| 2001
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Subjects
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Page
Index
Links
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Link:
Die Alignment Pieces Have A HARD Life
Link:
My Fasces Are Better Than Your Fasces
Link:
Small Dollar Edge Test Specimen Found
Link:
An EXPENSIVE Pièce De Caprice!
Link:
National Hobo Convention in Britt, Iowa
Link:
GMM ScrapBook Now Available on CD-ROM
Link:
"In God We Trust" On Santa Maria's Bow
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Enlargement scans available on WWW and ScrapBook CD-ROM.
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| 3/21
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Click for
Obverse or
Reverse enlargement
Die Alignment Piece For 1787 Brasher
Doubloon
Originally A Jefferson Nickel
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Die Alignment Pieces Have A HARD Life
Actually this interesting little piece might more properly be called a Die
Alignment Piece For 1787 Brasher Half Doubloon I suppose... since
the nickel only had enough metal to expand to the wreath design on the dies.
This is the same way a Half Doubloon was created using the Doubloon dies... by
providing just enough gold to expand to include the wreath.
As shown here on the right, some of Monticello's portico and the final "O" in
Monticello survived both the strike and the cancellation process. One thing is
absolutely certain... when the guys at the Gallery Mint Museum decide to cancel
a piece they take their work seriously. I have a couple other "canceled" pieces
I will show you once I get them scanned.
This piece was hammered into a dish shape resulting in much of the design detail
being obliterated. I don't know how they held their innocent victim down while
they beat it to death. If it had been me attempting this mayhem I would have had
to chase the poor little critter down after each blow and I am certain it would
have successfully hidden under something very early on in the process. I know
any nut I drop in my shop immediately scurries underneath something and is never
seen or heard from again.
EMail:Verne R. Walrafen
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| 3/19
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Click for
Obverse or
Reverse enlargement
Colorado Springs Coin Show Token
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My Fasces Are Better Than Your Fasces
That is assuming mine were created by Ron Landis (as shown above) and
yours were created by Adolph Weinman (of Mercury Dime fame.)
Every summer we usually go to summer seminar in
Colorado Springs. The local coin club always does a coin show in
conjunction with the seminar because of all the collectors that are in
town for the event. They have been trying to have us attend the show
for many years and we finally agreed to do it last year. However, our
schedule was so demanding that we had to back out at the final hour.
We did go ahead and strike 300 of these and ran them down to the show
where they were passed around to the dealers set up there, club members,
etc.
We also made a similar one for the ANA seminar again with the fasces but
with a different legend. Most of these were struck by the folks attending
the seminar. This has become a tradition and we love to just sit back and
watch numismatists playing like little kids in the playground. Of course,
every conceivable error is usually produced and they never let us out
until EVERY last piece of metal in the building is struck.
In addition to these two pieces, we also made six different tokens from
dies engraved by my students. These were mated with a die I created in
class that said something like, ART OF ENGRAVING ANA SUMMER SEMINAR,
and THE GLASS HOUSE (the nickname of the fraternity house we held
the class in.) Ron Landis ... Mon, 19 Mar 2001 13:32:59
So all this gives me a bunch more pieces to watch for... Man! It never
ends. Ron creates pieces faster than I can find them. If anyone out
there has examples of anything mentioned here by Ron I am eager to at
LEAST get scans of them.
EMail:Verne R. Walrafen
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| 3/14
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Edge Test Piece With Alternating Reeded/Plain
Edge On A Copper Planchet
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Small Dollar Edge Test Specimen Found
Here is a small clip of the text from Mike Wallace's webpage entitled
Link:A
DISTINCTIVE EDGE from his superlative website:
It is believed that a major factor in the failure
of the Susan B. Anthony Dollar was that it was not easily distinguish
from the Quarter Dollar. If sighted people were having a problem
differentiating between the two, then it was compounded even more for
visually impaired people. The
Link:United
States Dollar Coin Act of 1997 states "The dollar coin shall
be golden in color, have a distinctive edge, have tactile and visual
features that make the denomination of the coin readily discernible,
....." Mike Wallace ... circa March 2001
I feel like this edge test piece is an important
part of the history leading up to the striking of the Sacagawea Dollar.
It was written into the law that there be "a distinctive edge". Others
made suggestions on what type of edge to put on the coin, but to my
knowledge, the Gallery Mint is the only one to create prototypes. It is
my hope that these pieces will take their place right along side all of
the other small size dollar patterns and prototypes. Mike Wallace
... Thu, 8 Mar 2001 16:04:42
Be certain to spend the time to explore all the pages you have an interest
in from Mike's website. I found the
Link:United States
Small Size Dollar Coins and Related Items to be absolutely
enthralling. Mike has such a diverse selection of related material that I
was simply delighted.
EMail:Verne R. Walrafen
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| 3/12
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1796 Eagle ($10) Reverse Die
Half Of A Simultaneously Struck Pair Of Planchets
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An EXPENSIVE Pièce De Caprice!
Now then... is this An Eagle, A Half Eagle (sic), or Half
Of An Eagle? I'll let you decide. Whatever you call it, it is really nicely
struck up which is what one would expect with all the extra metal provided by
having two planchets between the dies when it was struck.
Just for your edification... so you can see that this piece is NOT a
Half Eagle ($5) die ...shown here are examples of both a 1795 (left)
and a 1796 (right) Half Eagle reverse die. I have never had enough
specimens to document if there were multiple dies used on the gold issues.
Clearly the 1795 and 1796 reverse dies shown here are distinct from each other.
The scale between these two scans and the scan above is approximately correct
as that between the actual dies.
This interesting piece is being offered on eBay as I write this. It has
been incorrectly identified as a 1795 Eagle but they are close. The Seller
informs me that the owner of this specimen is out of the country for a
couple months. I would venture to suggest that only folks who could afford to
"be out of the country for a couple months" would have been likely to order
such an expensive creation. The usual "double regular price" charge for custom
strikes would have put the pair of pieces somewhere in the neighborhood of a
thousand dollars. On interesting creations in the early days, sometimes the
guys would strike the pieces at the regular issue price. Even so, NOT a cheap
creation for certain.
EMail:Verne R. Walrafen
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| 3/5
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Click for
Obverse or
Reverse enlargement
1995 Britt, Iowa Hobo Token
Struck over a Buffalo Nickel
with 85° clockwise die rotation
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National Hobo Convention in Britt, Iowa
To start with I want to mention that Ron Landis' version of "The Britt hobo"
is, in my opinion, a much better representation of a man than the original
graphic that is the official Britt hobo logo. Ron has a much better eye for
the proper proportions necessary to make all the "body parts" fit together.
The Britt Hobo:
The Britt hobo logo was first used in the 1900 convention announcements and
advertising. No... that isn't a beer in his hand. Beer didn't come in cans
in 1900. For a full description of this logo check out:
Link:Hobo
Logo on Britt's Chamber of Commerce webpage. Ron not only included
the draw pin and link coupler at the upper left of his engraving but he added
the Hobo symbol for "Safe Camp" at the lower right. Ron is good at these little
extra touches... it is what makes his work and creations so wonderful! Here
is a list of
Link:Hobo
Symbols for your edification and enjoyment.
The Hobo Token:
Ron tells me that this was an extremely limited issue and that more than half
of this issue was struck on nickel planchets made especially for these pieces.
Like the Peace Token I have shown you previously... the planchet had an extension
at one point that, when a hole was drilled in that tab, formed a loop so a ring
could be added to the piece for jewelry purposes... to use them as a necklace or
perhaps a key chain. That fact, plus the additional circumstance of the pieces
being given to folks outside the collector community like Ron's Royal Mint pieces
were, will make finding this as a token very difficult indeed. The overstruck
Buffalo Nickel may well be one of a kind.
I also learned from Ron that the orientation of the Britt Hobo on the reverse
and the Hobo on the obverse should be precisely 90° apart. My overstruck
Buffalo Nickel has coin die alignment (almost) and my overstruck Jefferson
Nickel has medal/book die alignment. As such, NEITHER is anyplace close to
being correct for a genuine hobo token... something an experienced Hobo Nickel
collector would spot clear across the room. My 2001 silver "Hiking Hobo" GMM
token is struck with the correct "90° apart" die alignment but my 2001
silver "Hiking Hobo" OHNS token is incorrectly struck with coin die alignment.
The National Convention:
There is an neat WhatsGoingOn.com article on the 100th Annual convention at:
Link:National Hobo
Convention (100th Annual) - August 7-15, 2000.
Additionally, there is LOTS of cool information at:
Link:Your
Hobo Guide to Britt, Iowa.
An Unusual Experience ...or...
"Be Out Of Town By Sundown!":
Ron tells me his most vivid memory of the 1995 convention was being dragged
off the stage by the local Sheriff... literally grabbed by the arm and hauled
away in front of the onlooking crowd. It turns out that Ron had been mistaken
for some individual that the Sheriff had previously run out of town and told
to never return. After the mix-up was straightened out and the Sheriff publicly
apologized in front of the crowd, the activities continued. However, Ron said
he left town a bit earlier than originally planned. Probably a wise choice. One
never knows what might have happened next... the Sheriff might have changed
his mind.
EMail:Verne R. Walrafen
Click for
Obverse or
Reverse enlargement
1995 Britt, Iowa Hobo Token
Struck over a Jefferson Nickel
with 90° counter clockwise die rotation
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This is the CD-ROM version of the
GMM ScrapBook
Pages 1 through 23
28 February 2001
External links will work if you have
an ACTIVE internet connection!
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GMM ScrapBook Now Available on CD-ROM
Well, it took a couple days but I have an "autostart menu" CD-ROM created that
has the first 23 pages of the ScrapBook on it and ALL the graphics files that
those pages use. What is really wonderful is the speed that everything loads
from the CD-ROM... no waiting for files to come down across the Internet!
I will send you a CD-ROM for $20 postpaid with future upgrades available
after your initial acquisition for a nominal $10 postpaid. Now you can be
sure that all this great GMM data doesn't disappear some day when you turn on
your computer.
If the CD-ROM drive on your system has been assigned a drive letter other than
D:, E: or F: you need to tell me so I can customize your copy of the CD-ROM
before I ship it out to you. Personal checks are fine or I'll take PayPal if
you aren't using a Credit Card to pay the PayPal folks. This isn't a profit
motivated enterprise but I do need enough funds to purchase disks, cardstock,
printer cartridges, shipping materials, postage and other supplies.
Order from:
Verne R. Walrafen, 12000 Sunset Ridge Drive, Ozawkie,
KS 66070 and NOT from the guys in Arkansas.
You will get the very latest CD-ROM. This is no
longer the 28 February 2001 example shown here!
EMail and PayPal are the fastest way to get your disk but SnailMail and
Personal Checks work just fine also.
EMail:Verne R. Walrafen
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Click for
Obverse or
Reverse enlargement
Die Alignment Piece For 1992 "King's Coin
Hammer" Medal
Originally A Clad U.S. Quarter Dollar
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"In God We Trust" On Santa Maria's Bow
Well Lindy, I know you said that there were really four groups of GMM oddball
stuff: their "die trials", their real errors that they call "naturals", their
"Adam Hardcastles", and their "special orders". That left me several pieces
in my collection that I had to attribute to pièces de caprice, "special orders",
but they were normally much more crude than one expects from such pieces.
I now know that we have a fifth group to consider... "die alignment" (or
perhaps adjustment would be appropriate) specimens. Ron and Joe told me
that it is their habit to throw something, anything at hand actually, on
the reverse die so that the dies don't have the opportunity to clash each
other. Lindy told me that when Adam and he struck the 14 star 1796 proof
dollars, the Medalic Arts press would want to rotate until the dies kissed.
Adam used a block of wood to prevent that die kiss.
On my first visit to GMM Joe gave me a partially struck pewter blank from
the Eureka Springs medal dies that he was using in his repair of a press.
That press was not striking the planchet precisely "square". Where would
we all be without Joe to keep the equipment working? Without any of Ron's
wonderful creations is where!
EMail:Verne R. Walrafen
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