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Steve D'Ippolito

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Everything posted by Steve D'Ippolito

  1. Many of those currencies didn't fail due to a hyperinflation to be sure, but they almost invariably are a poor long term store of value because of a slow loss of value. The US, for instance, seems to find a 1-3 percent inflation, year upon year, to be acceptable; at least people don't bitch too much about inflation when it's kept this low. (On the other hand, it's gone as high as 12 percent a year, even 18% for a period of a month or two.) It's a hidden tax on any form of savings, and it happens primarily because governments and central banks create more money (through a convoluted process sometimes) to cover government spending more than it actually took in in revenue. So even a non-failed fiat currency allows for dishonesty by the issuing authorities. The very inflexibility of gold prevents this sort of thing. And since governments benefit by being able to fire up the printing press to cover deficit spending, they like fiat money on the whole, and that's why no one continues to use gold as a base for their currency. It supplies too much discipline for governments that buy votes with your tax money.
  2. Look really closely at the D--it's actually a stylized hammer and sickle. Obviously the 60 is meant to mean 60 years. But the word for "year" in Russian is год, which translitered is... wait for it... "god" (but prononounced more like goad"). So you COULD really stretch matters and say the 60+hammer and sickle actually does mean "60 god!" Alas, this word forms its plural irregularly, depending on specifically how many the plural might be. It's "год," (numbers ending in 1) "года" (numbers ending in 2-5) or "лет" (numbers ending in 6-0). So sometimes the "god" thing doesn't work. In fact 60 must be one of those cases where the plural is лет. Which ruins the joke. (Doggone it.) Russians when giving the calendar year (e.g., 2013) will recite (or write) the number and likely as not add "года" to it (no matter what the last digit of the year is) because that's a different gramatical case of the word год, and in writing will abbreviate it "г." That even sometimes shows up on the date on coins, either abbreviated (as on Nicholas II rubles and gold) or not. In fact on the 1826 half ruble in my avatar, the date below the eagle reads "1826 ГОДА." "1826" by itself just wouldn't say it, for a Russian.
  3. Conversely I've seen MS60 coins that were horrible, and AU58s I'd rather own. Those 60s are coins that are, technically speaking unworn (i.e., "Mint State") but really undesirable for some reason (lots of bag marks, a really unsightly spot of toning, etc. You almost wish they could assign an "MS-50" grade to them. Conversely it seems some AUs look vastly superior to MS-63s in many ways, you are trading unsightly bag marks (e.g., a ton of acne on Liberty's cheek, for Morgan dollars) for just the teeeny-tiniest bit of rub, or perhaps lots of "chatter" in the fields because someone long ago put the coin and a key in his pocket for an hour. That's a coin you wish they could grade as an AU-63. I guess what I am getting at, is if PF can be a parallel designation (you can theoretically have PF-3 if it's really, really worn) to the Poor, Fair, AG, G, VG, F, VF, XF, AU MS sperctrum, why shouldn't MS be such? MS would then mean only that a coin is not worn but may have suffered some extreme other type of damage; Poor-AU would mean the coin shows signs of at some point having been out in the real world. You wouldn't have a coin being hideous but bumped up to a numerical 60 just because it has no sign of wear, nor a beautiful coin knocked down to 58 because it does. That solves the problem of a line being drawn through the specturm because one specific type of damage is arbitrarily NOT permitted above a certain number, but any other kind is.
  4. I tend to diss the modern coin designs coming out of the mint (I still gag on the shield cent) but I think they did a fantastic job with the five star generals coins. You cannot get the set any more but last I looked the three coins were available individually.
  5. They are nice. Technically, though, the "dinosaur" isn't a dinosaur! It turns out to be something far more interesting in many ways, it's a "mammal-like reptile." About 320 million years ago the hardshell egg laying lineage (amniotes) split into two, and the finback critters are "synapsids"--a term which means one fenestral opening in the skull--more specifically, they are pelycosaurs. Synapsids are ancestors of therapsids, which in turn are ancestral to today's mammals. In fact by the strict rules of cladistics we are considered amniotes, synapsids, pelycosaurs and therapsids ourselves even though we don't lay hardshelled eggs or have a fin on our backs (but our remote ancestors did). Bathygnathus belonged to the specific group of pelycosaurs (sphenacodontia) from which the therapsids arose. Sphenacodontia split into two lineages, therapsids and sphenocodontidae, and bathygnathus is on the latter branch--so it's not quite our ancestor, but it's darned close. Bathygnathus lived about 270 million years ago during the Permian, which was the last period before the start of the Mesozoic (which is typically caricatured as the "age of the dinosaurs"). When I was a kid the "dimetrodon" was fairly famous, it too was a sphenocodontidae and therefore also not quite our ancestor. The other big branch of amniotes is the "diapsids" (two fenestral openings) which are ancestral to two large groups: Lepidosaurs--most reptiles as we know them today (lizards, snakes, amphisbaenians, and tuatara), and Archosaurs (dinosauria and crocodilomorphs--self-explanatory terms). Birds in turn are the only remaining lineage of the dinosaurs; they stem from a branch very closely related to the famous "Velociraptor" and not all that far off from T-Rex. (If you want to visit the real world Jurassic park, go to an aviary.) It doesn't taste like chicken, it tastes like velociraptor. At some point long ago, "anapsids" (no fenestral opening) developed and became the turtles, but exactly how they fit in (are they a sister linage to diapsids or did they branch off of lepidosaurs?) is still unsettled--other extinct lineages with "anapsid" skulls existed but they may have developed independently. OK, I hope you found that digression into "extreme genealogy" interesting. But now... back to fabricated metal discs!
  6. I wish I could afford one, but I am not terribly interested in them. They are basically a pattern coin (and I have complained to Ken Bresset that they should be moved to the pattern chapter of the Red Book).
  7. Bit of a die clash (I think) there on the obverse, at 9-10 o'clock.
  8. Hmmm Better not let you die. It would appear that the photo is quite grainy. My apologies.
  9. No great finds, but an amusing story. I asked a dealer if he perchance had anything from Georgia (not Jawjuh, the other one). He pointed to a gigantic bargain bin and said, "yes there is something in there". There must have been a thousand 2x2s and envelopes, of various colors. I asked if he could remember what color it was, and he said "blue, I think" so I picked a blue one at random. It was the coin! But it was a totally different time period from what I was looking for.
  10. Gotta warn you though... it ain't small, not by a long shot!
  11. Got the login, thanks! I have one significant overdate. Apparently my 4 kopek "livonia" piece is a mule of a reused pattern die with the date and the normal production die for the other side of the coin. Anyway, the date is an overdate (because the pattern is from the year before), and as of the time I bought it, it was the only one known (certainly helps to be able to put "unique" on a coin in an exhibit!). As for the last, thanks! First things first though, I have to get elected to the ANA board and convince the rest of them that this is a good idea!
  12. I'd like to thank everyone involved, even though I no longer collect Russian! I've been advocating that the ANA do something like this though obviously they'd want to concentrate on US coins. (I wonder, though, if your code would be useful for that and whether that could be arranged.) I do have some fakes I could upload to this; it's on my to do list to get my scans transferred over. (They were sold as "novodels--copies made for collectors" rather dishonestly (or ignorantly?) as the copies were not made by the Russian mint.)
  13. And for the Russians here I need to photograph my 1777 Siberian ten kopeks sometime. It's the one I held back from the sale.
  14. This has the advantage that in general, half dimes are MUCH cheaper than corresponding half dollars, and similar things are no doubt true for other countries. Of course with gold the price effect can be expected solely based on the bullion value, but for silver the numismatic value overwhelms the bullion value. If collecting trimes, note that there are three sub-types and that the second one is significantly more difficult than either the first or last. I still don't have one in fact. Type 1: MUCH larger picture Type 3: MUCH larger picture
  15. Fun it is. Alas for Colorado the font is just totally wrong. Of course the zero on actual Colorado plates looks wrong, it's an ellipse instead of being squared off like all the other letters. http://milepost61.wordpress.com/2009/08/30/license-plate-logistics/
  16. Like I said, definitely one of us. Oftentimes when people at an ANA show realize I am staying many miles away in a Motel 6 rather than in the convention hotel they look at me funny but then I point out I am saving something like $200 (or more) doing it this way (even including the ridiculous charge to park my car in the convention center). I then point out I'd rather spend the money on coins, and they sort of get the point.
  17. As for the question: I like lots of detail (sharp strikes) and some good toning so I have a feeling the coin hasn't been monkeyed with. As for design I seem to be developing a like for the draped bust design of all things! (Gold bullion tastes, chicken bullion budget.) But there are many other designs I like. And of course I was once an obsessive Russian Imperial collector but ended up selling. I was the name on the cover of Elmen's November 2008 sale.
  18. Barbers hold up surprisingly well to wear, and I think Barber himself designed them with that in mind. The parts that wear first, heck they don't have much detail on them in the first place. Contrast with the following designs (which are beautiful when fully struck and unworn) and see that the walker's liberty turns into a vertical bar with not too much wear (or a crappy strike, which was common). Barber apparently considered the mercury dime, standing liberty quarter, and walking liberty half to be "failures" for that reason. And by his criteria he was correct.
  19. Well I've got a few: That's probably my most attractive large cent. I do have an 1802 but it doesn't seem to photograph well (at least the photos don't do it justice).
  20. I'd definitely hang on to that 1954 half dime. Unless it's really an 1854.
  21. I have friends whose family came from Afghanistan, and they are hoping for some help in identifying the following. Object 1 doesn't appear to me to be a coin. Object 2 is more interesting to me, looks like a coin but what? Objects 3 and 4 are corroded and I've little hope of identifying them from pictures, but here goes. Any ideas?
  22. On my website's banner is a pic of an Athenian owl I own. I still haven't taken a pic of my Croesus stater.
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