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This might be the ultimate pocket piece
steelielee
Posts: 1,177 ✭✭✭
Took a road trip to Charleston, SC over the week-end. Wife wanted to shop, I wanted to go see the Hunley. The Hunley is a Civil war era confederate submarine that is acknowledged to be the first sub to actually sink a ship. Unfortunately, shortly after sinking the Feds ship, the Hunley also sank off Charleston harbor losing the entire 8 man crew.
For those of you who might not be familiar with the Hunley, here's a link to a very interesting bit of our history. Of course, from a coin collector's point of view, the real attraction in the Hunley exhibit is the captains gold coin, found on the sub 130 some odd years later.
Hunley Site
The exhibit itself is located in a working labratory buried deep in the N. Charleston shipyard. The exhibit was displayed in two rooms. The first room had great exhibits of a replica sub, facial reconstruction of the crew, pictures of the xrays taken of the interior of the sub prior to the scientists excavating it, a number of artifacts recovered from the sub&crew and a great deal more.
The second room had the sub itself on display. The sub is still in the harness/cradle used to lift it off the ocean floor. It sits submerged in a 90K tank of chemicals that are conserving the the metals and components of the sub. According to our tour guide, a very knowledgeble gentleman and a vet of WWII and Korea, the conservation effort will be complete in about another 7-8 years. At that point. the sub will be displayed in a new building being built at the shipyard and the display will be open air or not in a tank of liquid.
The real gem in the 2nd room's display is the $20 gold liberty that was carried by the sub's commander, Lt George Dixon. As the story goes, He was wounded at Shiloh in 1862 when a musket ball hit him in the upper leg. The ball actually impacted the coin Dixon carried in his pocket and, as Dixon inscribed on the coin, saved his life. The coin is on display and you can get a very good look at it ( maybe within 6 inches). Unfortunately, the lab does not allow any pictures of anything in the 2nd room....no sub pictures, no coin pictures..too bad. The story also goes that Dixon had a habit of running his fingers over the coin in the impact spot. When the guide told me that story, I had to go back in to see what the wear pattern is on the coin. I didn't see any wear at all in the impact spot. Could be that piece of the story is legend. The coin is in remakable condition, considering it was shot at then on the ocean floor for 137 years.
So off to the gift shop....they sell replicas of the coin amongst all kinds of typical gift shop stuff. The replica is actually pretty good. So it will be my new pocket piece...if it was good to Dixon, and evidently it was, I hope it'll be good to me!!
If you get a chance to visit Charleston, this exhibit is well worth a few hours to visit. It's located in the Warren Lasch Conservation Center in N. Charleston.
My new pocket piece:
Dixons gold obverse
Dixon gold reverse
For those of you who might not be familiar with the Hunley, here's a link to a very interesting bit of our history. Of course, from a coin collector's point of view, the real attraction in the Hunley exhibit is the captains gold coin, found on the sub 130 some odd years later.
Hunley Site
The exhibit itself is located in a working labratory buried deep in the N. Charleston shipyard. The exhibit was displayed in two rooms. The first room had great exhibits of a replica sub, facial reconstruction of the crew, pictures of the xrays taken of the interior of the sub prior to the scientists excavating it, a number of artifacts recovered from the sub&crew and a great deal more.
The second room had the sub itself on display. The sub is still in the harness/cradle used to lift it off the ocean floor. It sits submerged in a 90K tank of chemicals that are conserving the the metals and components of the sub. According to our tour guide, a very knowledgeble gentleman and a vet of WWII and Korea, the conservation effort will be complete in about another 7-8 years. At that point. the sub will be displayed in a new building being built at the shipyard and the display will be open air or not in a tank of liquid.
The real gem in the 2nd room's display is the $20 gold liberty that was carried by the sub's commander, Lt George Dixon. As the story goes, He was wounded at Shiloh in 1862 when a musket ball hit him in the upper leg. The ball actually impacted the coin Dixon carried in his pocket and, as Dixon inscribed on the coin, saved his life. The coin is on display and you can get a very good look at it ( maybe within 6 inches). Unfortunately, the lab does not allow any pictures of anything in the 2nd room....no sub pictures, no coin pictures..too bad. The story also goes that Dixon had a habit of running his fingers over the coin in the impact spot. When the guide told me that story, I had to go back in to see what the wear pattern is on the coin. I didn't see any wear at all in the impact spot. Could be that piece of the story is legend. The coin is in remakable condition, considering it was shot at then on the ocean floor for 137 years.
So off to the gift shop....they sell replicas of the coin amongst all kinds of typical gift shop stuff. The replica is actually pretty good. So it will be my new pocket piece...if it was good to Dixon, and evidently it was, I hope it'll be good to me!!
If you get a chance to visit Charleston, this exhibit is well worth a few hours to visit. It's located in the Warren Lasch Conservation Center in N. Charleston.
My new pocket piece:
Dixons gold obverse
Dixon gold reverse
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Many successful BST transactions with dozens of board members, references on request.
Many successful BST transactions with dozens of board members, references on request.
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Tom, formerly in Albuquerque, NM.
my early American coins & currency: -- http://yankeedoodlecoins.com/
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Tom Pilitowski
US Rare Coin Investments
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The name is LEE!
<< <i>Here is a thought..................whick would stop a bullet better....................1 oz. of gold or platinum?? >>
Likely gold, because it would absorb the projectile better being that it has softer properties. Platinum is much denser and harder than gold and would more likely deflect a projectile and more injury could result. Civil War era minie balls were rather slowish by comparison to modern cased rounds like those fired today. One, they were not overly accurate, two they were rather clumsy. But at closer ranges they could inflict a lot of damage because of their sheer size and the fact that if you were wounded by one, your chances of recovery in the pre-antibiotics age was minimal.
Here is a little known fact though about the Civil War, more soldiers actually died from diseases than from battle wounds. Sanitation then was miserable, and made all the worse by putting a bunch of people together in regiments etc.
<< <i>Musta left a helluva welt on his leg?
Actually, the guide talked about the injuries, or lack of, that the forensic pathologists found on the remains. They found a total of 218 bones from 8 crew members. They could tell, from the position the remains were found, which were the captains. He was in the forward conning tower. They found that the femur showed that he had sustained a serious leg wound. They found no other injuries on any other bones.
It also kept the mystery going as to what happened to the crew&sub and how the crew died. The strongest theory is that they simply ran out of oxygen due to staying submerged too long while attemting to get away from the other Yankee ships. They did say that the main conning tower was slighly open when the ship was found.
Many successful BST transactions with dozens of board members, references on request.
Here is another little known fact. The horror of the Confederate prison camps like Andersonville and Marietta were caused by the Union. Early in the War, prisioners were exchanged or paroled. The Union figured that if each side kept the prisioners, it would cause a greater hatdship to the South rather than the North. The last I knew historians were still debating whether starving the North's prisioners was an atrocity or if the South was trying as hard as it could to feed them. I could understand the temptation to feed your own people first.
<< <i><<Here is a little known fact though about the Civil War, more soldiers actually died from diseases than from battle wounds. Sanitation then was miserable, and made all the worse by putting a bunch of people together in regiments etc.>>
Here is another little known fact. The horror of the Confederate prison camps like Andersonville and Marietta were caused by the Union. Early in the War, prisioners were exchanged or paroled. The Union figured that if each side kept the prisioners, it would cause a greater hatdship to the South rather than the North. The last I knew historians were still debating whether starving the North's prisioners was an atrocity or if the South was trying as hard as it could to feed them. I could understand the temptation to feed your own people first. >>
Having ancestors on both sides of the conflict, I have studied it in depth. I have my own conclusions, southern POW's were not afforded much better treatment than the Union prisoners in southern prisons, mostly later in the war. One of my ancestors was captured by CSA forces in Missouri in 1861, and spent sometime in a POW camp until he was exchanged in a swap. Early in the war, prisoners from both sides were reasonably treated and usually exchanged in swaps. It was even possible for civilians to get passes and cross lines. It was the downturn of fortune for the Union that eliminated the more tolerant policies by mid war. But all those temporary reversals early in 1863 were wiped out by Gettysburg and Vicksburg - but there was no back tracking on policy.
Late in the war, southern civilians were not afforded much better comforts than Union prisoners in southern POW camps. Scorched earth policies pretty much wiped out agriculture in Virginia, Georgia, the Carolinas etc. Of course the politicians were all well fed, while the civilians and the armies all starved.
I learned that from "Dr. Stangelove"
<< <i>The real question is would PCGS grade and holder the coin since it is damaged and "tooled".
Genuine holder only except it wouldn't fit in any TPG holder unless the bend is straightened out.
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire