ikaros

True story, I bought a coffee at a Tim Hortons (in Ohio) with a Sacagawea and a half dollar, and the window help asked me if the Kennedy was a two dollar piece... I was so very tempted to say, "Yes. Yes, it is," in as sincere a voice as I could manage. As it stands, I have a 1994P half in my pocket even as I type.

Gnnn... another imperial piece to get my attention! No fair! Jeez. I think making a 'pence of the Empire' collection is only a matter of time...

Really? I don't think I've paid more than $5-$6 for any of mine -- but they're not slabbed and professionally graded.

Are you going to be including the SMS issues too? Some of my favorites in my set are really well struck SMS nickels, especially when they have that really light cameo, like they're trying their hardest to be proofs even though they aren't.

They're pretty even if I am late to the party. Thanks for the contest and congrats to the winners!

Not for that kind of money, no.

Me either. I wonder if I should be looking for a coin expert specializing in toning, or a metallurgist who happens to be a collector...

Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of the electromotive potential between the pure copper and the cupronickel layers as a toning inhibitor -- just as a theory, I'm no physicist or a metallurgist, but it's the most obvious structural difference between a nickel and clad coinage and the simplest interaction that's a direct result of that difference. I can think of seeing several sets where the nickel was well and truly toned, and the clads were barely, if at all, so I suspect there's something going on.

What's funny about that is that I've got two of the 2011 NPQs from change - Glacier and Olympic, and only now have got my first 2010. Meanwhile, I'm really looking forward to 2013's Ohio NPQ because the Perry monument was visible from my grandparents' place on Lake Erie. It'll be nice to see something I know on a coin.

Well, it only took until 2012, but I finally got a 2010 NPQ -- Yellowstone.

Huh. I thought it was a different composition, mainly because I haven't seen clad coins tone the same way that nickels do, even the ones from the 60s when they were still deeply sculpted. I wonder if that has to do with being a copper sandwich rather than being a solid piece...

Jeffs are a blast to collect. They converted me from my agnosticism on toning. There's no killers (unless you're going for the major known errors or strictly FS), and the glow of a vintage Jeff in MS is unlike any other modern American coin -- well, that's probably not a surprise given that it has a metal content unlike any other. Also, I'm with you on golf.

I think I'm going to jerry-rig a polarizing filter in there, to see if that moderates the glare. I dunno, it's all about the experimentation now.

Pictures! Lenin Centennial ruble, 1970 This is a companion to my 2009 Aerican Empire piece, and my first coin dated 2012. And besides, a Henson quote is all but irresistable. Never posted this earlier -- a wooden nickel from the CONA show last September.

Pictures! They had to come eventually! 1972 nickel 1972D nickel 1973D nickel 1981S Type 1 nickel -- doesn't capture the really remarkable toning. It's an odd olive green, just gorgeous. 1981S Type 2 nickel 2011P nickel 2011D nickel 2011S nickel I really need to spend some time just taking pictures and learning what I'm doing wrong... my photo quality is just too variable.

Yeah, I was really happy to have all my data at hand. It'll make the Ohio show this coming September a real breeze. The only thing it can't do is update data on the fly, since it's just a reader. But I can live with that. It beats my old Palm-based system on a couple counts -- while it loses on updating on the fly, it wins on readability... and on compatibility, as my Palm is so old, Palm's not bothering with writing new drivers for Win7. I think the only update I need to make is to condense all my spreadsheets into one document instead of separate documents as I have them now. It would've been a lot easier to flip pages than it was to change documents. Live and learn!

I recently bought a Nextbook -- real basic ebook reader, not tied to any particular merchant like Amazon or B&N. So I can print out my catalogs from OpenOffice to PDFs and load them directly, and have them on-hand to refer to, while listening to my favorite MP3s in the background! So I sat down and catalogued my Jeffs, then my Brits, then my Poles, then my Russians, and got ready for a raid on my LCS. Just as I'm heading out the door, the reader already stashed in my backpack (gotta love long earphone leads) and the computer already shut down, I spot five coins sitting on a shelf that I forgot to catalog. So I still have to rely on memory. But not for everything anymore. Not much to be had in the foreigns bin, other than a few Soviet-era rubles turning up -- all of them the 1970 Lenin commemorative. At least I was able to pick and choose and get the best available than the only available. I also got a 5 kopek piece... forget what year off the top of my head, I'm posting from a coffee house and don't have them at hand. One new Polish piece, a 10 groszy from the early 1970s. And a couple of Brits - a threepence from the early 1940s, a 1916 penny, and a 1963 shilling (Scottish reverse). It's a blessing and curse that my LCS takes foreigns seriously enough that I can get really good pieces there... and therefor that I can't luck out too much in the foreigns bin. Ah, well. I love the team there; they know their business, and they don't look down on the small-scale collectors like me. Actually, some comments I overheard while there suggest they really like the guys like me who collect for the love of collecting rather than the hope of making a quick buck.

I really need to capture the color on that 81S-T1. I mean, it's *green*, and it's a *pretty* green. I can't recall ever seeing a color quite like it on a coin before (anodized NCLT notwithstanding). As soon as it was in hand, I knew I needed it, especially since there wasn't anything more impressive (I couldn't tell a PF65 from a PF70 anyway). I think it's probably fair to say that I'm no longer agnostic about toning.

I usually do, in my own random way. I needed the 64/64D to go with the proof I'd picked up at the CNS show last September, for one. The 73D had killer eye appeal, so I thought I'd get some more from the early 70s while I was at it. And of course, the 2011PDS all in one fell swoop. But there wasn't an appealing 73 (more accurately, there wasn't *any* 73 in the cabinet) to go with the 73D, so that's waiting until later. BTW, the dealer mentioned that the 2009s are even harder to find than before; they've been offering $4 *apiece* for them, and can't get any. They've had outstanding orders for unc rolls for months that they just can't fill. People aren't breaking up their mint sets to make them available, and there were so doggone few released in the first place... glad I already have 'em! In twenty years time, the 09P&D may well have joined the 39D and 50D as additional keys to the series, though I should be surprised if they get much above $10 each in BU -- the 50D is something like $15 to $25 in unc and only starts to get obscene when those magic letters FS appear (and even then, it's not too horrible -- a 50D graded MS65FS by PCGS went for $44 on Heritage earlier this month), and even the 39D is still under $100 even in MS65 and 66. Still, since most of the rest of the series barely reaches $2-3 in unc, it's still a premium coin, if in a relative way.

Still alive! I made a milestone yesterday: the Jefferson Project is now 25% complete. Not counting errors and going only with major variations like the 1939 T1 and T2 issues and the 1979 and 1981 T1 and T2 proofs, I count (including 2012) 246 individual coins, treating proof and business strikes separately. I currently have 55 coins, almost all chosen individually based on whether or not it made me happy. Pictures to come, of course. I got the 2011PDS (no 2012 available yet), the 1981S T1 and T2, then filled in a few uncs from the 60s and 70s and 61 proof. The 73D is stunning; the 64 and 64D pointed out the problem of finding strongly struck issues from the late 50s and early 60s -- almost all of them had more softness than I really like, but I located a couple I was happy with. The star of all of them is probably the 81S T1, which has got the most unusual olive-green toning going on. I don't know where the color is going, but I like where it is. The set so far seems evenly divided between blast white, and unusual toning. Few of the coins (other than the most recent) are just plain coins. I may end up leaning more towards toned coins. I'm getting more and more interested by the variations in color, and nickels of course tone differently than other issues. The set could end up bifurcating into white and toned sets, but I doubt it will if only because an untoned coin may tone eventually, but a toned coin will never untone.

Funny you should mention. I hit up my LCS yesterday, and found three 1970 Lenin commems in the foreigns bin, but almost never see a regular issue ruble coin. The only other ones I have are the 1987 Tsiolkovsky, and the 1991 regular issue, which was purchased singly rather than from a bin.

I don't think I've spent more than $80 for one single coin yet. There's a reason my collection is mostly base metal.

I think the new design of the Jeff looks good on the matte uncirculateds, especially since the coin has no sculptural depth anymore. I'm not convinced on the proofs, though. The cameos look like they were added later, and the fields are too flat. They're like a hand mirror, not a telescope mirror. If I could make any one change to our coinage, it would be to return to more deeply sculpted designs.

I dunno, it's hard to improve on the simplicity of 'Art'. I have to think longer about this. I was leaning toward the Latin "Ars", but that has other issues, mostly involving being too near to a certain British slang term.

Too many choices! I abstain.