My SE Silver Dollar Proof Set finally arrived on Tuesday (eight weeks after I ordered it!) and the colourized SD it includes is about what I expected.
From a typical viewing distance (12-18"), the SD looks reasonably nice and the painted areas of the coin appear to smoothly transition between its deep and rich colours.
When the coin is viewed from a closer distance, and especially under magnification, the painted areas reveal the individual coloured ink/paint dots that are printed on the coin to create the illusion of full, natural colour. While it is distracting to my eyes, I will admit that the overall appearance of the current coin is not as bad as the highly "pixelated" appearance of some of the
RCM's early colourization attempts. At least it's nice to see the advances in coin-printing technology.
One other artifact of the colorization-by-dots technique is that smaller elements of a design will become blurry - they don't require enough "dots" to print them clearly. The small fishing boat in front of the
Great Eastern is an example of such on this SD.
I continue to prefer fully-engraved coins over painted and I have my reservations over the direction the
RCM is taking with the increasing use of colour on a large number of its coins - but especially of its use of the technique on its SDs. Time will tell if I continue to add these colourized pieces to my SD collection, but I do plan on keeping this one (and I won't even hide it away where no one can see it!).
Here's an image of the reverse of the coin I received.
The coin was designed by Yves Berube. You may remember him from his designs for the 50-cent silver-plated coins commemorating the RMS
Titanic and the RMS
Empress of Ireland, each of which featured colour enhancements; I thought the
Titanic coin was particularly well-done. Including the Transatlantic Cable SD, Yves has created ten nautical-themed coin designs for the
RCM.
The set has not proven to be a "collector favorite" at this point, and it appears that its lower-than-previous-years mintage of 12,500 units will be enough to ensure that all who want one will be able to get it at issue price (or lower). More than 2,300 of the sets remain available for order on the Mint's web site and hundreds (if not 1,000+) are likely in dealer hands waiting for a new home.
Posted 06/02/2016 9:47 pm
