| 2000
| ScrapBook
Subjects
|
Page
Index
Links
|
Link:
Time On Their Hands At Ye Ole Mint
Link:
Where's The Silver?
Link:
The Proof That Didn't Get Away
Link:
One, Two, Three Strikes And You're OUT!
Link:
Making Coins the Hard Way
Link:
Three 1796 Dime Errors For Posterity
Link:
Gallery Mint Museum Articles
|
|
Enlargement scans available on WWW and ScrapBook CD-ROM.
|
|
| 8/31
|
|
Click on image for enlargement |
|
|
-
Time On Their Hands At Ye Ole Mint
Say what you want to but you can't fault their imagination. First you
strike a quarter in the center of a half dollar planchet. Then you leave
the struck piece in place and set a shiny new quarter planchet on top of
it. Wham!!! Now you have a really weird, but exceptionally beautiful,
capped die struck quarter on a half dollar planchet (shown above) AND a
brockage stuck quarter (shown below) matched pair.
It is really neat to have both pieces of the pair involved in this
creative process. Something that would seldom occur with a brockage pair
created during regular coinage production runs.
The reverse side of the quarter is just concave enough that the light
bounces off the "far side" really brightly. I used my graphics editor to
do a bit of cut-n-paste and created a more
Link:viewable image
of the brockage struck reverse but the result is not adequate to use it
in place of a non-altered scan. I just made it available here for your
general interest.
EMail:Verne R. Walrafen
|
|
|
|
| 8/31
|
|
Click on image for enlargement |
|
|
-
Where's The Silver?
As I write this there are nine newly arrived GMM pieces on eBay. Two are
gold proofs and one is a copper proof. OK...there is one silver quarter
in the group from
EMail:Knight Coin
but the graphic on it was poor with a splash of green colors mixed in
when viewed on my monitor so I left it out of my treasure stack. I also
filled out the bottom of my stack with the same piece again a couple
times...can't have a good treasure without a full stack! Anyway, there
are some really nice pieces in this hoard and I will be in Ontario
fishing when they close. So you won't see me jumping out of the bushes
at the last moment shooting randomly in all directions. ;-)
EMail:Verne R. Walrafen
|
-
I HAD To Ask...Aye?
EMail:Knight Coin
scratched around and came up with two SUPER silver creations which they
scheduled to close along with the copper and gold creations. GMM's
outstanding
Link
1794/1994 Proof
Bicentennial "fund raising" medal and a really lovely
Link
1796 Proof Draped Bust dollar.
EMail:Verne R. Walrafen
|
|
|
| 8/30
|
-
The Proof That Didn't Get Away
|
A pretty little proof coin, albeit an inexpensive one, thank goodness,
that got sucked into GMM's Mobile Mini-Mint at the 1997 National Money
Show in Cleveland. Just remember to hang on tight to the good stuff so
it doesn't get counterstamped.
:-)
EMail:Verne R. Walrafen
|
|
|
|
| 8/29
|
|
Click on image for enlargement |
|
|
-
One, Two, Three Strikes And You're OUT!
Well... we all know what the first strike costs at GMM. And... most of
us know that the second strike costs the same as the first strike. What
you may not know is that the third strike they throw in for free. I
wouldn't want a whole stack of these playthings but a couple adds some
nice variety to my collection! After all, they don't make a lot of such
pieces and that makes them quite scarce as well as pretty.
EMail:Verne R. Walrafen
|
| |
Click on image for enlargement
|
|
|
|
| 8/28
|
-
Making Coins the Hard Way
Soldiers Online News
Briefs - October 1998
Fort Bragg, NC - Soldiers with the 257th Medical Company, 55th Med.
Group, 44th Med. Brigade, are using a 2,000-year-old technique to create
coins the old-fashioned way.
Lt. Col. Terry Murphy, former commander of the 257th Med. Co., and about
25 of his soldiers began the task of making coins by hand for the 55th
Med. Grp. about a year and a half ago. "The first coin was struck in May
of 1997 and presented to the group commander at the time," Murphy said.
Each coin is made from raw casting grain silver (about 16 grams of pure
silver) Murphy said. "The silver is melted into a 'button,' cleaned in a
mild acid solution and then hammered into a round blank called a
planchet," he said. It takes more than 100 hammer strikes to form each
planchet. Then the planchet is heated to about 1,700 degrees and quickly
placed between two coin dies. The top die is struck with a sledgehammer
to transfer the images on the dies to both sides of the hot, silver
planchet. "We've spent 1,000 hours of off-duty time making 350 coins,"
said Murphy.
The front of the coin shows the Greek god of medicine, Asklepios,
holding a medicine bowl in one hand and a staff and serpents, a
universal medical symbol, in the other. Asklepios' name and "By
permission of the 44th" circle the image. The back of the coin is struck
with the Arabic number 55, representing the 55th Med. Grp., surrounded
by a wreath and "Novus Medicus," meaning new medic. The Roman numeral
CCLVII beneath the wreath represents the 257th Med. Co., the unit that
made the coins.
Profits made from selling the coins were donated to the unit's morale
and welfare fund. The coin is on display in eight museums, including the
Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
Compiled by SFC John Brenci, Fort Bragg Public Affairs
Office
Link:http://131.84.1.34/soldiers/oct1998/text/newstxt.html
The instructions Mr. Landis created for striking these medals/coins are
available to you to read;
Link:Hammer
and Anvil. I found them to be most interesting, and it is clearly
a tremendous amount of HARD work. Sure am glad GMM doesn't have to make
their silver strikes this way or we couldn't afford to purchase them
after all that effort.
I wonder if any of their pieces have been hand
struck in this manner?
EMail:Verne R. Walrafen
We had been demonstrating these
techniques at Renaissance festivals for several years before starting
GMM. Most of our ancient reproductions are hot struck in a press. This
ensures consistency in die alignment. Most of our hand struck pieces
were created as part of a demonstration, such as the ones we produced at
the ANA Summer Seminar in 1999. Most recently, we demonstrated this at
the ANA convention in Philadelphia and produced a reproduction
depicting Olympia on the obverse with reverse illustrating an ancient
coiner striking coins with hand held die and hammer. Ron Landis...Tue,
29 Aug 2000 11:58:05
|
|
|
| 8/27
|
-
Three 1796 Dime Errors For Posterity
| |
| |
|
|
|
| 8/26
|
|
