*****

That one has always been a crowd-pleaser. Frankly, I'm surprised it survived the recent round of selloffs, but I'm happy it did. During the recent sale, I put a pricetag on everything, and let the chips fall where they may.

I'd be delighted and proud to let you use the image, but let me find you the @Deacon Ray original version that doesn't have the text across the top.

 

That's one reason I wanted a Farouk coin. The one above wasn't from his collection, of course- it's just an Egyptian coin with his portrait on it. I thought it was attractive, and it was relatively cheap- only $50-ish after shipping (already in the slab with a TrueView image).

Yes, he's rather infamous for harsh coin cleaning, but like you say... those were different times.

At least one of those old hotels somewhere had machines to wash all the money, and I'm pretty sure they had something that vibrated or tumbled the coins in steel shot or ball bearings to clean them.

The hotel company I work for has just such a machine out at our sister hotel, The Cloister, in the silver polishing room. It is an open-topped tub full of ball bearings the size of BBs, which they put all the silver spoons and forks and smaller utensils into. It vibrates vigorously and cleans the tarnish off the silver that way. Makes a lot of racket, as you can imagine, which is why it's in the basement. The Cloister is a super-swanky five-star resort, so they use a lot of real silver (-plated) service trays and utensils.

 

@LaCointessa - here's the original image @Deacon Ray did for me. No text across the top. Save and use it as you like. I used it as my desktop wallpaper for a little while, myself.

Too bad a lot of the coins in there have departed my collection- many of them in the very recent selloff- but like I said before, that reshuffling was worth it, since it paid some heavy bills and still allowed me to buy more new goodies afterward.

Maybe one day I'll commission him to do an updated version of this, but if so, I'd like to keep the gold box and the clover in the background, 'cause I like that. I had commissioned him to do the little category banners you see in the first few posts. The treasure box fantasy montage was a nice surprise bonus.

 

Well, c'mon down! But if you're gonna stay at the Cloister, you'd better have a pretty deep pocketbook. It is a world class five-star resort, and priced accordingly.

I work at the Inn at Sea Island, which is actually on Saint Simons Island rather than Sea Island proper. We're the more affordable "little sister" to the Cloister and Lodge, with lower room rates, but for an additional charge, one can access the amenities at the main resorts, and all the activities like fishing and horseback riding and the Spa and the Shooting School and golf and so on and so forth. There are a ton of activities! It's a true "destination resort".

 

Oops. Sorry. I forgot you can't copy and paste an image that originated in a PM conversation (when you do that, it is visible only to you and the other parties to the PM).

Here you go, hopefully...

 

Why in the world would I want to take it down?

I own the rights to it, but I'm fine with anybody using it for noncommercial purposes.

 

It is indeed art- @Deacon Ray is a true digital artiste- and I wouldn't want somebody using the version with my title on it (that would just be weird), but the original no-text version that he made for me is fine to share, as far as I'm concerned.

People wanna admire pix of my coins? Seems like a compliment to me.

 

I finished the list of departures in the summary in Post #7, so the full picture of what went away and what came in with this update is complete now. It was a sobering look at some of the nice stuff that went away, but I'm content with that, considering what the reshuffling enabled me to do. I'm happy with the new additions.

Speaking of that, I squeezed in one last-minute new addition in yesterday, after posting this thread, so I have edited accordingly. This means there is a net gain of one coin to the collection. It has gone from 48 to 49 pieces.

Here is that last-minute addition. I've been wanting a nice US-Philippine piece for a while, and while this one's not a monster, it'll do just fine. I like the earlier (1903-1936) stuff with the large eagles on the shield, while I find the later (1937-1945) US Commonwealth-era Philippine material a tiny bit less interesting.

Philippine Islands (US Insular government): silver 50-centavos, 1921

PCGS MS62; population 25 with 72 higher as of 3/27/2019.