August 15th. 2022.   

August

·        This is a garden tea party

Monday 2nd September.

Monday 7th October.

 

Meetings are held at the Abbey Baptist Church, Abbey Square, commencing at 7.00 p.m.

 

July Meeting

We began the meeting with apologies from Peter, Tony and Paul.

Next was the sad news that Doug Dean, a long time member of Reading coin club had died. His latest contribution to the club was to write an article for us in February last year, which is still available on the website. He also joined in the Zoom sessions during Covid. He will be greatly missed by the club and our condolences go to his family. (His funeral was subsequently held in Reading and in line with his lifelong interest in Scottish Dancing we had a piper to usher him in and out. A very moving ceremony.)

 

We were very fortunate to be able to welcome back our past chairman Mick Martin to give us a talk on ‘Varieties in Milled coinage - Where to draw the line’.

Mick began by explaining that he had always been interested in varieties but that all of a sudden it seemed as if the number of varieties had increased enormously as evidenced by coin catalogues and reference works such as ESC, which went from ½ inch thick to nearly 1 ¾ in. Mick said he was going to try and decide what was a significant variety an insignificant variety and – in his opinion – where to draw the line. Mick classified a significant variety as an obvious error or alteration and an insignificant variety as being due to minor variations and/or positional differences. He then pointed out that to really understand how varieties occur one needs to understand how dies are made and also how they are used.

 

Mick then set out a timeline for the way die production and use has changed.

 

Between 1660 and 1800, each working die was made piecemeal with punches and was unique.

Between 1796 and 1820 working dies were hubbed from one master relief Patrix, with some later work to finish the working dies

From 1820 a reducing machine was used allowing the production of multiple working dies, though quite often the date and legends were sometimes added later.

In Modern times CNC machines are used and even the initial design for the coin can be modelled on a computer.

 

Over the periods Mick talked about, the mint was always short of dies and that led to significant pressure to produce the required number of dies and engravers were paid according to output. Dies are difficult to make and with non-existent quality control, technical difficulties with the materials (dirty steel with impurities etc.), the hardening and tempering process and the final hubbing operations, mistakes were bound to be made. The overall management of the Mint was also very weak - when Isaac Newton was offered the job of Mint Master, he said he wouldn’t have time to oversee such a position and was told ‘You don’t have to do anything, we just need someone with the title!’.  So, if an engraver were to miss a dot or get a letter in the inscription wrong, they could probably just keep quiet and carry on without worrying about being caught out. If the hardening/tempering process wasn’t right then bits of the die would just flake off and Mick thinks this could explain many of the numerical overdates, also the heating of the metals in the process wasn’t uniform, being done by a raw flame.

 

Mick then took us through the production of a die in the first period, it is a three stage process at heart.. An incuse principal design punch (eg. Portrait), with similar but separate for the legend and so on are prepared by hand and used to create relief punches. These punches are then used to create an incuse die with all the features, a working die. However, when the process is repeated to make a second die, the chances of the separate punches being aligned in the same way is zero. Mick illustrated this with a series of six pictures of a 1739 1/-, all of which have different alignments of the legend with the portrait. This was an example of what Mick described as a minor variation and hence an insignificant variety.

 

Next in the minor variation mix, Mick listed position of stops, missing stops, the number of harp strings and variations in punches, with many examples taken from the shield reverses of this period.

Mick illustrated the various positions of stops with illustrations of 1692 halfcrowns, a 1666 Crown with a stop in the middle of REX and a pair of 1685 shillings, one with no stops. In the case of harp strings, Mick has deduced that because broken harp strings are never seen, they must have been added to the working die, they were not present in the harp punch. He explained that from an engineering point of view such thin lines would never survive the process.  He also pointed out that each engraver would probably have his own set of punches for various features. He illustrated this point with examples from the Lion of Nassau on halfcrowns and the harps on Crowns of William III. He pointed out that each working die would be unique and hence the number of such insignificant variations was equal to the number of dies. To give an idea of the number of dies required, Mick took the example of a die for a shilling of this period. He concluded that about 50 obverse dies would have been required, with a similar number for the reverse, leading to an enormous number of combinations. In another example he reminded us that Barry Cooke had estimated that approximately 350 dies were used in the production of halfcrowns for Queen Anne. Anyone hoping to have a ‘complete’ collection of these insignificant varieties from this period would need a set of very large cabinets and extremely deep pockets.

 

So – are there any significant varieties in this period? The answer is yes and Mick listed examples from the reverse of the shield types with various combinations of Roses, Plumes, intertwined Cs and just empty space in the angles. Also he allowed that the presence of a privy mark on the obverse would also be significant. A separate area were errors, for example a misspelling of GRATIA as GARTIA on a 1663 shilling amongst others, slightly different but still a variety are examples of the shields being transposed.

Turning next to spelling corrections, Mick started with a 1686 shilling with a very clear G over A in MAG and a very clear V over S in GEORGIUS. However a similar supposed V over S in a 1686 halfcrown was, in his opinion more like a clogged die and a further example of an A over R in a 1687 halfcrown which was probably a correction but much less clear. Mick’s background in metallurgy and similar allowed him to say with some certainty that a supposed 7 over 6 in a 1687 shilling was a fissure in the steel rather than the remains of a six, until the whole picture of the coin revealed the same clear G over A error in the 1686 shilling. Clearly an old die had been used and the date altered. So even clear cut cases require very careful analysis and corroboration. Next we had a 1746 6 over 5 halfcrown, a well known variety which in Mick’s view is no more than an example of part of the die breaking off and last but not least a 1739 9 over 7 shilling. On this shilling an old 1737 die has supposedly been altered and converted to a 1739. Yet the 1737 shilling has Roses and Plumes in the angles and the 1739 has only Roses!

 

We now move on to the second period, where Matthew Boulton introduced ‘hubbing’ into the process of making dies adding an extra stage to the process. An incuse die called a master matrix is produced using punches in the same way as a working die previously. This is used to create a number of relief ‘master hubbed patrixes’ from steel, which can then each be used to produce several working dies. In theory, since everything is derived from the master matrix, these should all be the same. However, there were problems striking steel on steel as before and Mick showed an example of a Bank of England issue where the edge lettering is fading due to the inability of the press to keep an even pressure over the whole coin. Hence each working die would be tooled by hand before use to add back in any missing detail, one example of this being the ships on the1797 Penny issue of which there are dozens and dozens of different ones. There was a problem in keeping up with the demand for coinage and this almost certainly led to the creation of more than one master matrix for series such as the Bank of England Trade Dollars. In consideration of this it is remarkable that there are so few variations in the coinage from this period, mainly confined to very small variations in the position of the edge legend.

 

Mick did show some varieties, for example the D over T in DEI and S over I in PENSE on the 1817 halfcrowns and then a lot of different date numerals on the shilling series. There are so many of these latter that Mick believes the master matrix probably didn’t have a date and it was added to the working die by hand.

 

We now come on to the third period, with the introduction of the reducing machine in 1820. The reducing machine allowed a complete plaster of coin design to be prepared, including all details which was then reduced. This meant that no punches need be used in making the initial master matrix at a stroke removing the alignment differences. However, problems still remained. Before electricity the machine was worked by treadle and so was not always entirely uniform in its performance, plus the problems associated with hubbing still remained, meaning that working dies were still ‘finished’ by engravers to add in fine detail.

 

Mick gave examples from an 1825 farthing with letters having to be repunched and even the more famous 1844 E over N half farthing where the repunch was mistakenly done with the wrong letter and then had to be redone. A quote from ESC reveals that individual working dies were still being ‘finished’ up to 1879. Mick told us that the Mint was under pressure from Parliament to be more efficient and had to produce dies at a quicker rate and greater pressure always leads to mistakes. Clearly some dies were reused, by altering the date in an effort to meet the demand, leading to some of the overdate varieties. Another famous example from the period is the ‘unbarred A’ farthing of 1841, many of which Mick feels are more likely due to a filled die, so you should look very carefully to see if there is any evidence of a bar having been there.

 

Mick felt that many modern so called varieties come down to whether a letter points to a space or a bead and if the dies were hubbed, this shouldn’t be occurring, leading Mick to speculate that the beads could have been added later. Michael pointed out that the bead count is usually different and if you look close enough, you can find some other difference and that the ‘pointings’ are more a good way to distinguish what would otherwise be very hard to spot differences.

 

Having taken the time to look at how varieties could arise, in both the production of the dies and their use in practice, it was Mick’s conclusion that

“With an ever increasing number of apparent ‘Varieties’ being recorded where to draw the line? A personal choice.”

Many thanks to Mick for coming back to us and giving such a thought provoking, well researched talk.

 

Subscriptions

Be reminded that subscriptions are now due. It would be most appreciated if members yet to renew their subscription would please do so at the next meeting. Please see our treasurer Peter Hall. Membership cards are now available for paid-up members.

 

Future Events

·         London Coin Fair – Holiday Inn, Bloomsbury - 3rd September

 

Past Events

Club Secretary.