Longacre Rant
RKKay
Posts: 3,017 ✭✭✭
Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed:
Letter from JB Longacre to unknown recipient (presumably JR Snowden) dated 9-12-57:
Dear Sir
In the hopes that you will appreciate the intention of this communication, I ask that you will receive it not so much as official in character, as friendly and confidential: I am led to make it from the knowledge I have incidentally of outside movements in various quarters in respect to the policy and operations of the Mint and more especially in respect to the service with which I am charged.
There is much misapprehension in respect to the labour and skill required in the ordinary routine of operations in the Engravers department: This in connection with a degree of malicious, jealous or unfriendly misrepresentation: has sometimes annoyed me but less than it has those beside myself employed in the department –It is represented and no doubt supposed by many that the work in the Engravers department can be done but I any die sinker of tolerable cleverness and besides that there is very little to do. As the [] preacher said when he found himself unable to proceed, addressing his audience: “if there any among you that think it is such an easy thing to preach I would just like you to come up here and try.” I would like sometimes, to be able to say the same thing to these self conceited meddlers with the duties pertaining to be Engraver of the Mint.
Let any of them undertake once to make a die and adapt it to the working of the coining press, so as to produce a coin that will challenge public favor: and I know less than I think I do, of the capabilities of men, if they will not be in nine cases out of ten give it up in despair --
Longacre, James B. “Letter to Unknown Recipient, September 12, 1857.” James B. Longacre Papers, The Library Company of Philadelphia.
Letter from JB Longacre to unknown recipient (presumably JR Snowden) dated 9-12-57:
Dear Sir
In the hopes that you will appreciate the intention of this communication, I ask that you will receive it not so much as official in character, as friendly and confidential: I am led to make it from the knowledge I have incidentally of outside movements in various quarters in respect to the policy and operations of the Mint and more especially in respect to the service with which I am charged.
There is much misapprehension in respect to the labour and skill required in the ordinary routine of operations in the Engravers department: This in connection with a degree of malicious, jealous or unfriendly misrepresentation: has sometimes annoyed me but less than it has those beside myself employed in the department –It is represented and no doubt supposed by many that the work in the Engravers department can be done but I any die sinker of tolerable cleverness and besides that there is very little to do. As the [] preacher said when he found himself unable to proceed, addressing his audience: “if there any among you that think it is such an easy thing to preach I would just like you to come up here and try.” I would like sometimes, to be able to say the same thing to these self conceited meddlers with the duties pertaining to be Engraver of the Mint.
Let any of them undertake once to make a die and adapt it to the working of the coining press, so as to produce a coin that will challenge public favor: and I know less than I think I do, of the capabilities of men, if they will not be in nine cases out of ten give it up in despair --
Longacre, James B. “Letter to Unknown Recipient, September 12, 1857.” James B. Longacre Papers, The Library Company of Philadelphia.
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Comments
Specializing in 1854 and 1855 large FE patterns
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I had to read it three times, and I'm still not sure what the heck he's tying to elicit/convey to the Unknown Recipient.
Was this the 1857 version of a rant?
To me, it sounds more like a letter to someone unfamiliar with the expertise involved in developing designs for coinage. I doubt it was addressed to Snowden. I could have been addressed to a newspaper editor/writer who complained about the Flying Eagle Cent, calling it the eagle a wet washcloth, for example.
I trembled before opening this thread. Thank cat this wasn't anything negative about the man in the velvet smoking jacket
An authorized PCGS dealer, and a contributor to the Red Book.
older, then he was letting on.
Camelot
Thanks for posting this neat find from 1857. It seems that JBL was under the gun for quite a lengthy time.
Feel free to post anything else that you found on your Philly research trip.
Specializing in 1854 and 1855 large FE patterns
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<< <i>I opened this thread thinking it would be discussing topics such as speaking in the third person, asking a million questions, working for The Man, the IRS code, the bucolic country estate, the velvet non-smoking smoking jacket, the glass of cognac and the overstuffed chair. How wrong I was!
You weren't alone.
Jade Rare Coin eBay Listings
<< <i>
<< <i>I opened this thread thinking it would be discussing topics such as speaking in the third person, asking a million questions, working for The Man, the IRS code, the bucolic country estate, the velvet non-smoking smoking jacket, the glass of cognac and the overstuffed chair. How wrong I was!
You weren't alone. >>
Ditto.
Didn't wanna get me no trade
Never want to be like papa
Working for the boss every night and day
--"Happy", by the Rolling Stones (1972)
Coin's for sale/trade.
Tom Pilitowski
US Rare Coin Investments
800-624-1870
Over the past 8 years he had done three seperate gold dollars in addition to many many other projects.
Just those gold dollar dies alone, OMG we look at the coin the size of a dinnerplate here on the monitor, he was working with an object the size of a shirt button!!
<< <i>Over the past 8 years he had done three seperate gold dollars in addition to many many other projects.
Just those gold dollar dies alone, OMG we look at the coin the size of a dinnerplate here on the monitor, he was working with an object the size of a shirt button!! >>
Agree 100%
Specializing in 1854 and 1855 large FE patterns
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Camelot
Keeper of the VAM Catalog • Professional Coin Imaging • Prime Number Set • World Coins in Early America • British Trade Dollars • Variety Attribution
I have began to hate humanity because if all the egotistical jerks and smart asses and people who just want to put others down because it makes them feel better if they think others approve of their comments and actions. Adults need to grow-up and if they don't have something positive to say when someone is trying to do good, then they need to not say anything. If a person is trying to do good then why try to make them look bad or make jokes about them. It's immature and show your level of intelligence as below average. Thanks for posting this letter, because it proves men have not improved in manner for over a hundred years. Sad.
<< <i>As an artist, he was by nature easily irritated and a poor taker of criticism. I know the type
Over the past 8 years he had done three seperate gold dollars in addition to many many other projects.
Just those gold dollar dies alone, OMG we look at the coin the size of a dinnerplate here on the monitor, he was working with an object the size of a shirt button!! >>
Didn't they sculpt a plaster model the size of a dinner plate and then a reducing machine transfered the model onto a steel die?
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
<< <i>Now that's a frothy frenzy. >>
Just remember that it's phrases such as these which keep me coming back here.
``https://ebay.us/m/KxolR5
<< <i>
<< <i>As an artist, he was by nature easily irritated and a poor taker of criticism. I know the type
Over the past 8 years he had done three seperate gold dollars in addition to many many other projects.
Just those gold dollar dies alone, OMG we look at the coin the size of a dinnerplate here on the monitor, he was working with an object the size of a shirt button!! >>
Didn't they sculpt a plaster model the size of a dinner plate and then a reducing machine transfered the model onto a steel die? >>
I used to own Longacre's original wax models for the $3 gold piece. These were used just to create device punches. He used two mint medal planchets (approx. 5 inch in diameter--Rick Snow, can you give the exact diameter?) and built up the head on one and the wreath on the other. No lettering at all.
Presumably he would have made a plaster negative of each, cast iron against the plaster to get a positive image, and used the iron casting on the reducing machine available at the time. This would give him punches sized to that on the coin.
Sink a head punch into a master die, add border lettering and LIBERTY on the headband and a border. Touch up as needed. Harden and use to raise up a working hub. Touch up as needed. Use to make working dies.
Repeat for reverse, but leave the date off to be added by hand on the working dies. Add dates and mint marks as necessary.
TD
"Everything is on its way to somewhere. Everything." - George Malley, Phenomenon
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