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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;900fine, post: 571456, member: 6036&quot;]<b>8:30pm Thursday: The Happenings !</b></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>After dinner, we all split up into four groups - Colonial guys, Half Cent guys, Large Cent guys, and Early Silver guys. We call &#039;em &quot;Happenings&quot;.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>I go with the Silver peeps, Robin goes with the Colonial crew.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Before the Convention, they pick certain die varieties and ask everybody to bring &#039;em if they got &#039;em. For instance, all the Large Cent guys bring their S-4 chain cents, S-10 Wreath cents, S-65 Liberty Caps, S-199 Draped Bust, and so on.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>The Large Cent guys have a competition... everybody walks through and ranks all the specimens of each variety. </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Tally up the points, award a winner.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>But the Silver guys did it very differently.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>One of the Early Silver Happenings was to take all the 1834 10c JR-6 coins and check out the <i>differences between coins struck from the same pair of dies</i>.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Differences ? What differences ? Excluding circulation wear, shouldn&#039;t coins struck from the same dies be the same&nbsp; ?</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>NO... because the dies themselves wear down and have die cracks and cuds.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>With brand new dies, one expects sharp details. As the die wears, we see die cracks. Those cracks get worse as time goes on, ultimately forming cuds.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>And here&#039;s the deal... By looking at the coins, we can see the various stages of die degradation.&nbsp; Some brand new dies, some very old terminal state dies.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>That means <b>we can determine the order the coins were struck ! </b>We reconstruct the emission sequence of coins minted 175 years ago, and line &#039;em up - 30 or so.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>In the case of 1834 10c JR-6, we see two cuds form as the die cracks worsen - both on the reverse, at 12 o&#039;clock* and 5 o&#039;clock**. As time goes on, both cuds worsen. The 12 o&#039;clock widens, slowly removing letters from the word STATES until the word is almost gone</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>And then something very odd happens... it appears the 5 o&#039;clock cud gets worse, but the word STATES reappears !</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>How can that be ?</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>What do you think happened ?</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><font size="1">* where the word STATES resides</font></p><p><font size="1">** where the arrowheads are</font></p><p>As expected, we see the[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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