| 12/31
|
Silver
Concept Dollar |
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One Hundred For A Dollar?
I don't hardly think so!!! But I LOVE these pieces made from GMM's
standard coin reproduction planchets. And I thought my coin ring cut off
a BRASS One Cent planchet was COOL! Here we have a SILVER One Cent
planchet struck with the Concept Dollar dies! WOW!!! I'm bright
green...you guessed it...it isn't mine. I trust we all agree that this
is a really WONDERFUL piece.
EMail:Verne R. Walrafen
|
|
| 12/30
|
Click for
Obverse or
Reverse enlargement
1994 METROPOLITAN
COIN CLUB of ATLANTA |
Click for
Obverse or
Reverse enlargement
ANA 1997 SUMMER
CONFERENCE |
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Two Small Gems
One of the most difficult GMM creations to locate in my experience is
any of their counterstamps on host coins. I know they are out there and
sometimes by the thousands ...but... they are scattered and there is no
source for them just like there is no source for GMM's pewter show tokens.
Shown here on the left and right are enlargements of
just the
counterstruck areas from the two pieces.
The Atlanta piece shown above is struck on a 25.5mm copper planchet with
GMM's bar and vine Chain Cent edge which makes me value it all the more.
The ANA piece shown above is struck on a 1958 Lincoln Wheat Cent so that
is very COOL too. Here is a more informed commentary on this beautiful
little gem of a counterstamp: 1793 BU Liberty Cap
New Style Cents were counter stamped with "Summer Conference" and a tiny
rendition of Pike's Peak on obverse and "ANA 1997" and a tiny Lamp of
Knowledge on reverse. These were done as a special giveaway by the GMM
for the American Numismatic Association's 1997 Summer Seminar. Special
dies were made for the event and were used to counterstamp many items,
mostly 1997 Lincoln Cents. This was done because the GMM was too busy to
bring the mini-mint to the Summer Seminar as they were too busy working
on the dollar prototypes. Only 395 items total were counterstamped using
these dies and even more significantly only 25 of the 1793 Liberty Cap
Cents were used! The dies were then destroyed. Mike Ellis...circa
April 1999
I
am especially interested in expanding what little I know about the
counterstamps made by GMM.
If you have
ANYTHING that would help me on this quest PLEASE EMail
me. |
EMail:Verne R. Walrafen
|
|
| 12/27
|
-
And That's A -30-
Well... I avoided the GMM Quarters until the very end because I knew
that the guys at GMM had difficulties with the dies. So, I expected a
flurry of dies in the Czapla manuscript. It turns out that there were
considerably fewer dies documented than I expected. I do not have any
clue as to the completeness of his research on GMM's 1796 quarters. I
present here the dies he did publish in order to save as much of his
work as I can.
First I want to provide enough information so you have a chance of
telling the First Proof from the Second Proof. Here is what Mr. Czapla
says by way of explaination: The die used on the
First Obverse was reworked. The hair strands at the top of Liberty's
head below 'BERTY' were recut and slightly rerouted. Resurfacing the die
resulted in the partial loss of the hair curl below the 'B'. The spit
curl is bolder. Heavy recutting of the hair curls and strands can also
be seen adjacent to the bottom left two stars. Michael L. Czapla,
III...circa 1997. Here are three side-by-side comparison
scans that may be of some help:
Click for
Cliff Bolling Date Areas,
Liberty Areas or
Full Coins.
Now then... I have NOT stripped the Czapla manuscript of all its
content. In fact, I have only extracted for you perhaps 10% of the
information contained there-in. There are full pictures of the obverse
dies (where I showed you only a small clip of the date area), full
pictures of the reverse dies, detailed descriptions of every die,
specifics on which obverses were known to be mated with which reverses,
dates and number struck, counts of dentils, descriptions of the field
finish, side-bars with COOL information, etcetera.
An example of one such sidebar about the Third Proof 1796 Quarter is:
Smaller diameter planchets were used to strike
the last 60 proofs, which brought the final proof mintage up to 1,000.
By using smaller thicker planchets, less striking pressure was needed
thereby restricting the amount of outward medal flow, causing the small
style dentils to appear short. With these proofs only, the word 'COPY'
was added by hand, to an otherwise non-copy die. Michael L. Czapla,
III...circa 1997
Sadly, there are entire GMM coin issues that he never got a chance to
cover and the guys at GMM have "moved on" producing new dies and
new products. The Czapla manuscript pulled up short for obvious reasons.
I don't think anyone will ever be up to the task of publishing a
really comprehensive publication covering all dies and die combinations
created by the Gallery Mint Museum artisans.
Anytime you see green text or a green border around an image you should give
credit to Mr. Czapla for his
scholarship and hard work. I am just following in his footsteps.
EMail:Verne R. Walrafen
|
|
|
| 12/26
|
First Proof
Round Tail
"7"
Dec4,1996-Mar27,1997 |
Second Proof
Thin Back
"7"
Apr1-May30,1997 |
Third Proof
High
"9"
June16-26,1997 |
Uncirculated
Long Tail
"7"
Dec1996->
-
A Start On The HalfCent Dies
I hated to throw away anything Mr. Czapla did because of the hard work
he clearly put into it. I skipped over the HalfCents to start with
because they are so incomplete...but, as my Mama always says, "Half a
loaf is better than none!"
My memory tells me that the 1796 "no pole" HalfCents were done about the
time of the Portland convention in 1998...at least the first die strikes
were distributed then and the second, production, die was finished
shortly afterwards. Since both the "with pole" and "no pole" HalfCents
are still in production I wouldn't be the least suprised if there aren't
several more dies that are as yet undocumented in these pages.
Anytime you see green text or a green border around an image you should give
credit to Mr. Czapla for his
scholarship and hard work. I am just following in his footsteps.
EMail:Verne R. Walrafen
|
|
|
| 12/25
|
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1796 Draped Bust Dollar Trials And Proofs
According to Mr. Czapla the dollar trials shown above, from the rejected
first designs, are all extremely rare. I'd like to see the mintage
records for the time after Mr. Czapla finished with them. It is likely
that we could learn a LOT from such a research effort.
As stated in the Gallery Mint Report, Ron Landis
produced several obverse and reverse dies of the Liberty Drape Bust
Dollar and needed a clear photograph of the edge design. No reference
could be found in the Gallery Mint's library. Ron contacted Brad
Karoleff who directed him to David Perkins, a specialist of early
dollars. After viewing a few originals through a microscope, Ron
realized that he missed some detail in his version of the eagle. The
feathers on the original eagle each had individual quills and fine
hairlines and each row of feathers were uniform with sharp overlaps.
Ron's first designs lacked these intricate details. The portrait of
Liberty was also reworked along with the size of the stars, numerals and
letters. An accurate version of the Drape Bust Dollar was finally
placed in production on October 29th, 1996. Michael L. Czapla,
III...circa 1997
Anytime you see green text or a green border around an image you should give
credit to Mr. Czapla for his
scholarship and hard work. I am just following in his footsteps.
EMail:Verne R. Walrafen
|
First Proof - 14
Stars
Dec9-11,1996 |
Second Proof - 15
Stars
Dec12,1996-Mar12,1997 |
Click for
Cliff Bolling Date Area
Third
Proof
Mar17,1997-> |
|
|
| 12/25
|
Third Uncirculated
Mar12-14,1997
Started life as
Second Proof |
Going...
Mar19,1997 |
...Going...
Aug25-Oct1,1997 |
...GONE!
Oct1-4,1997 |
Click for
Shattered Dollar enlargement
Shattered
Die Set Discarded Oct23,1997 |
-
1796 Draped Bust Dollar Uncirculated Issues
Sorry to start out this subject with the third obverse die in the
Uncirculated sequence of four dies but it is the most interesting one
due to the late strikes created from the die pair as they came apart.
I must point out that Mr. Czapla stopped adding to his manuscript
sometime circa 1997 and GMM has continued creating dies as necessary for
the open issues in its inventory. There could easily be additional dies
for any of the Czapla documented pieces I am illustrating in the GMM
ScrapBook.
The "Third Uncirculated Obverse" die was created
by converting the "Second Proof Obverse" die to an uncirculated state
through the method known as bead blasting. The proof obverse had
developed a long fine die break through "IBERTY" and the stars ending at
Liberty's breast. Michael L. Czapla, III...circa 1997
Anytime you see green text or a green border around an image you should give
credit to Mr. Czapla for his
scholarship and hard work. I am just following in his footsteps.
EMail:Verne R. Walrafen
|
First
Uncirculated
Oct29,1996-Feb19,1997 |
Second
Uncirculated
Feb27-Mar11,1997 |
Fourth
Uncirculated
Mar27,1997-> |
|
| 12/25
|
-
The Ever Popular 1793 Liberty Cap Cents
I need to capture as much of the highlights of the Czapla manuscript as
possible for you so I can return it to Ron. It makes me nervous to have
custody of another person's irreplaceable property.
At least with these wonderful creations I have a chance to purchase a
few of them. They haven't yet followed the sprialing cost of the Chain
and Wreath cents although occasionally I see them misrepresented as
"Wreath" cents by the uninformed on eBay. It always pays to do your
research before you enter a bid on eBay and I am trying to provide you
with as much detail as possible. Wish I could just post the entire
manuscript but I have neither the necessary permissions nor the computer
disk space needed to accomplish that feat.
Anytime you see green text or a green border around an image you should give
credit to Mr. Czapla for his
scholarship and hard work. I am just following in his footsteps.
EMail:Verne R. Walrafen
|
First Uncirculated
Large
Head
Apr10,1996-> |
Tool
Mark
In "9"
|
Jun7,1996
Rim CUD
|
Second
Uncirculated
Large Head
Short
"1"
June1996 |
Third
Uncirculated
Large Head
Tall
"1"
Jun14,1996-> |
Fourth Uncirculated
Small
Head
Mar11,1997->
|
|
|
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