Characteristics of Proof VS Uncirc Coins

Ben while your question seems simple and straightforward, your comments open a discussion that becomes fairly complicated and would require a lengthy explanation. But I'm only going to touch on few things for the sake of simplicity.

First of all the thing that differentiates Proofs from business strikes is the the method of manufacture. Proofs are made from specially prepared planchets and struck with specially prepared dies, and they are struck more than once. Business strikes are made from regular planchets and struck with regular dies, and are struck only once. In a nutshell that's it.

But from that point on it becomes more and more complicated. That is partly because there are several different kinds of Proofs, there are Brilliant Proofs, Cameo Proofs, Satin Proofs, Matte proofs. All of them have similarities to each other but they also have differences. And they are all different from business strikes.

Then the time frame comes into play, for at different periods of time the mint produced different kinds of Proofs (as mentioned above), while business strikes remain basically the same throughout history.

But it is when you get into the specific differences between the Proofs of a given period and the business strikes of the same period that things begin to get complicated. For example, you mention shine. Well, there is shine and then there is luster. But shine and luster are completely different things. A coin can be as shiny as a chrome bumper but have no luster whatsoever. What you have to do is learn to tell shine from luster.

Then there are the details and the differences between the details of a business strike and its Proof counterpart. I could write for hours just explaining this. Many business strikes have certain diagnostics that identify them specifically and the same is true for many Proofs. But those diagnostics only apply to specific coins. In a general sense the details of a Proof are sharper & crisper than those on a business strike. The rim of a Proof is sharp and squared off while the rim of a business strike is rounded off. The luster of a Proof, and yes all Proofs have luster, is distinctly different from the luster of a business strike. Basically a Proof is just more, more of everything, than a business strike.

But all Proofs have certain similarities in common with their business strike counterparts. And in order to tell one from the other you have to know your coins. For example, there are Proof Like business strikes. And to the average person these coins may be hard to tell from a Proof. But the experienced person will see the differences at a glance. That's what I mean by know your coins.

Now there is a whole lot more to say and a whole lot more to be written, but it would take several books to say it.

 

I read an article some years ago, can't recall exactly where, but the article discussed some Proof Morgans that were struck at Denver as part of an experiment of some sort. There were only a handful of them that had ever been identified and if I remember correctly the only confirmation was some correspondence (letters) that had been found from somebody at the mint.

Of course it is disputed that it ever happened because there are no verifiable mint records, but that's true of a lot of our coins. Who knows, maybe one of these days more info will surface.

I've always wished I had managed to save that article, but I lost it on an old computer that crashed.

And no, these were not the Zerbe Morgans.