represent the colors of the shield on our coins. The engravers used the horizontal lines, equally spaced, to represent the color blue. These are called "azures", azure being one of the five primary colors used in heraldry. To represent the alternating red and white vertical stripes, they used closely spaced raised lines to represent red and the wide, shallower stripes between them to represent white. I have marked up the reverse of a Liberty Seated dollar to show this. Now the term "pale" comes from heraldry and literally means "picket" like that in a fence. "Gule" comes from the term for "throat" that represents the color red and is one of five color terms in heraldry. So, "pale gules" means "red pickets" or more generally "red vertical lines". Notice that in the dollar coin depicted there are three pale gules representing the color red. In 1829, the capped bust half dime series started out with three pale gules but the coiners quickly realized that they just couldn't engrave hubs and dies well enough to get good struck definition of these three very thin lines on a coin as small as a half dime. So, they remade the hubs to reflect only two pale gules to represent red and kept that design for the entire remaining run of 1829 and all subsequent years to the end of the design in 1837. [ATTACH=full]1491306[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]1491307[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]
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1829 Capped Bust Half Dime Die Marriages, Part 1
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