WANTED: EDGE MIRROR
Cladiator
Posts: 18,080 ✭✭✭✭✭
Specifically for half dimes, capped bust. Those of you that know what I'm talking about keep your eye out for one. Trust me when I tell you I will make it well worth your while if you can dig one up.
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Comments
anything like a SHOE MIRROR?
<< <i>I thought they used reflectors from flashlights. >>
Some may have but that's not what I'm looking for. A long time ago some folks actually designed and fabricated, specifically for coins, a handfull of these things and I know for a fact they are in existence for half dimes. Elusive doesn't even begin to describe.
<< <i>anything like a SHOE MIRROR? >>
Sorry Goose, different purpose all together
Edited to add: I only replied because this was already on the top.
Works perfect.
I don't know what your purpose might be, but if you're going to photograph the edge you may have to do something to kill the glare.
Maybe someone on the US coin forum can suggest something.
Ray
Going further through the search I also found this article. Funny, he graduated from same college as I, but the year before I was born!
RUSSELL JAMES LOGAN -- Biographical Notes of Coin Collector
Born December 6, 1941, Holyoke, MA, youngest of 3 children of Laura
Russell and James Newton Logan.
Childhood endeavors included paper route, baseball, trout fishing,
canoeing, stamp and coin collecting. Saturdays spent sorting through
bags of dimes at local bank.
1955-1959 at Choate (Rosemary Hall), Wallingford, CT. Hockey, lacrosse,
wood-working shop.
1963 BSME, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), Troy, NY. Varsity
Lacrosse under legendary coach Ned Harkness, hockey, DKE fraternity
steward, summer engineering intern at Sonoco Products Co.
Married July 13, 1963 to Brenda Lee Murph, Hartsville, SC. Hired as
staff mechanical engineer at ALCOA, Massena, NY. Collecting early half
dollars and dimes by die varieties along with father, using Beistle and
Valentine. Also collecting mid-19th century US revenue stamps in
multiples.
1965 son Robert Russell Logan born. Russell hand-builds boat house and
dock at camp on lake in Adirondacks. Drives 1950 baby blue Studebacker
pickup truck.
1967 daughter Harriett Russell Logan born. Russell active on board of
Massena Jaycees, lastly as President.
1968-1976, Furnace Engineer at ALCOA headquarters in Pittsburgh, PA.
Files several US patents for work on recycling aluminum cans, slitting
scrap metal, and furnace design. Manages Junior Achievement team in
award-winning aluminum coat hanger projects. Studies, buys and restores
early American furniture from the 18th and early 19th century. Asked
what he collects, he responds: "wood", by which he means walnut, maple
or mahogany antiques, especially Queen Ann and Chippendale furniture
with a New England origin. Attends local coin shows with well-loved
copy of Al Overton's half-dollar variety book.
Early 1970s -- discovery of Bust Half Nut Club opens fellowship of
collectors to formerly-private father/son team. James N. Logan was
buying bust coins from dealers in Savannah and Brunswick, GA, where he
moved after retiring. One of these dealers mentioned the BHNC, and got
great attention from Dad, who said his son might be interested in
joining. The dealer contacted Sam Nolt, who contacted Russell, who
promptly sent in a cesus of his and his father's bust half dollar
varieties and was accepted to club membership. Thus began 30 years of
avid correspondence with other collectors and sharing of interests and
inquiries and friendship in annual meetings around coin conventions.
Cherry picking may be a competitive sport, and crowing about rare finds
and new varieties the ultimate brag, but to the onlooking wife these
guys formed a real team, supporting and appreciating each other in an
endearing way. James Logan corresponded with other collectors, but he
never actually met them in person. Russell loved putting faces with the
notes, and he shared all his coin contacts with his father.
Logan vocabulary words, understood by growing Logan children but not
general public:
Varieties, cherry picking, bust, attributing, emission orders,
edges, azures, gules, errors, cuds, brockage, pedigree, coin show, bust
nut, obverse, reverse, cle, curled base 2, Overton, census, love tokens,
itty bitty busties, Castaing machine.....
1976 move to Cleveland to work for Chase Brass & Copper, chief engineer
for Narrow Strip Division. Meeting with David Davis and John McCloskey
at Central States Coin Show in Dearborn, MI, begins long and beloved
tradition of such Thanksgiving weekend meetings. The shared interests
of these 3 lead them to Bill Subjack and Allan Lovejoy, all of them
working on manuscripts for a "dime book". It took nearly 10 years to
complete, with each of the five authors contributing valuable
information and effort, but they got the book they wanted. They sought
to do for dimes what Al Overton had done for half dollars, and to
introduce even more collectors to the joy of classifying early dimes by
die variety. In the process of work on the book, they became good
friends. And when it was done, they invited others to join them in the
John Reich Collectors Society, founded in 1985.
Photograph of 5 dime book authors taken in Cleveland during a working
session at Logan home, probably in 1983, is the only known photograph of
all five of them together. James N. Logan died in August 1985.
The solitary hobby of collecting early US silver coins by die variety,
shared by father and son, was greatly enhanced by interation with the
members of BHNC and JRCS. Stu Witham became a special friend and mentor
for Russell in the 1980s. When Stu died, Russell realized that he had
moved from the role of young apprentice to that of mentoring others.
And that was a role he relished.
Writing was difficult and unnatural for Russell. He was much more
comfortable with numbers and ideas and action. But he did a lot of
writing. The computer was a big help, with its spell-check and easy
editing functions. His articles for the JRCS Journal won numerous
awards. He understood the importance of studying, compiling,
questioning and sharing the results with others.
Russell's chief interest in the coins, as in many other things, was to
appreciate and understand the human intervention in a mechanical
process.
1985-1990 were the years when children were in college and wife wanted
to travel, so Russell studied and wrote about coins, but did not buy as
many as he would have liked. In 1985 he left the corporate world to
co-found a consulting engineering firm with a fellow-RPI graduate, Clark
Hungerford. Inovent Engineering developed and built prototype machinery
for manufacturers, mostly in the Cleveland area, all very specialized in
nature. One of its innovations was a hot-air-powered conveyor, for
which they secured a patent, and various hydraulic systems for material
handling applications. They were called on to provide machine
modifications and to solve specific problems, and they built the pieces
in-house in Solon, OH, a suburb of Cleveland. Every job was different,
and they had a great time. Russell did some of everything there, and
learned the latest computer-aided design systems too. But he and John
McCloskey were talking about half dimes. And they met Mark Smith, who
wanted to help write a half dime book.
The 1990s were devoted to the half dime book project, writing articles
for JRCS, and cultivating friendships with old and new variety
collectors. Mark Smith's death early in the development of the book was
a blow, but his coins were used in the research. ANA conventions
continued to be a focus of every year, often including extended trips at
convention locations with the Davis's. Russell and John McCloskey did
every step of the book project themselves, but it was published under
the auspises of the JRCS. Computers made the job much easier than the
dime book had been. The book won the NLG Award for Book of the Year on
its publication in 2000.
Russell loved the oddballs in the coin world. He delighted in finding
coins with errors in production. He liked knowing how the Mint
operated. He built a scale model of the Castaing machine and
demonstrated how it worked. He built an edge mirror to enable him to
photograph the "third die". He lobbied for the inclusion of the cle as
an official variety. He looked at every early US silver coin he could
find, and he tried to attribute it and appreciate its characteristics.
He did not buy the most expensive or perfect coins, but he tried to buy
the most interesting ones he could afford. He was always eager to see
other people's prize coins, and he was always happy to answer questions.
He had the true collector's vivid memory, and he could tell you history
and location of thousands examples. Many of his favorite coins were
acquired by trading with other collectors, which he always preferred to
buying or selling. I often asked him why he focused so narrowly on the
bust coins, and his answer was that they were the last ones to use human
hands to cut the dies and human hands to control the manufacture of the
coins. Earlier coins were too expensive and rare, and later ones were
too mechanically uniform for him. He found his niche.
<< <i>Try a large laboratory equipment supply company (biological or chemical). Ask about first-surface aluminized concave mirrors. >>
Thanks for the tip. I'm actually looking for one of a handfull that was produced by a famous half dime geek of the past.