Preliminary idea for 1853 silver coin design change
RogerB
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In a letter dated February 22, 1853 mint director George N. Eckert made these comments about changes to the silver subsidiary coins:
“… [I] point out such minor and easily executed changes in the present dies as will suffice to discriminate the new coins, satisfactorily, from the old.
“One suggestion which has been made impresses me favorably; it is to make a change in the reverse of the half- and quarter dollar assimilating them to the dime and half-dime; that is introducing a wreath, with the name of the coin enclosed. It would be well, if this change were made, also to introduce a new design of wreath in the dime and half dime. Such alterations in connection with arrows at the dates, as you had formerly proposed, might suffice. It is probable that we have already punches that would suffice for such borders, or that we could procure such already made, so that the delay in making the alterations need not be very great.”
Thus far, nothing states if the arrows were added to extant dies or hubs.
[RG104 E-1 Box 32 Feb 1853]
Comments
Thanks. Interesting use of resources they already had on hand to save time and money. I enjoy your research.
It would have been nice if they kept all the old dies/hubs in a museum and could be researched much like the communications have been kept. I understand why they were not kept, just some thoughts I have when reading these old letters. Cheers, RickO
It appears that routine notebooks and journals were considered ephemeral and discarded almost at-will. There were also occasional memos about getting rid of unneeded documents....50-year old die lists would seem to qualify.
Interesting !!!
You are a coin historian! Thank you for sharing