Shitstorm Saturday

I generally copy an old post to start the new one. With five eagle pictures in my rotation, I grabbed my last post from October.

The election hadn’t even happened yet. What a world of difference in five weeks. Still waiting for the big boom of something happening in POTUS’s favor in terms of the electoral vote count!

WordPress Sucks.

But large parts of the suckage have been left behind. Bwahahaha!

Meanwhile, it’s appropriate that the eagle I first used on a daily thread, all those years ago…is the eagle I am using today, the first Daily to be written after the move, and to be a natural born citizen of the new Q tree. It just happened that way; this eagle was “due” to be used this time in my rotation.

“But there are no coincidences.” Yes, there are. One chance in five. That does happen about 20% of the time.

A Reminder Of Today’s Big Issue.

Our movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt political establishment with a new government controlled by you, the American People...Our campaign represents a true existential threat, like they’ve never seen before.

Then-Candidate Donald J. Trump

Needs to happen, soon.

Lawyer Appeasement Section

OK now for the fine print.

Please note that our menu has changed, please listen to all of the options.

This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Political correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines,  here, with an addendum on 20191110.

We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.

And remember Wheatie’s Rules:

1. No food fights
2. No running with scissors.
3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.
4. The first rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government take your guns.
5. The gun is always loaded.
5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty.
6. Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy.
7. Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire.
8. Be sure of your target and what is behind it.
9. Social Justice Warriors, ANTIFA pukes, BLM hypocrites, and other assorted varieties of Marxists can go copulate with themselves, or if insufficiently limber, may substitute a rusty wire brush suitable for cleaning the bore of a twelve or ten gauge.

(Hmm a few extras seem to have crept in.)

Coin of The Day

The Gobrecht Dollar

I’d love to own one of these. They’re about the price of a new car, so it’s not completely outside the realm of possibility…as long as I am happy driving beaters.

The first requirement is that I be able to embed pictures, and that didn’t work too well during testing a few days ago. Let’s give one a whirl…

https://www.usacoinbook.com/us-coins/600/gobrecht-silver-dollar.jpg

OK, THAT didn’t work…so I’ll try something a bit different.

Hmm, I can’t add something to the media library by giving the URL, so…

Now that’s the ticket; I have download the file onto my computer then upload it into media. Cumbersome (especially when my bandwidth is under restriction like it is today) but I can make it work. And our Fearless Canid Host says our media bucket is bottomless, so here it is.

(And WOW, I can actually center the doggone thing! In the past it only pretended to let you center it.)

OK, this is the 1836 Gobrecht dollar. I have this nagging suspicion I’ve talked about this one before, so if I have you can certainly skip this.

The backstory is that an artist by the name of Christian Gobrecht had been trying to get hired by the mint for many years. There were even people in the mint itself who wanted him. The workload was simply too much for one engraver, especially since the US was starting to open branch mints in New Orleans, Charlotte NC, and Dahlonega GA. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, in 1835 the current engraver, William Kneass, suffered a debilitating stroke. The mint needed another engraver, Right Effing Now. The problem was there was one “Engraver” position and a bunch of “Assistant Engravers.” Since Gobrecht was a much more accomplished artist than Kneass, giving him an “Assistant Engraver” position would be an injustice…so he was made “Second Engraver.”

Meanwhile, the mint director (who was retiring) was starting to talk about issuing silver dollars once again. None had been issued since 1804 (using 1803-dated dies), with the “Draped Bust” design. The current silver coin design was the “Capped Bust” design, but they decided to inaugurate a totally new design.

It fell to Christian Gobrecht to create the “Liberty Seated” design, on a dollar coin (it would soon be “rolled out” to the other four silver denominations). For the reverse, he created a flying eagle, one which was climbing upward to the left. He must be flying at night, because there are stars, one for every state in the union at the time. This was a bit of a break with tradition; the usual practice since the late 1790s had been to use exactly thirteen stars. (Before that, they had one star per state which got up to sixteen stars, crammed in around Liberty’s portrait on the Draped Bust coins through about 1797.)

Now it gets a bit tricky. You’ll notice that with the reverse oriented as in the picture, the pellets separating ONE DOLLAR from UNITED STATES OF AMERICA are lined up on the same horizontal line. This to me is an indication that the eagle is supposed to be climbing up and to the left; the words are lined up properly if he is.

Another thing to remember is that US coins, without fail, are intended to be flipped over top to bottom, about a horizontal axis, not left-to-right. So, looking at one of today’s dimes, the top of Never-To-Be-Sufficiently-Damned Roosevelt’s head is opposite of the bottom of the torch, the truncation of his neck is opposite of the top of the torch. This is called coin turn.

Medals, on the other hand, which often hang from a ribbon, have the top of the obverse and reverse near the ribbon, so they are properly flipped over left-to-right, about a vertical axis. Because medals are done this way, it’s called medal turn.

[Note: Many older coins don’t seem to quite be this way. The dies would often slip in the presses and rotate, sometimes as much as 180 degrees out of whack, unintentionally producing a coin with medal turn. Some people who sell these coins online will rotate the reverse image on their website accordingly, so if you see a picture of a coin where the reverse is “upside down” it’s probably the dealer showing you that the reverse is medal turn. Which ironically really has the top of each side pointing in the same direction in reality.]

[Another Note: Southern and Eastern European countries tend to use medal turn on their coins as well. And when the decision was made as to which way to do the Euro coins, it went up to a vote of the member states, and the southern and eastern European countries outnumbered places like France and Germany. So today’s Euro coins use medal turn. And jeez that common obverse is something only a globalist bureaucrat could love, but at least the member states can put something distinctive on the other side. The ugliest damn coin out there is the 20 eurocent with its funky edge and that faux “gold”-ish color that turns pukey beige as it ages. However, it fulfills the same role in their monetary system as the quarter does in ours, so they’re unavoidable.]

Returning to the Gobrecht dollar, the mint ran off about a thousand or fifteen hundred of them. They have no reeding on the edge (smooth) and with no adornment whatsoever on the obverse, like the stars people were used to to, it looked a lot like a medal. But it had coin die alignment!

Then, for some reason someone at the mint started mucking with the die alignment. So today, when talking about these coins the “normal” coin-turn die alignment is called Alignment I. There are specimens with medal turn as well, and those are known as Alignment II.

But that’s not all. Someone decided they liked the eagle flying horizontally. So there are also Alignment III (almost but not quite coin turn, eagle flying horizontally to the left) and Alignment IV (almost but not quite medal turn, eagle flying horizontally to the left).

There has been a lot of arguing over when these bastardized alignments were created. And I mean a lot of arguing. One side maintains they were all produced in later years (but with the 1836 dies) and the other maintains they were produced as part of the original production run. As it turns out my favorite reference holds to the “later restrikes” theory.

There’s also a version of the coin that has another difference. If you look at the very base of the Liberty Seated design, just above the date, you will see a hint of very small lettering. It reads “C. Gobrecht F.,” which is short for “Christian Gobrecht Fecit,” which is Latin for “Christian Gobrecht Did This.” For some reason there are samples of this coin where that lettering, rather than being sunken into the base, is in raised lettering below the base. These were apparently made in 1859 even though they are dated 1836.

Apparently more of these were made in 1837 and (probably) melted down.

In 1838, the stars were removed from the reverse, and put on the obverse. A number of these were made but they are considered patterns. They exist in Alignments III and IV. But some examples also exist with stars still on the reverse, those are apparently all Alignment III. Most are plain (smooth) edge, but some have the reeding.

Finally in 1839 there was another small production run, similar to the 1838s but with a reeded edge. They all appear to have been in Alignment II, which is contrary to the mint’s usual practice, and some argue that these are all later restrikes because of that.

See, it’s a complex mess…I left about three quarters out of it.

But it seems like any coin dated 1836 with Alignment I is original–provided the reverse die shows no sign of a crack! The debate is over whether the ones with Alignment II or IV are also from that original production run. They are all struck to the 416 grain standard of 1836, not the slightly lighter 412.5 grain silver dollar standard of 1837-1935. (Silver coins became lighter because less copper had been added, the silver content remained the same. The 416 grain silver dollars were 1485/1664ths fine, the 412.5 grain dollars were .900 fine. Unlike the other denominations, the silver dollar kept this new weight until we stopped making silver dollars.)

And yes, I mentioned a die crack on the reverse. If that is present, the coin was in fact made much later (and will probably be of the lighter weight).

I’d love to own an original 1836 Gobrecht dollar with the proper die alignment, but they typically run about $15K even for circulated examples, hit about $25K in MS-62, and go up sharply once you get past that grade (the numbers run on a scale of 1-70, 60 and above are “MS” for “Mint State,” 58 and below are circulated coins [and not every number below 60 is used]).

Standard disclaimer: I never show pictures of my coins, and in many cases don’t own anything remotely resembling the coins in these pictures. [This would be one of those cases.] Any prospective thieves should know I also collect other heavy metals–anything with a heavier nucleus would be unstable–and keep those a lot closer to me than the coins.

Obligatory PSAs/Reminders

Just one more thing, my standard Public Service Announcements. We don’t want to forget any of these!!!

How not to get your ass kicked by the police. Chris Rock in 2007

Granted an “ass kicking” isn’t the same as being shot, but both can result from the same stupid act. You may ultimately beat the rap, but you aren’t going to avoid the ride.

Remember Hong Kong!!! And remember the tens of millions who died under the “Great Helmsman” Chairman Mao.

中国是个混蛋 !!!
Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!!
China is asshoe !!!

For my money the Great Helmsman is Hikaru Sulu (even if the actor is a dingbat).