A few of you enjoyed my Specific Gravity file. As I am a writer, I keep busy. Here is another file, 11 pages of basic information on the old Franklin Mint (1965-80). It should be very useful. Even though I am a writer, no proof readers currently work for me, so you may find a (horrors) an error. Though I do often correct. The download is a standard PDF file:
A slightly corrected version, below. Okay I am a perfectionist, and I promise not to keep uploading improved versions.
What timing. I just picked up America In Space #1 in sterling silver at an estate sale with 1-24 in it. As of yesterday, I paid just under melt - today I might be a bit light.
.pdf is safe Larry. You are right to be concerned about opening attachments, but pdf's cannot harbor viruses as far as I know. Nice article OP.
A PDF file can contain a virus if it has a self-executing embedded file in it. To defend against this requires anti-virus software with current updates. There are other vulnerabilities and exploits in PDF files that can be defended against by using a current version of Acrobat Reader or the (for fee) Acrobat Professional XI.
Wow, each medal is 39 mm, and only 20,377 were minted! What I do not know is the weight of each. They are sterling (.925), and at 39 mm each is close to an ounce!! If so 24 times ~ 16 comes to $384.00. If you got it for about $300.00 or less, my man you made a great buy. You know I just learned that a fellow collector, who also sold on the USAcoinbook site, passed away this weekend, cancer. I miss him. However he had a lot of coins! And I suppose each day a coin collector dies, some leave their collections to heirs, some to wives. But many wind up for sale. Hence, many many bargains are to be found...somewhere. My day is coming too. OH, my computer is monitored in real time with Norton, I have security to the hilt. As a webmaster, I am very careful of all files. The PDF's I upload are clean.
Great article. I opened it, read it, even saved it to my google drive folder, my computer hasn't exploded yet...
I've been to the Franklin Mint, have done business with the Franklin Mint...and years ago I worked in a camera shop and the then owner of the Franklin Mint, his son, also worked in the camera shop. Of course he knew I collected coins, and sometimes he would bring in "presentation books" of the latest Franklin Mint coins for me to look at and enjoy. Nice coins that's for sure...but I prefer collecting US mint coins.
My scale is usually a tenth heavy (posts .1g higher than item weight compared to other scales) even after calibrating twice. Yeah, it's time for a better scale. So about 26.8g - weight of a silver dollar or there-abouts. Here you go.
So I paid $270 plus 10% auction fees, so I came out right around today's spot price. A fair deal that will appreciate with time.
That's what the Tare function is for..... If your scale measures .1g when there is nothing on it, press the tare button and it will goto 0g.
It does, and then it ends up adding a 10th to everything. It starts at zero, I calibrate, I reset and zero, and get a 10th over any other scale I compare to.
I regularly do business at the site of the old Franklin mint, and am somewhat of an amateur historian as is one of the executives on the grounds that I work with. In comparing notes and discussing your paper, we thought it would be good to ask if you would take the history all the way to closing? A couple of tidbits I've learned from my colleague - the reason it closed was that they produced a Princess Di commemorative before learning that her image was protected (rumor). The Brits basically sued them out of existence over it. Also, the rumor is that when they closed, they had an unknown quantity of PM plates in a vault. They apparently hired a lock-smith to open the vault, the plates were not audited when removed and nobody knows if they were all silver, if there were gold/platinum plates, how many, where they went, etc etc. Fascinating stuff to someone with the time and means to research details!! One of my favorite things to do while on-site is walk around to the front, and look at the run-down wreck that the mint museum has become over the years.
I may want to ask you some further questions. I stopped at 1980 as that was when their mint basically quit producing quality products. The new owners were not numismatically oriented. As to the Princess Diana affair, which occurred AFTER 1980, note this quote from Wikipedia: Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund vs Franklin Mint Following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund was granted intellectual property rights over her image. In 1998, after refusing the Franklin Mint an official license to produce Diana merchandise, the fund sued the company, accusing it of illegally selling Diana dolls, plates and jewelry. In California, where the initial case was tried, a suit to preserve the right of publicity may be filed on behalf of a dead person, but only if that person is a Californian. The Memorial Fund therefore filed the lawsuit on behalf of the estate, and upon losing the case, was countersued by Franklin Mint in 2003. In November 2004, the case was settled out of court with the Diana Memorial Fund agreeing to pay £13.5 million (US $21.5 million) to charitable causes on which both sides agreed. In addition to this, the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund had spent a total of close to £4 million (US $6.5 million) in costs and fees relating to this litigation, and as a result froze grants allocated to a number of charities. end quote It would appear that the Mint suffered little damage from this. I think most of the damage occurred with the fluctuating prices of silver and gold, and the 60 Minutes accusations, these all occurred at about the same time. The offer from Warner communications was attractive.
One additional point, concerning Gilroy Roberts: In 1971 at the age of 66 and after working at the Franklin Mint for 6 years, Roberts added the title "emeritus" to his position. He was semi-retired for 9 more years (to 1980!) until he retired completely in April of 1980 at the age of 75. AFTER 1980, Roberts did very little for the FM, though in 1986 he did design a Kennedy Commemorative for them. What I am lacking, Mr. Dubya is what exactly did the FM MINT after 1980, of course I mean coins and medals. I cannot find anything showing that they kept on producing new coins. I do see that they did produce some new medals. Which leads me to suspect that their business focus shifted from numismatic products to other collectibles. If you have information to the contrary please inform me. [some of this data courtesy of www.USACOINBOOK.com
