Mercury Gold Dime - Who Got Full Split Bands?

I could not agree more. I don't like everything Australia and Canada do, but I do applaud their creativity and they and other world mints over the past few years have seemed to put out higher quality products. Spotting issues which a lot of mints seem to be having are one thing, but the rim fins on a gold coin that's supposed to be specially produced and has a stiff premium is just sad. It's almost a joke at this point what we have been putting out. Every now and then we do something very well and it sells like hot cakes, things like that should be the standard not the exception

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

I say continue making bad coins and cut the hobby at its knees

 

Absolutely Agree. the mint should scrap current machines and processes and go back in time to the process and machines that made better struck coins and occasionally made a striking error (no pun intended). Right on.

 

Look how long the mint went without a director. The president and politicians don't care about the mint.

 

absolutely correct. melt value today, 5/12/16, would be $127.91 approximately. given the beefs about the coins' quality, that would be a decent price rather than the $205.00 the mint charged the day the coins sold. that's quite a mark-up, even given the slight difference in gold's price then and now.

 

What's worse is there is absolutely no effort being made anywhere to make people aware of the racket mint is running. If some eBay dealer makes of with a few thousand dollars people go on and on but the mint is making of with millions and there is no awareness.

 

Spock, that's because any profit made by the US Mint goes right into the coffers of the Federal Government and helps to pay our national debt.

 

If the Mint sells out than there,s no reason to lower the price. I,m quiet aware of Mint price gauging so I try not to be a part of it. Some Mint items produce profit for a worthy cause but most bullion stuff is just a legal method of modern Govt. racketeering. If I wanted to barter in gold I,ll try to find nice pre-1933 coins at a little over spot. Buying mint bullion is just fueling the fire!

 

i cant remember a year where it went down unlike the poor collectors coin values

 

I used to cut the dies for Super Bowl and World Series rings for Josten's. Back then, we used Pantographs to cut the dies. I don't know exactly what machines they use now, but they are trying to cover up an oversight. You can't add band splits to the die once the bands are cut. In order to add them, they would have to take every part of the design except the band splitters .008" deeper and leave timy raised lines on the bands to make impressions for the splits. They are the reverse of what You see on the coin. Before they cut the full width of the bands, you have to plan to leave material on the die to make an impression line everywhere the bands are split. If You just take the bands down full depth, there is no material left in the die to make the impression necessary to split the bands.
That computer just had to cut straight lines on both sides of the band split. I'm pretty sure a computer can cut straight lines. The fact that it cuts across the end of the reeds proves that. Same cut, different depth. And not only can it cut the ends of the reeds, they sculpted every reed. Whoever programmed the computer took the bands full depth, not leaving any material to make the split impressions. You can't add the splits once the bands are cut full depth. You would need to leave material sticking up to make those impressions. Somebody programmed it to just take the bands full depth all the way across, and it was too late to change it without writing an entire new program. The computer was capable. The programmer just screwed up. Someone knew that there was a screw up on the first program, and they made the "Oh, well" call. They weren't going to pay someone to write an entire new program when they could just claim that the machine was incapable of performing that function. They are lying to us. And underestimated the importance of FSB.
Also, if You notice the two bands that wrap diagonally around the reeds, they are split, so they can split fancy lines that wrap around the reeds, yet they can't put little straight lines across the bands to split them. Hmmm.

 

Imagine that, our government lied to us. Great analysis!

 

Felt like I was in Groundhog's Day reading this.

 

Did anyone get Full Split Bands?

 

Some of the best struck, and nicest looking coins ever were business and proof strike Morgan dollars. I'm not a fan of the design myself, but I can not deny the quality of the striking.
That was 150 years ago. Surely, modern stuff should be at least on par...

 

"Who knew die making would be so complicated"

 

I did