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July 1917. Instructions for making new Type II Standing Liberty quarters.
RogerB
Posts: 8,852 ✭✭✭✭✭
These are instructions sent to the San Francisco Mint for starting manufacture of Type-II Standing Liberty quarters. Notice that they were instructed to give no publicity to the new design.
[Available from NNP RG104-Entry 235 Vol 420, San Francisco]
9
Comments
Great post!
Collectors used to drive the mint crazy. Now the mint drives collectors crazy. Cool letter.
Well, the government managed to keep it a well-guarded secret until you posted this letter.
Now everyone is going to realize that there are two types of standing liberty quarters.
And before you know it they will all be gone from circulation!
My Adolph A. Weinman signature
Great find. How can I put this delicately - given the demographic of coin collectors and all - but wouldn't collectors have more interest in the old design?
Neat !!!
Notice there is no specific date for starting to use the new dies, and no instruction to destroy the only type. Might there have been some hybrids made by accident?
Also interesting - to me - is that this letter is typed.... different from the handwritten letters/records you usually post.... so, this would indicate the transition to mechanical communications (typewriters)... I need to check if this is close to the patent date for typewriting machines. Cheers, RickO
What "recent act of Congress" is he referring to?
The instruction to use the new dies to the exclusion of all other twenty-five cent dies should have made any muling of the new dies with the old dies verboten. Had any occured anyways, I think they would have been noticed by now.
The suggestion that mentioning the new design would have caused a heavy demand for the NEW coins was laughable. They were trying to avoid hoarding of the original design, as happened with 1883 "No CENTS" nickels and 1909 V.D.B. cents.
Hoard them all ... they are going to be rare!
While trying to find V.D.B. initials legislation, which I have never found, I found this.
Taken at face value....it almost seems like adding the chain mail was FORBIDDEN by this legislation!!
Yet, somehow, (and for some reason), it happened.....
Manuscript (handwritten) files were prohibited at Treasury after November 1897. Carbon copies and presscopies only were standard.
Indeed.
And many thanks, Rosco, for the citation. I had never heard of this law.
RE: "While trying to find V.D.B. initials legislation..."
There is none. The decision was made administratively by the Secretary of Treasury.
TommyType ....Perfect opportunity for the groups outraged by the breast exposure to have their way, behind
the scenes after the legislation passed ?
Your welcome CaptHenway....it is amazing reading some of the Library of Congress documents.
Thank you RogerB,.
Yeah....If you watch the government for any time at all, you learn that "interpreting" legislation is an art, used by forces on both sides to get what they want.
"It's still a lady standing with a shield! We didn't change the "devices"! "
Of course, many will say they've never found evidence of outrage in any contemporary news or documents. But it probably only took the quiet intervention of one person in the right position....
This calls for a recall of all Type 2 SLQ's and reissuing them with the correct obverse. Write your congressman!
(At least they got the 2016 version right.)
My Adolph A. Weinman signature
The bare breast is not mentioned in contemporary documents or in a negative way. The "massive opposition" so greatly promoted is completely false. For a factual picture of events read the section in Renaissance of American Coinage 1916-1921.
There are equivalent or more revealing images all over government buildings in state capitals as well as Federal buildings.
If there is evidence for the comment, "But it probably only took the quiet intervention of one person in the right position...." please present it so all can learn.
That was just speculation. Nothing more.
Bottom line, the design was changed. Presumably, someone had a reason for it. We just don't know what the reason was, even after all these years of honest interest by numismatists. It obviously didn't come directly out of the legislation passed, (as shown above).
But whether for "puritan reasons", or an alternate opinion of "artistic merit", or whatever....the change got made, and got rolled into the changes that WERE part of the legislation.
Interesting article on the so called "opposition" of the 1916 SLQ (bare breast).
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/scandalous-quarter-protest-wasnt-180962088/
"You Suck Award" - February, 2015
Discoverer of 1919 Mercury Dime DDO - FS-101
Good article.
Is there really any reason that anything except the low mintage is to blame for the price of the 1916 quarter? The article seems to imply that us collectors want one for more lurid reasons....
Here is a somewhat related article from the February, 1914 issue of "The Numismatist." It's been long known the the modifications on the Variety Two were made because of concerns that the denomination would wear away but the same concerns about the date is new to me.
RE: "We just don't know what the reason was, even after all these years of honest interest by numismatists."
Actually, we now know why the changes were made and those involved in the changes. Please read the book that was recommended. The answer is in there.
It's painful to see such abjectly poor research and writing in any publication - especially one from the Smithsonian. It is utter nonsense.
Some stories are so "obviously" true it is hard to disprove them. Would be interesting to know who was the first to put this nonsense into print.
A personal opinion is that the lies have the "smell" of Max Mehl. However, after WW-II Walter Breen was the prophet of falsehood. The Numismatist in the 1990s and about a decade later published the same pack of lies and embellished lies. What is amazing is that no one seemed to bother to check records of 1916-1917.
If you read Breen's early work in the Coin Collectors Journal, you get the feeling he was like a kid in a candy store at the National Archives. It was a combination of genius and this huge unexplored archive. No one understood the scope of it - in some ways we are still trying to get our arms around it even today - or the need to work through the collection systematically. Then too, Breen was funded by Raymond and had to produce content.
I can't argue with the "prophet of falsehood" description - the 1960s were not a good influence on Breen. A pity he did not have more discipline, but that's what makes people unique.
Yet, despite Breen's "academic training" he almost never referenced sources in published materials. The few drafts I've seen are likewise missing critical citations throughout. How did he successfully complete a BA - or any course work for that matter - especially at Johns Hopkins University? Or...an MA from Univ Cal, Berkeley? (An MA in Sociomusicology would have required a large amount of research into prior art. Without citation knowledge and discipline his graduate thesis would have failed.)
In the archives, I've come across several markers left by Don Taxay, but only one for Breen and one for Dorothy Paschal. Curiously, the lone Breen place marker was in the same box containing considerable correspondence between Augusta Saint-Gaudens' lawyer and the Mint Director - none of which appears or is ever referenced in Breen's published writings.
I doubt there can ever be a definitive answer to who was responsible for creating the "obscenity" lie about the 1916-17 quarter. But it is very irritating to see a respected publication perpetuate falsehood through inept basic research.