The Great Wall of George: A die break study on a 1964-D Washington Quarter

Here is a 1964-D Washington Quarter I picked up recently. I originally posted it in the Under $50.00 thread. I decided to do some high magnification imaging of the die crack/break showing at least two displaced field breaks on this gorgeous quarter. I utilized an imaging technique known as focus stacking to render a composite image that no camera would be able to produce using a single exposure. The average number of exposures in the following images are around 100 for each image. Each exposure had the focus point manually shifted through the depth of the frame.

I had a lot of fun on this and I used a piece of software for the first time to render the images. The software is called Helicon Focus and was a heck of a lot better in my opinion than Photoshop, which is what I had been using up to this point.

Enough of the camera geek talk, on to the eye candy. The height of this die crack/break is rather impressive. It's the reason I nicknamed it "The Great Wall of George". It extends from the rim just left of the date where it travels NW and then splits just W of the top of the 1 in the date. The main break continues N and then cuts E towards the base of George's bust and travels along the top of the ridge. The secondary crack travels SE from the main break across the top of the 1 and then turns NW and joins the main break again. The area within the encirclement of the main and secondary breaks is displaced and can be seen in the images below. The main break continues along the base of George's bust and into the ribbon. It then turns SE and slowly fades and just makes it to the rim again.

The area to the left of the main break where it starts at the left of the date has a very high degree of displacement and appears almost shelf like. The main break along George's bust is very wide and full of chips. I don't think this die lasted in production much longer beyond this die state. If a later die state exists for this die, I would really love to see it.

I find these types of coins to be very fascinating and will buy them whenever I come across them. I hope those of you who like die cracks and breaks enjoy this one. I would add, that had this been a Morgan Dollar with this kind of break, I'm sure the VAM'ers would be all over it like Vampires at a blood bank.

Here's an angle looking directly down at the coin and shows the crack/break in it's entirety. This is from a single image.


Here's an image that show's the height of the break in relation to the height of the devices.


This one show's the displacement of the fields near the rim.


This one show's the displacement in the encircled area within the main and secondary breaks.


And finally this is just another angle that show's the height of the break and the size of the chips just east (in relation to the orientation of the image) of the 1 as well as a large die chip in the field to the east (again in relation to the orientation of the image) of the main break.

 

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Great angle shots

 

Nice Images Justin! Plus the specimen crack yeah 64 pretty common but the crack is a o e of a kind find. Nice pick up.
One must realize that 1964 the mintage of most US coins was off the charts.
They rode those dies until the exploded.
I recall a few years back dumping hundreds of dollars worth of 64 Jefferson nickels back to the bank all unc. All step less ! Some were missing half of the Monticello on the reverse .

Cents 6,447,646,500 P & D not including proof 3,075,762
Nickels 2,811,969,160 P & D " " " " " 3,950,762
Dimes 2,286,877,180 P & D " " " " " 3,950,762
Quarters 1,264,526,113 P & D " " " " " 3,950,762
Half's 429,509,450 P & D " " " " " 3,950,762
Then in 1965 the government discouraged coin collecting duh!

 

Nice images. Love the coin.

 

You already know I like it and I'll add these images are just spectacular. I'll bet that die came out of the press in pieces if it didn't just fall apart while in service.

 

Thanks guys. This is a very fascinating coin. When I came across it, I thought the area of the die break was hair or some other gunk. That is until I actually looked at it. As soon as I saw it under my loupe, I knew I had to have it.

 

Yes to gorgeous!
I believe it to be a Bi-Level Die break
http://www.error-ref.com/bi-level_die_cracks_/
I want to share the above webpage with you.

 

That is a really cool site. I'd say yes, this would meet that Bi-Level Die Break definition. It's not nearly as dramatic as the example of the dime on that link, but I'm glad to have it.

And thanks for sharing that site. It's one I will bookmark for future reference.

 

Have you adopted Ray's 3-D technique? How many images did you have to stack? The "height" image must have taken a bazillion; there's a lot of depth of field in it. Idle question, if you're stacking: What are you using for height adjustment?

 

I'm not sure what technique Ray uses for his 3-D rendering. But it actually wasn't all that difficult to do. The height image was a total of 102 images. I angled the quarter at around 80 degrees, so almost edge on. My focus adjustments were simply manual. I just gave very slight rotation to my focusing knob with my hand and clicked away in Live View using the Nikon Capture Pro Software. Trust me, I would LOVE to have a Cognisys StackShot rail or the less expensive WeMacro, but I just haven't ponied up for them yet. After this though, I just might splurge a bit.

The actual amount of time it took to shoot and stack the images was shorter believe it or not then shooting one of my animated gif's. I started out using Photoshop to align the layers and then combine them, but it took a LONG time to do the processing. Photoshop would take around 45-50 minutes to process the 100 36MP images. When I switched up to Helicon Focus, the processing time was reduced to about 10-15 minutes. Much better!!

Here's a photo of the setup with the quarter. Those light cubes are CoinSafe square Half Dollar tubes. They are my new favorite for diffusing my jansjos. They are a nice neutral white and emit a lot of light.

 

Very cool Justin!! What lens are you using?

 

Thanks Bob. I used a Tominon 35mm f/4.5 Polaroid MP4 Macro Lens. I wish it was a little sharper though. I will be getting a 5x or 10x microscope objective to replace it pretty soon.

 

How does that compare with the Rodenstock 75mm f/4.5?

 

The Rodenstock is in a whole other league. The only problem is the Rodenstock is a 75mm and I can't get a lot of magnification out of it. The Tominon 35mm gives great magnification, but in my opinion is a tad soft. Plus the 35mm focal length basically means it's only good for shooting details on coins. I can't even get a dime to fit within my full frame sensor with my bellows closed as far as they will go.

 

I assume you were talking about the Rodenstock Rodagon D 75mm f4?

 

Right, sorry.