Manufacturing question for early coin specialists:

Artist

Hello All -

Lately I have been giving a lot of thought to the manufacturing of coins. My question has to do with the typography used on early dies. I know in the early days, that the dies were carved by hand, but were the legends also, or were they stamped using individual letters?

Also, does anyone know of a resource that explains what kinds of tools were used to carve the steel, or if anyone still pursues this craft today?

Thanks in advance -

Artist

Artist

Bump

Conder101

Assuming we are talking about early US Mint coinage, there may be a couple of cases where a letter was hand cut but the vast majority were the result of letter punches. Some of the very early bills paid by the mint were for sets of letter punches. Now in the earlier pre-federal coinages you will find examples of hand cut letters.

I would also like to say that the early US coinages dies were not really "carved by hand". The letters were punched and the central devices were also either created from a central punch or built up from individual punches. Some hand engraving then was usually done to finish the details of the die.

If you truly want to see hand cut dies, they are much more easily located among the Conder tokens. Another good example is the Liberty cap patterns proposed for the new mini dollar in 2000 by the Gallery Mint. The bust profile is from a punch and I believe the date is as well, but the hair and lettering is all hand engraved.

slumlord98

Ron Landis of Gallery Mint Museum still does it the old fashioned way. If you have a chance to see them at a show, it is fascinating to watch him work on the monitor.

Letters and numbers were made with punches, but often serifs were added by hand, or were touched up. In this image, you can see extensions on the right serif of the first 1, the left serif of 4, and recutting of the top loop of 8 and the diagonal of 4. Also, if you look closely between the dentils, the compass line used to orient the dentils is still visible.

Artist

Thank you both so much - the information you have provided is very interesting and useful to me.