The mint is crazy like a fox with these NEW finishes. They make the first of them in 1998. Then nada for years. Kapow, a second, then a third. Now, it is a series. Completists like me see it as a gift, with a tidy little abbreviated set, easy to assemble right now, and quick to put into a binder. The mint now announces a three coin
ATB set, with a special "other" finish. Let's look at what it isn't to see what it may be: Satin... well they've already done that. Burnished, as in the fields of the
ATB Quarters, well they done that as well. Uncirculated, simply. That's done in general circulation rolls, so that might not be it. Let's flash back to 2007, shall we? The US mint announces a Signature series for the
Presidential dollars. They are sixteen bucks a pop, so people stay away in droves. However, some do purchase those, and now those are thousands a pop for PF 70 specimens. So that third finish they are speaking of, like the Goodacre finish, might not be instantly recognizable to anyone except the Daughterties, Coops, Potters and Crawfords of this trade, but not you and I. But someone will get a fix on it, and then find that examples are ONLY in that three coin set. So quibble about these new finishes if you must, I love each new finish like it is a brand new color a painter has never discovered, and put into a new painting. Finally, remember that the color you see is all the other colors that the painting is not: only the color which is reflected is the color of the thing we see. That finish on that coin is a product of ingenious illusion, reflecting all which it is actually not. Brilliant, beautiful to look at, and like it's own mysterious numismatic Mona Lisa.
Posted 06/15/2010 02:53 am
