Something new from {my friends at Alchemy Mint} the parking lot across the street..

jayPem

My wife and daughter have been taking amazing care of yours truly whilst I sit on the couch and rehab some busted bones..
My pal Jack is a life long silversmith of some renown and he and his wife Janette are always ready to take on a fun project.
Wife and daughter both have impressive collections of their work and actually wound up with a very mild bit of interest in coins due to the fact that Jack uses old 90% silver for most of his creations.

One of their best sellers over the years are these Liberty clam shells made from old Mercs..

I got to thinking, what would be a great gold coin to have made into something similar?
$5 Indian came to mind, as I have several circs laying around, but the design wasn't quite right and plus the premium is a bit high on these, even cleaned... wanted something closer to melt.
I had one 20 franc rooster to contribute, and lo and behold Don Rinkor had another one for me...at melt!

So I sent Jack down with enough silver eagles to make the purchase and then we had ourselves some gold, Jerry..
The cool thing about the clam shell design is that he saws out a small circle and the plan was to make these into a second set of earrings. The hoops for mom, and the little ones for Chica 😘

Well, here's what they made for us. I don't think the lady of the house has taken them off since she got them, and I'll find out later today how the other pair was recieved as they just arrived in the mail in time for the 21st birthday!

pursuitofliberty

Great choice for the gold.

Pretty kewl!!

jayPem

Tough to compete with parking lot finds, but I thought this particular bit of PMD might be of interest to at least a couple collectors of exquisite exonumia..🤔

ricko

Very nice and great pictures. Hope your healing continues to be fast and complete. Cheers, RickO

gumby1234

@jayPem those Liberty clam shells are definitely not Mercury dimes. Looks to be Washington quarters.

jayPem

@gumby1234 said:
@jayPem those Liberty clam shells are definitely not Mercury dimes. Looks to be Washington quarters.

Huh, I'll tell Jack he can up the price on these then...more than 2x the silver content! Dudes leaving money on the table 😅
So, the deal is, they are mercury dimes.
As the silver is hammered and shaped, it gets thinner and spreads out close to or beyond the diameter of a quarter..
Not sure if you are familiar with 20 franc gold coins. They are essentially the same diameter as a US nickel, but you can see that they've been hammered out to about the size of a quarter, maybe a little more.
But I do appreciate your close observation!
These posts of mine really don't (understandably) catch too many eyeballs here 😉

jayPem

@ricko said:
Very nice and great pictures. Hope your healing continues to be fast and complete. Cheers, RickO

Thanks RickO!
Appreciate that!... these kind of little projects really help pass the time 🙂

gumby1234

maybe roosevelt dimes. the liberty is not spaced closely on Mercs @jayPem

jayPem

@gumby1234 said:
maybe roosevelt dimes. the liberty is not spaced closely on Mercs @jayPem

Well,the amazing thing is he compresses the letters all back together with an antique, bench mounted compression mill and then re-stretches the coin back into a suitable diameter...😅

Actually, you are absolutely correct!
My bad! These are obviously silver Roosies. Foot in mouth, arguing with a dime guy 🥴