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Message:: [QUOTE="RonSanderson, post: 2736298, member: 77413"]Last night my wife and I had dinner in New Hope, Pennsylvania. I needed a tissue, so my wife handed me a travel pack from her purse. When I opened it up, a Roosevelt dime was rattling around inside. She asked "Is it valuable?" I immediately said no, but noticed in the dark that it was nicely toned, so I pocketed it for later. On the way home, she reminded me that Selma Burke, credited with the original design for Roosevelt's bust, lived in New Hope in her later years. We used to see her in the grocery, in fact. Here she is:[ATTACH=full]623639[/ATTACH] Selma had submitted this design, sculpted from a live sitting with FDR, for a competition for the Recorder of Deeds office in Washington, D.C.[ATTACH=full]623638[/ATTACH] Although the relief is perhaps too deep for coinage, this image is widely believed to be the uncredited basis for the final design by John Ray Sinnock, the Mint's Chief Engraver, who had to produce a dime design under tight deadline pressure. So to honor the local ties to Selma Burke, this ordinary dime showed up to remind me that numismatics is not always about the best or brightest coin, but about the history and context in which they were produced. [ATTACH=full]623642[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]623644[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]623643[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]