bill

I'm intrigued by the statement that you "made" encased pennies. Do you mean that you were a maker of encased pennies or do you mean that they had booths where you could make your own encased penny? I've never heard of the latter case? Rolled cents, yes. Encasing a cent, no? It sounds like an interesting story.

The smallest piece is just under 13 mm, but the Lord's Prayer is in yet a snaller circle: The so-called Widow's Mite is a store card for the Langdon Bakery, Cincinnati ca. 1895. On either side of the microscopic Lord's Prayer (it can be read), is the maker's mark, MM DUCK / CINCINNATI.

Three tokens acquired recently: Brooklyn Bridge / Lord's Prayer token by George Soley. 13 mm George Soley 13 mm medal struck for the World's Columbian Exposition. The Washington obverse and the Brooklyn Bridge obverse first appeared paired in 1883. It is possible the Brooklyn Bridge / Lord's Prayer medal was a Columbian piece as well. The Washington piece is cataloged as Eglit 255 and Baker 561A (Copper, Rarity 8). The Washignton / Brooklyn Bridge pair is Baker 464E. 13 mm Liberty Bell / Lord's Prayer medal struck for the Columbian Exposition. Eglit 143.

Pond 30 Aluminum Encased Cent, 35mm My latest acquisition. Unknow maker, unknown number produced. A generic luck penny.

1894 Aluminum Lauer Exposition View So-Called Dollar Hibler & Kappen 264 35.6 mm EF Not as nice as the others in the set I am building, but it will do for now.

Congratulations. These early works are wonderful additions to a collector's library.

I love the coins in this series. Keep them coming.

The Michigan Stove Company started using aluminum to alloy with iron in producing their cast iron stoves in 1891. At the time, aluminum was expensive to produce, but it helped ensure smooth casts with no cracks when alloyed with iron. I'm not sure when this aluminum sample advertising medal was first produced, but it is the style of the many aluminum medals produced around the time of the Columbian Exposition. A giant Garland Stove was reproduced in wood and exhibited at the Columbian Exposition and it has survived as a tourist attraction to this day at the Michigan State Fair Grounds. An excellent photograph of the stove can be found on flickr.

Comments in order of yours: I reshot the Carus piece using different lighting and was unhappy with the results compared to the first image. When I went back to the original raw image, I realized I had introduced the over saturation and color shift at some point in the early stages of processing the image. Rather than replace the original Carus image once again, I put the Carus family together and added Numerian. The Carus obverse is the same used for the previous image greatly desaturated, with a much lowered contrast, then tweaked brightness. If anything, it is too light compared to the coin in hand, but it shows the wonderful detail of this piece. I agree that page after page would get boring and one needs to mis things up. Again, I did the Carus family page as I started building the Numerian image. I have several goals with my photography. One is simply a record for my inventory and the other is for use in places like Omnicoin for discussion threads and posts on CoinPeople. Another purpose is for a photo album of my collection so that I can show off pieces and enjoy them myself without necessarily dragging the coins out. These I print 8x10 and that leads to the general format I use here. I keep one image pair sized at 1 to 1 for printing so it is actual size on the page with the enlarged image where one can see much if not all of the detail. The challenge is in finding the right mix to present the images of the coins, present some relevant information, and make it visually interesting. I like the three-quarter view for high relief coins and am interested in the image stacking as you demonstrate on your site. As for the turtle, that's just a damned fine image. I don't collect that type of coin, but I love holding and examining them for exactly the reasons your image reveals. The relief and detail is beautiful. I also haven't really delved into fine details, but that is something for next project with my Celtic coins. Some of the imagery is meant to be seen at an angle and some of the fine detail needs to be separated from the background before one recognizes it as a separate image. New challenges for both photography and then putting the images together to tell the story. Thank you for your comments and feedback. I hope I have managed to convey that I am listening and trying to learn even if my head might be a bit thick.

Silver coins are seriously debased by this point in time (Roman time) and are no longer good silver. At some point they basically become bronze coins with a silver wash. I have to go back to the books to place the Carinus in the proper sequence of debasement, but I believe it is a much degraded, base alloy with a silver wash. The silver wash is gone over much of the surface and yes, that is a low grade form of "rust" that you see.

Alittle different approach, three coins from the same family: A larger image.

After the last two, I added the hint of the reflection of a surface the coins are standing on (I like the feeling of depth I think it lends to the image) and the reflection of the backside of the obverse and reverse images. I dropped back the surface and did not reflect the coins in that surface. The large image. The largest image.

A coin from an early collection (the collector died in 1906 and his collection was sold in 2005) with the original cabinet tag. I've positioned the obverse image over the tag in the same position it occupied for nearly 100 years as indicated by the foxing on the tag. I've also shown the entire tag. The large image. The largest image.

I've reimaged the Carus piece, but I'm happier with what I have posted here so far. I do see a variety of colors on Doug's images, as does my wife, but without the coins in hand, it is somewhat difficult. So, I'm still thinking about further processing on the Carus image with preference to getting a fresh image that I like. In the meantime, I moved on to a Carinus piece (son of Carus). I've dropped the reflection and added a relief image. I'm not happy with the relief image myself, in part because there is not really enough relief to add additional information in my mind. If I was happy with it, I would go back and find some different lighting options , but what I have here seemed to me to show the relief the best. Despite the uneven loss of silvering, I like this piece because of the Medusa shield. It is a rare type. As with the others, comments are invited. The large image. The largest image.

Its not always a problem and usually I ask my wife to do some basic checks. Review the image now. She believes it is very close to the actual color of the two sides of the coin (and they are visibly different even to me). My red/green color blindness is not total, I can distinguish the two, but faint hues and the edges blend into what for me is a brown.

Thanks. I was trying to match the colors, but I am red-green color-blind. They do match to my eye. I'll pull back on the red and repost the image. I agree on the contrast, but backing off too much means the loss of the fine detail in the helmet crest and the beard. It was a toss up in trying to capture the crispness of the image and not have too much contrast. Again, thank you for the helpful feedback. I think the Carus is a good candidate for another go this weekend in trying to reduce the contrast while maintaining the detail.

Okay, my response to syzygy's feedback follows. I like the feeling of depth, but I've modified it some and reflected the coins in the background. The reflection is the mirror image of the opposite side of the coin (as it should be if a true reflection) and it correctly shows the die rotation. (Edited for color correction.) A larger image. The largest image.

Thanks for the feedback. I agree that the lighting came out well on these two pieces. I'm working on two others where I have one side good in my opinion, but I haven't been able to match the other side as yet. Each coin is so different in the challenges to not only light the piece to show the detail, but also to match the coloring, etc. I have good shots of both of the coins I am working on now, but the two sides look like different coins if I try to match detail. If I match color, one side is poorly reproduced. Both are going back under the lens for more work. I like showing the relief on the first coin. The other has no relief to speak of, so that sort of image doesn't really show anything. The reflected image doesn't really add anything to the information in the image, but the feeling of depth is interesting. I think I'll try some variations on the theme as I finish my Roman coins, but I'll try something different with my Celtic/Roman Republic pairs when I get to them. As for the size of the image (the negative space), I was in fact thinking of a printed image as opposed to a screen image. That is the point of the actual size picture of the coin so I have a blow-up and an actual sized image on the same print. I added the scale since I can't control the display size on any given computer screen. I'll experiment with a landscape version for a coin with good detail. Thanks for the feedback.

Those will come in time. In the meantime, check out my thread on the Pixtilos Celtic series (I do need to rephotograph them, but I'm still working out how I want to do it).

The emperor Gallienus. There seems to be several varieties of this coin and I am not certain the RIC number is correct. However, the RIC attribution is as I received it from Harlan Berk and he attributed it to a Gallic mint (not necessarily Lyon). The large link. The really big link.

I'm preparing to take some of my Roman coins to the ANA to sell. They represent a part of my collection that has fallen into the less than interesting category as my interests have focused on other areas (Celtic, CeltIberian, and the early emperors or the "sons of Caesar." I spent an evening rephotographing the coins in question aiming for the highest quality images that I can produce given my set up and experience to date. This includes post-processing, etc. aimed at the best image, not necessarily the most true image that I might produce if I wanted to sell the coin. I've drawn ideas from the Becoka reflection template that some have used here--not using the template itself, but modifications for my own purposes. I want to show the coin, the relief where it is exceptional, and a traditional catalog description of the coin. Finally, I want the image to be aesthetically pleasing. The first image is a denarius of Clodius Albinus. It is the only piece of this lot of coins with significant relief, so it is the only image that I have tried to show the relief. The master image is scaled for the printer so that the smaller image in the lower left corner will print actual size as opposed to the larger image in the central part of the picture. Since the digital image will show at different sizes, I included a scale with the small image. Let me know what you think and I'll post each of the images here as I build them. I'll try to incorporate good ideas and feedback in later images. A small one here and a link to a larger version for those who want to see the image in more detail. A larger image. Warning, the largest (really big) image.

2006 Convention, Denver, Colorado Bronze, 64mm 125 struck

Pond 40 Gilt Bronze, 35mm L.G. Balfour Co., Attleboro, MA 1500 struck The "Pageant of the Mystic" was held June 23rd to July 2nd, 1930 displaying the history of Medford. A pinback with a similar design is pictured earlier in this thread. Three other badges with different designs, struck by other companies are also known from Medford.

I came across another version of the Guttag Brothers store card struck for the 1926 International Philatelic Exhibition, the naked collectors with a Washington/Lincoln obverse, in Rulau and Fuld's catalog of Washington medals. While they may be talking about the Washington/Lincoln obverse only, they note the store card was engraved by Jonathan M. Swanson and the piece was struck by the Medallic Art Co.