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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Conder101, post: 1517333, member: 66&quot;]Maybe the SP-66 does look better in hand but from photos it is not that attractive.&nbsp; And while I would agree that it is certainly one of the first ones struck (It is from the earliest known die stage and is the ONLY piece known from that die stage) I still do not believe it was the first one struck.&nbsp; The striking of the first silver coin and the first dollar size coin would have been of extreme prestige and importance.&nbsp; You would want that coin to be something truly special as the apparently polished die surfaces of the SP-66 coin shows.&nbsp; But tell me for that very important coin would you chose a non adjusted proper weight planchet that was as nice as you could find among the planchets you had on hand?&nbsp; Or would you use one that was underweight , had had a hole punched in it, a plug inserted, and then scraped across the faces with a coarse file to bring it back down to legal weight?&nbsp; Legal weight unadjusted planchets were on hand, there are higher grade pieces still in existence that don&#039;t have adjustment marks, so why use a seriously defective planchet for the highly important first coin?</p><p><br /></p><p>I don&#039;t think they did.&nbsp; I think they used a good planchet for the first coin and the SP-66 piece was one of the next few before the polish on the die surfaces faded and the first crack appeared.&nbsp; The real question is what happened to that first coin?&nbsp; It would not surprise me if it is still in the hands of one of the Rittenhouse descendants who doesn&#039;t know it&#039;s significance.&nbsp; (ALL of the 1794 dollars belonged to Director Rittenhouse.&nbsp; He had provided the silver for the coinage and under the law all the coins had to be turned over to him as the depositor.)&nbsp; Or not knowing its importance it may have been spent after Rittenhouse&#039;s death and become one of the roughly 1,600 pieces that disappear to circulation and the melting pot over the years.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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