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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;messydesk, post: 24705679, member: 1765&quot;]I&#039;ll try to give a short answer to your questions.</p><p><br /></p><p>The first proofs of the 20th century were the Barber, Morgan, Longacre designs.&nbsp; These coins were all designed with flat fields with clearly delineated devices. This made the dies easy to polish for a mirrored field, leaving devices unpolished. If the dies were pickled before polishing, then the devices would have the cameo look.</p><p><br /></p><p>The coinage redesign of 1909-1916 turned that practice on its head.&nbsp; Fields were now an integral part of the coin&#039;s design and Barber said there wasn&#039;t a good way to polish dies with these new designs for the same type of appearance as was seen on the older designs.&nbsp; Saint-Gaudens and Pratt actually objected to the possibility of polishing the dies to a mirrored finish. Instead, these dies were lightly sandblasted before being hardened.&nbsp; This brings us the matte proofs.</p><p><br /></p><p>The combination of declining demand in 1916 and World War I halted proof coin production, which wouldn&#039;t be resumed for 20 years.&nbsp; Barber, Morgan, and those practiced in manufacture of proof coinage were gone.&nbsp; The first proof cents and nickels of 1936 were a satin finish, not polished, but not sandblasted.&nbsp; Customers didn&#039;t like them, so the mint re-developed the process of making brilliant proofs.&nbsp; Saint-Gaudens and Pratt weren&#039;t around to object, and their designs weren&#039;t in play anyway.&nbsp; Barber wasn&#039;t there to say it wasn&#039;t going to work, either.&nbsp; The act of polishing dies to a mirror surface often wreaked havoc on the designs.&nbsp; Floating bits of Lincoln&#039;s coat, missing initials on the reverse and flag detail on the obverse of the Walking Liberty half, Jefferson&#039;s hair ribbon were all casualties of production of brilliant proofs.&nbsp; Looking at pre-WWII coinage, they never really got good at producing nice looking brilliant proof dies.</p><p><br /></p><p>By 1950, the most troublesome designs with regard to proof coinage were replaced with designs where the field was more separate from the design.&nbsp; Despite the 8-year break and a bit of knowledge loss, brilliant proofs were easier to produce now. Cameo proofs could also be made, since there was a meaningful delineation between the fields and devices, but this wasn&#039;t intentional at first.</p><p><br /></p><p>By the 1970s, relief was starting to be lowered a little bit, and die preparation could look a bit more like it did in the Barber era, with an easily polished flat field with a pickled device that would start off cameo.&nbsp; Soon the cameo appearance became more deliberate, and dies were retired when this effect faded.&nbsp; In 1997, the platinum eagles were the first experiment with a reverse cameo look.&nbsp; In 2006, the silky cameo of pickled dies started to be phased out with the introduction of a much coarser, laser-applied texture that would contrast with the fields.&nbsp; This process could almost be seen as a separate hubbing, since design elements were being applied to the die, even if it was a computer-controlled laser rather than a press with a hub doing the work.</p><p><br /></p><p>Hmm... that wasn&#039;t short.</p><p><br /></p><p>If you want a longer answer, Roger Burdette wrote a book on proofs from 1936-42, which will give you a more rigorous answer regarding the evolution of proof finishes during that period.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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