Goodbye Spaghetti Hair? WARNING: An OLY semi-rant.
oly
Coin Meet on 5 June in Rockville, Indiana. The piece was a 2010-D and
the collector who gave it to me obtained it at the distribution/
inaugural ceremony for the new coin which I seem to think was held in
Little Rock some weeks back.
What interested me the most was that the Bust of Washington on the
obverse seems to have been re-sculpted a bit. The hair on
Washington's head had more of a "sculpted" effect and the "spaghetti
lines" representing hair that had crept into the bust/head in the last
twenty or thirty years were all gone. Washington's neck was also
improved in a way that seems slightly more "sculpted". The new effect
was pleasing, if real. I hesitate on this point, because the coin
given to me might have been slightly understruck or lightly struck. I
need another specimen or two for comparison.
The elongated coin meet was very pleasant, there were twenty-five to
thirty attendees. Many collectors swapping coins on a one-for-one and
maybe a grand total of $150 or $200 in cash changed hands between all
participants. A career Army guy who spent the entire year of 2007 in
Iraq gave me a nice specimen of the only elongated coin ever made in
that country, he stated a total of 130 pieces were "rolled" by hand
with primitive equipment on the bumper of an armored vehicle. There
were NO POS dealers flying into the Rockville International Airport
for a two or three hour sweep of the bourse floor. No head-case
dealers who were not actually in attendance having their names paged
over the speaker system at our meeting. Happily, I think only three
of the attendees could have told you what a third-party grading
service is. Actually, the meeting was held in a Methodist church
meeting hall -it had good air conditioning and above average kitchen
facilities. Our hosts Brad Ream and Kay Harpole served up a nice taco
dinner, gratis. Rockville, the prototypical "Hoosier" town, has a
nice old-fashioned dime store and most attendees went over there at
some point during the course of the day. I myself bought a large
brown hook rug, a "Moo-box" AND a gallon of refill for my bingo
markers.
I had not seen it until yesterday, but there was a short article in
the February 2010 issue of National Geographic Magazine on "Uncommon
Cents", a brief history of elongated coins. The article was
illustrated with nine elongated coins from 1893 to date. Coin number
nine was a coin designed and rolled by yours truly about four years
ago. I believe that I owe Ray Dillard some hearty thanks for that
"hat-tip".
oly
Mr. Jaggers
Well, mon vieux, you sent me a-scurrying to that NG article! Sometimes I
don't read my mags as thoroughly as I should, and I had missed that article.
Ya done good, but they should have given you and the other artists credit.
In other news, I remember that the advance pub on the new quarter series
included a notice that Washington had been yet again re-designed to get rid
of that ghastly spaghetti hair. I just got my HS quarters from a dealer
last week, and GW's "do" is much more dignified. Easy on the Jarvis, hold
the Brylcreem.
James the Sleek-Headed and Such As Sleep o' Nights
oly
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My dad used Vitalis and Brylcreem and still has, at age 80, a head of
very full - if very white - hair.
I did not use such products and probably over-did it with the portable
hand hair dryer too. You have seen (or cannot see) the result.
If the improvement in the hair is indeed intentional, the Mint's
engraving department did a very very nice job. The coin looks more
like it did in the early 1960s.
I would like to have one of the Hindenburg elongated cents shown in
that article. Wonderfully well-done.
Of course, I would like to have an original "Pike", but then, sinners
in hell want ice water too.
oly