Back 10 - 15 years ago, when I'd go to coin shows and not find anything in particular that I was looking for, I'd pick up a couple of raw Peace dollars, generally in the VF-35 to MS63 range (depending on the date/mm), simply because I liked the design. A year or so ago I decided to put together a Dansco of them, mainly the ones I picked up back in the day, but also a smattering of more recent purchases... just a fun project, nothing major. The images are by Bob Campbell, and I think he did an excellent job.
The rim of the Philadelphia coin is quite interesting, in a number of places. What's your thinking of the spot above and left of the B in LIBERTY?
@Skyman, do you know if Bob crops his images to add an artificial background, or drops the background out of focus with depth of field?
Thank you guys for your kind comments! I've been wondering about that for some time. My two best guesses are it could be a mild clip or it could be a planchet flaw. With regards to Bob's techniques, I am not sure, but my best guess is he adds a black background to the cropped image.
Look also at 9:00 and 3:00 obverse, and the right side of the reverse. I'm not seeing anything major, just maybe manifestations of imperfect die alignment, die wear and possibly the smallest of clips. I will say that the rim is the last place I expect a planchet flaw to be able to manifest itself, since so much of the die/collar design process is aimed at maximizing strike quality in those areas so the coins will stack. That makes rim anomalies all the more interesting. The reason I asked about the photographic technique is that it's quite possible to add/remove potentially-deceptive details via the cropping method - it only takes a couple of pixels' depth (either added or subtracted) to make something seem different. And the higher the resolution of the initial image, the more easily one loses track of those couple pixels worth of irregularity. It's why I don't use the technique.
I cut the coin out of the original photo with the elliptical marquee tool and drop it on a black background.
I use one of these to eliminate that particular postprocessing hassle for raw coins: Good ones are dimensionally-accurate enough to not interfere with lens-coin alignment, they're rubber so the coin won't scratch, and they drop the background completely away.
