The “Lost Works” of Francis Leroy Henning
JCH22
Posts: 394 ✭✭✭✭
Did not know the extent of Henning’s work. Thought he devoted his special talents only to nickels! He did seem to take great pride in his work!
Anyone do a little NJ river diving---have a Henning Half? 😊
6
Comments
So it looks like we can know the mintage of nickels - 100,000. I would guess that means around 3,000 still exist.
Get your scuba gear out!
Interesting.
I had heard decades ago that he had purchased pre-made blanks from a company that sold products made of nickel and copper-nickel, and that the Secret Service had tracked him down through them.
When you punch your own blanks out of sheet stock, like a mint does, you need a punch press that leaves you a lot of webbing, and if you throw that away your metal costs skyrocket. That is why mints used to have other specialized equipment to chop up the webbing, melt it down and cast new ingots, and rollers to make the ingots the correct thickness to go through the punch press again. Horribly expensive unless you are working many tons of metal to get the benefits of the "economies of scale," or whatever the phrase is, as a real mint does.
I am not saying that the Chief of the Secret Service was lying in his testimony, but I am suggesting that he had been misinformed by the people who prepared him for his testimony.