Steve D'Ippolito

Wait a minute... you _have_ a larger version? Can you not resize (doing a save-as!) and repost it? Something about this sequence of events is confusing me.

Gotta admit it was a three-way tough choice for me but I went for the Grant. The photography really brings out the relief on it.

There were multiple categories at first, bimetallic, other precious metals, non-metals, base metals... There weren't a lot of entries in any of those categories, so this is the combination of four categories.

I have a number of coins whose toning only shows up (or shows up 10x better) when the coin is held obliquely, to both the light and the camera. That's frustrating! I've not figured out how on earth to photograph that--if there is some magic trick I'd love to know what it is. (In fact I discovered one coin of mine that I thought was just black ugly toned, has fantastic cobalt blue if you look at it about 60 degrees "off axis" and get light to reflect or rather glare off it.)

Maybe you got the only Philly one they encased. Just your bad luck!

"Depends on where you start" indeed! Certainly you don't have a lot of holes left in the whole date run. But if you want 'em all, financially you ain't even started, if you don't have the flowing hair dates. You've started once you get those. But then there is the 1796 and 1797--the two draped bust/small eagle dates... which even in AG-3 apparently are up into five figures. You have your work cut out for you. Good luck! This will be quite an achievement. I am working a copper/nickel/silver type set, 1800-1964, myself... and there is a reason my set starts with 1800! Some of the denominations don't get too ridiculous in price back into the late 1790s but if you push back far enough just about everything has a type (much less a specific date!) that will annihilate your bank account in any grade I'd want to put in a type set (or any grade at all). [Dimes seem to be an exception; I might stretch my budget a bit and squeak into a small eagle reverse (and pull a tinfoil clad one out of circulation too) to have a complete dime type set but I want to put off thinking about that until I'm a lot closer to getting my 19th century types done.] Conveniently for half dollar date collectors like you, there is a type change in 1800; the heraldic eagle belongs entirely to the 1800s (starting in 1801 so you can say "nineteenth century" without someone getting pedantic on you) while the small eagle is a 1790s design. If you get all of the 180x dates you have all of the heraldic eagle series. So you could just say you concentrated on only the reeded edge, capped bust and draped bust/heraldic eagle series OR you can say you stuck to the 19th century. If I am not mistaken you do not have any 1790s dates yet at all, so this might be a convenient way to move the goal posts closer and be able to someday declare victory without a second mortgage. By the way, did you get both 1807s (the draped and capped bust), or are you satisfied to just have any ol' 1807? My favorite purchase from Pittsburgh ANA is something right up your alley: an 1807 Draped Bust half. I also picked up an 1839 (reeded edge, "Half Dol"). Still looking for the "50 Cents" sub type. And I might decide that 1807-08 is a different sub type in which case I need one of those too. (And we won't discuss that I need seven more seated liberty halves what with all the subtypes...) Anyhow. I am finding this pre-1840 stuff (or maybe it's better identified by the initials "JRCS") more and more interesting, that's for sure. Between them and Seated Liberty sub-types for all the silver denominations I have my work cut out for me. Meanwhile, you've picked an area that has quite a following... you might even start delving into die varieties and someday qualify to join the Bust Half Nut Club--I think they also do Draped Bust. I'm a confirmed type collector, emphatically into that kind of minutia, so I will never make it.

I recall as a kid (back in the 70s!) getting a 1919 out of circulation. (I don't recall whether or not it had a mint mark.) That was a really cool thing even back then. Add about forty years, and it's gotta be verging on awesome. So I can understand all the emoticons!

They generally seem to have gotten folded into fourths, with hard creases (not the gentle u-bend most notes get today). I suppose one could use a drawer in a file cabinet for this kind of money but 100 rubles or 500 rubles was a LOT of money in Tsarist Russia. Even the 3, 5 and 10 ruble notes were large by our standards (not huge, but large) and probably got folded/creased as well.

Fantastic lion/lioness vignette.

Nothing to sneeze at; it's centered and legible and you can use it to bail out the english channel if you have to (just like Canute's men when they didn't realize he was kidding)

Not quite, the original ratio was 15:1 and even that was a decline from the 14:1 ratio prevalent in Europe earlier in the 18th century. The fact that the ratio tends to change is a fundamental problem with bimetallism. The coinage of one metal becomes too pricey in terms of the other, and then those coins get melted down. If the silver is deliberately made subsidiary to the gold (or vice versa, but we made silver subsidiary so I will stick to that) that problem ceases but then a new problem could arise, inflation, if the government _freely_ coins the subsidiary metal (silver). To avoid that, the subsidiary coins have to be backed by the standard ones, which means the government cannot simply mint however many silver coins it wants to. If the coins are made _extremely_ subsidiary (say, for example, if the government had decided to reduce the silver in a silver dollar to half what it was) then another problem arises in that people might counterfeit the silver coins and try to buy gold coinage with them. When the gold/silver price (not coinage) ratio became even wider, counterfeiting silver coins apparently started to become a problem. The fact that we could go through several decades of slow inflation before the value of silver got high enough the mint could not continue using silver in our coinage indicates that the gold/silver ratio had widened considerably by the time of the great depression.

A nice one to be sure. Congrats!

Steve D'Ippolito;Silver;Group 3 1701-1800; 1713 Grivennik (10 Kopeks) Russian 1713 Grivennik (10 Kopeks)

Steve D'Ippolito Copper Entries Steve D'Ippolito;copper;group 3 1701-1800;1777 10 Kopeks Siberian, Russia Siberian 10 Kopeks 10 Kopeks. Siberian coppers were made out of copper by-product of a silver mine in the Altai. Since the copper contained some silver and even gold it was decided to mint coppers at a new facility in Kolyvan, but in doing so to institute a new distinctive design and make the coins to a lower weight standard (more face value per unit weight). The KM stands for Kolvyan Copper (Med'), and is not a mint mark. The very early coins in the series had edge lettering instead of the KM initials, on the larger pieces. The series ran from 1764-1781 after which the Kolyvan mint started producing regular-style coppers, of the typical Catherine II type, with the KM mintmark (and this time it was a mintmark). The Kolyvan mint was finally closed in the 1830s. Steve D'Ippolito;copper;group 4 1801-1900;1810 Bisti, Georgia Georgian bisti This coin was issued for use in Georgia, after the Russian empire absorbed it. Note the lettering entirely in the distinctive Georgian alphabet. Even the date is done with Georgian lettering, in a scheme similar to ancient Greek and Hebrew usage where the first letter of the alphabet was 1, the second 2, the tenth 10, the eleventh 20, the nineteenth 100, and so on. The Georgian alphabet had enough letters to get one through 9,999 with this system, though some of the letters are no longer in use today.

Steve D'Ippolito;Other Precious Metals;Group 4 1833 3 Rubles Platinum, Russia 3 Ruble Platinum in BU (Beat Up) This is a worn, bent example of the Russian 3 ruble platinum piece issued from 1828-1845. It has also been knifed (possibly for acid testing) twice, forming an X on the obverse. Platinum first came to the attention of European science in what is now Colombia; it showed up as nuggets mixed in with gold in panning on the Rio del Pinto. It was not regarded as valuable; in fact it was a nuisance because the panners had to painstakingly sort the nuggets. When platinum nuggets were noticed near the Urals in Russia, peasants would actually use them as shot in their shotguns. (Imagine blowing 1/4 or even 1/2 ounce of platinum nuggets out the muzzle of a shotgun!) Anyhow, Russia faced an annoying situation in the late 1820s--they had both paper and silver coinage in circulation but they did not trade at par (four paper rubles made a silver ruble). Enter the platinum coinage. These coins were issued by Russia as an extension of the silver coinage (note the value reads 3 Rubles "in Silver"). Not coincidentally, the platinum mines were owned by the politically powerful Demidov family. The three ruble piece did circulate to a very limited extent, as seen with this very coin. The Russians introduced a 6 ruble piece the next year and a 12 the year after that; these did not circulate. There is also a lot of fascinating information on how the coins were made but I'd probably exceeded people's tolerance for coin trivia by now. The 3 ruble piece stands as the only platinum coinage ever issued with the intent of circulating, that actually did so. (Somehow I'll be surprised if anything shows up in Group 1 or 2)

One disadvantage to the way they do it, it's impossible for someone to get a picture of his exhibit and his medal. I generally bring one of mine to the show so the winner can "pose" it with their exhibit if they want to, on Sunday (now Saturday--the banquet has been moved).

How about some Howland Wood medals? These are given out for best in show exhibits. I am not sure what year these were instituted, but originally they were a silver medal given the the best of show exhibitor. Sometime in the 1990s they started announcing who the runners up were, and in 1999 they switched to a gold/silver/bronze system. This is the very first bronze given out for second runner up (for my exhibit on eagle varieties on Imperial Russian rubles). The color changed to a more coppery color in later years. When they present the awards at the ANA banquet, they give you a medal in a box, but there's a note saying please give it back at the end of the banquet so it can be engraved on the reverse. By the time I won my first Best of Show, I knew that that process would take more than two months, so I photographed the "presentation" medal. This medal was apparently donated by the Franklin mint and at some point they stopped doing that, so the ANA went to another supplier and the medals took on a much more polished look, so the gold ones I have are polished--unfortunately I don't have pics ready to hand. Apparently now they are lustrous once again. It turns out I have the largest (but not the best!) collection of Howland Wood medals, three bronzes and three golds. Thomas Law's heirs have three silvers (back from when they _were_ the Best of Show award) and two golds. No one has won all three types of medals. Sam Deep is another multiple-medal holder and he never got a bronze, and I never got a silver. Now the first and second runners up get a Radford Stearns medal.

1957 "wheatie" cent. Surprised me; I maybe see one every couple of years. Saved it of course.

Hear hoofbeats, expect horses not zebras. See copper piece the size of a Lincoln cent, expect Lincoln cent not something the finder probably never even heard of. Not everyone is watching their change! It takes obsessed (if not malfunctioning ) minds such as ours to even want to bother. This is why we even find these things like 1944 quarters (I am still stunned I found that one a month or so ago) in change either spontaneously or dedicated searching--because 99% of people don't look.

Well that is a cool find!

It's interesting to note that the 250 ruble note on the previous page of posts has a swastika on the reverse! (I've had one for quite some number of years.) It was issued by the Provisional government in 1917, well before the Nazis stole the symbol. Before it got trashed by association with them it was a "good luck" sign, originating in India (though I've also seen it on American "Indian" petroglyphs). There is a town in Ontario by the name of Swastika, founded in 1908, and they refuse to change the name, despite a lot of pressure from the provincial government in WWII and derision today. I rather admire that, actually: It's not their fault the symbol was so famously misused. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika,_Ontario

Holy moley! A V nickel from the bank! You must have been doing cartwheels! Had you not searched this particular bunch of nickels, imagine someone (not one of us!) getting it in change and probably being disgusted because they thought it was fake or foreign or something.

Well I just got back from what was probably my best circulation find _ever_. I bought a six inch hoagie at a shop on campus, and was thunderstruck to get a 1944 silver quarter in my change!! The sandwich cost less than five bucks, I think this quarter made it free. (I noticed the color was off, glanced at the edge and saw no red... looked at the date and almost did cartwheels out the door. Silver quarters don't turn up that often--in fact I think it has been well over ten years for me--and when they do it seems they are always from the 60s.)

Another option... go find a 5 ruble note (I think they are prettier anyway, but that's because I like blue, and they are novel in that they are printed in "portrait" mode) and one five ruble coin.

Many aspects of the transition were deliberately gradual... there were coins issued in the denomination of "ten dengas" rather than "five kopeks" which would be more logical given that part of the reform was to make the kopek, rather than the denga, the "important" small denomination. (I was about to launch into a longer explanation of what I mean by this but I realized I did it in my first post.) The transition from Cyrillic to Arabic dating was handled similarly, it was pretty much done in a random-seeming way so that people could see coins of both types circulating together. There were even cases of copper polushkas (1/4 kopeks) with mixed dates: 17К = 1720 and 17К1 = 1721. Another aspect of this which was not gradual was the change in the calendar, which happened abruptly enough that there is almost no trace of it in the reform coinage. Before 1700 the year started September 1st and was on the old system allegedly dating from the creation of the world; 1700 was rendered 7208. Any reform coinage you are likely to have in your collection will be a post-reform date. That is, unless your name is "Hermitage", for there is a unique pattern poltina (half ruble) from 1699 which is essentially the first coin of the reform (you could think of it as equivalent to the Contursi silver dollar), and it was dated 207 in Cyrillic (Σ = 200, З = 7. Σ is simply an older style rendering of С that recalls Cyrillic's origins in the Greek alphabet). The thousands "digit" was omitted as was customary before the calendar reform--it is not omitted in post-reform Cyrillic dated coins. The pattern itself is unique in the trivial sense but it is also unique as the only reform coin dated under the old calendar.