Warning! The next questionable term will be - wire edge/wire rim.
RogerB
Posts: 8,852 ✭✭✭✭✭
This is an oldie and has a long history of confusion and misinformation. So start your search engines!
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I love this kind of semantic challenge. I suspect the final outcome will come right down to the wire.
FWIW, a search of this site's archives reveals that the term wire edge was used 3 years prior to the first use of the term wire rim. (Ambro51 posted in 2010 referencing a "wire edge." Perry Hall posted in 2013 describing a coin with a "wire rim.")
Looking back even further, I see that Max Mehl in his 1949 auction catalogue description of my 1850 Double Eagle "Proof" (lot 719) used the term "wire edge." Specifically he wrote, "There are traces of what seems to have been a wire edge."
https://forums.collectors.com/discussion/993882/1850-proof-double-eagle-inquiry/p1
[ ..... the auction description for lot 719 from the 1949 sale: https://archive.org/stream/drcharleswgreenc1949mehl#page/42/mode/1up]
The parts pointed to surely qualify.
Keeper of the VAM Catalog • Professional Coin Imaging • Prime Number Set • World Coins in Early America • British Trade Dollars • Variety Attribution
And here is a reference to the other known "Proof" 1850 Double Eagle located in the Bibliotheque National Collection of the Paris museum to which the term, "wire rim" is used:
From the R. Tettenhorst Files, this description is contained therein of their 1850 Double Eagle "Proof" based upon a recorded personal viewing chronicled in the below linked files:
"From the Z 2128 collection, there is ..... The 1850 $20 gold piece is clearly a proof, with an extremely strong strike; a small amount of wire rim on the reverse, but a few minor spots of rub."
https://archive.org/stream/bibliothequenationalecollection1995tettcorr#page/n39/mode/2up
Not sure of the history or confusion, but I always regarded it as just a description of an error in the use of the collar, and not a a design element.
We have hundreds of thousands of words and phrases in the english language and we get hung up on a few limited ones in discussing minor technical descriptions?
I would rely on original phrases and descriptions way before those that developed over the last 50 or so years as marketing promotions.
Many collectors don't even know the difference between a normal rim and a normal edge, so don't expect them to understand differences in rims.
And for the record, the correct term is, of course, "Wire Rim."
Hint: These two terms cannot be blamed on Walter Breen. They pre-date both his conception (i.e., inception) and natal dates; presuming Breen was not a product of parthenogenesis).