Quote: is that really supposed to be the re-entry vehicle?
Actually, it's a rendering of the REV's contrail as depicted on a particular NASA medal. But it's just easier to refer to it as the REV. You know how we shorten things in numismatics.
Well, I certainly learned something about Ikes today. I appreciate them more, although I always did like the Moon images, being a lunatic coin collector.
Call me a kill-joy, but unless Gasparro himself wrote that this was an intentional feature, I'm going to have to call self-promotion on this whole 'discovery'. This looks very much like a random die chip on a single die that some -=GENIUS=- promoter convinced others to accept as a rare variety. The reason there are MS66 "Friendly Eagle" dollars without this feature is due to there being multiple dies used to strike these coins, but only one die with this supposed 'contrail' error.
It should be easy enough to see if this 'feature' is present on the original hub either through actual physical examination or photographs of the hub.
Quote: Call me a kill-joy, but unless Gasparro himself wrote that this was an intentional feature, I'm going to have to call self-promotion on this whole 'discovery'. This looks very much like a random die chip on a single die that some -=GENIUS=- promoter convinced others to accept as a rare variety. The reason there are MS66 "Friendly Eagle" dollars without this feature is due to there being multiple dies used to strike these coins, but only one die with this supposed 'contrail' error.
Quote: Call me a kill-joy, but unless Gasparro himself wrote that this was an intentional feature, I'm going to have to call self-promotion on this whole 'discovery'. This looks very much like a random die chip on a single die that some -=GENIUS=- promoter convinced others to accept as a rare variety. The reason there are MS66 "Friendly Eagle" dollars without this feature is due to there being multiple dies used to strike these coins, but only one die with this supposed 'contrail' error.
It should be easy enough to see if this 'feature' is present on the original hub either through actual physical examination or photographs of the hub.
I can't resist...Hi Killjoy!
Sorry, but you told me to call you that (note beginning of quoted text).
Darth Morgan is probably the biggest and most intelligent Eisenhower dollar collectors on this community, and unless someone can come up with evidence of your theory, I am going to trust Darth.
Quote again:
Quote: The reason there are MS66 "Friendly Eagle" dollars without this feature is due to there being multiple dies used to strike these coins, but only one die with this supposed 'contrail' error.
This doesn't make any sense. If that is the case, this is still a new variety.
I fully understand your skepticism and appreciate the humorous barbs. I could, of course, be completely incorrect about the whole messy business.
I do not have your faith in the infallibility of experts in ANY field, and I understand their need to make discoveries in their fields. This allows them to sometimes see patterns where there are none, where it seems to make sense simply due to the desire for it to make sense.
If the design was originally supposed to have a representation of a spacecraft there would be no reason to remove it for subsequent dies.
The coincidence of two microscopic curvy lines being similar to a design on a mission badge was enough to trigger "Discovery!" by your expert. The problem is that in the scene depicted on the coin, the eagle is symbolizing both America and the spacecraft landing on the lunar surface, so re-entry con-trails would in fact be several days in the future and in any case be entirely invisible at the scale portrayed on the coin. Add to this that Gasparro was not in the habit of trying to capture tiny details on circulation coins of that period (look at the almost total lack of detail on Eisenhower's image) and it really makes very little sense for this mark to be anything but an unintentional die nick, not a collectible variety.
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Posted 09/13/2017 6:14 pm
......Uhhhh, OK. 
