Shire Post Mint Silver 1/10 Oz Bullion Coins

Wow graet job! Are they cast coins or made with machine dies? If the coins are cast, can you tell me how you do it?

Okay. This is really neat. I like the idea of do it yourself coinage to learn about the process.

Thanks! Here's my little workshop tour webpage that shows some equipment and whatnot
http://www.shirepost.com/ShopTour.html
The jump to making bullion is mostly because I FINALLY got a handle on the whole melting/pouring/rolling/blanking sequence and feel like I can do it reliably now. My 3 hp 5x5 rolling mill is powerful but not really a finishing mill, which means that it's hard to hit a final thickness target any closer than about two thousandths of an inch. So for making 1/10 oz coins, I want to punch a blank exactly 3/4" diameter through sheet that is about 0.041" to get a blank weighing 3.15 grams. If it ends up being just a thousandth thinner at 0.040" thick, the weight drops to about 3.08 grams which is just below a tenth ounce. If that happens then I either have to use that sheet for a different project that can use thinner silver, or scrap it back into the meltpot and start over, because nobody wants underweight bullion! So to keep from wasting a lot of time I just shoot for a target of 0.042" or even 0.043" thickness. Yes the blanks come out a bit heavy, but we're talking maybe 10 or 15 cents worth of extra silver per coin, which is worth it to ensure full weight so that I can stand behind each and every one.

The coin blanks are then cold-struck between hardened steel dies mounted in a press, one fixed to the press-bed and one mounted on the ram. The die-alignment process can sometimes take hours and dozens of bad strikes. Even so, once it's set up diestriking is WAY faster and more precise than casting, which is why all the big mints do it this way. I have a completely different feeling about badly offcenter errors now. When I got started I would make bad errors on purpose just because I could. Now I hate them! A good day is where there are none.

Dies!
Dies start at $100 each, which includes the steel and heat-treating and a small simple design. If the design becomes complicated or high relief, or is large in size then the price goes up. Something very large and complex can go $3000 or more per die. So that's a wide range! By "complex" I mean in terms of artistic rendering. A human face is probably the most difficult subject, so those tend towards the high side. But on the other hand I have a large library of images in the form of master hubs, and if one of those can be used then otherwise complex dies (like for instance the Lincoln head shown on the bullion coin above) can be done more cheaply. I made that die by using a vintage (probably 1950s) master hub of the head of Lincoln engraved by Stan Pearson for the central image, then wrote in the text using the rotary engraver (Gorton P1-3 pantomill). It's been a learning curve for sure! Here's a pic of what a typical die looks like if it's designed for broadstriking (NOT using a collar) Dies can potentially last for thousands of strikes, but I've also had them shatter after only a few strikes, or tragically, clashed during a mistake in setup before a single piece was ever struck! AAAAGH!

First off welcome to the board, and secondly that is one fantastic job to create your own silver rounds an design your own mint, most impressive....

Have you considered pouring bars, we like some barz in these parts, lol?

Perhaps even in larger size, say 1, 5, or 10 oz., I can bet you would have no problem moving them, esp after you established good trust with for example all the great members here, who I can promise you are mostly all good people who many of would buy your products....

To be honest, I would not consider buying the 1/10 of oz. of silver, just too much premium an too small increments, like trying to tunnel out of a prison with a rock hammer, aka my boy Andy from Shawshank prison, lol....

Never the less, does not mean there is not a market in them just because I don't chose to buy them, more power to you for learning an doing it, that is a great skill to have in my estimation....

That scene above is right out of the end of "The Hobbit". Very cool!

It's called the "Daler of New Dale". (sometimes spelled "Nu Dal") The entire project was inspired by the name of the place. The engraver Greg Franck-Weiby and I had long speculated about the town of Dale from THE HOBBIT story. Because of course in real-world coin history, the Dollar comes from the Thaler, which originally came from Joachimsthal. So in Tolkien's world if there is a town of Dale and they are going to mint coins then they would OBVIOUSLY be called Dalers (but pronounced like dollar). And of course it would need to be a large coin... which would exceed the technical press capacity of Old Dale, (destroyed in 2769 of the third age by that wily old dragon Smaug.) But two hundred and some-odd years later... after the return of the King Under the Mountain, the technical capacity was there!

So this is a FOURTH age piece done to comemmorate the 100th anniversary of DOS (that's Death Of Smaug) which was a very very big deal in those parts.

Exactly 100 pieces were struck from the hand-engraved master dies using a smooth collar. Near the very end of the run, a small "cob" appeared at the back of Bards hair-bun. (there's no cob in the one photographed) Fearing an imminent demise of the die, and wanting to preserve the artistry of the piece, I took the radical step of cloning a transfer hub from the master die. This required over 250 tons of force. The die held together under this pressure, and I was able to harden the hub (sometimes called a matrix) and proceeded to clone another die. Die #1 has been archivally retired. Die #2 is very close to identical except that the ears of the dragon touch the rim. 26 pieces were struck in silver from Die #2, using a reeded collar, when the die shattered. A third die set was prepared, this time using a higher grade of steel. Die #3 was successful and has been primarily used to strike copper and bronze versions of the coin. Upon Greg Franck-Weiby's death 45 silver strikes were done on die #3 for gifting by his widow to his close friends, for Greg considered the Daler to be his Magnum Opus of die-work. The copper and bronze ones are not rare. At least one ebay dealer routinely lists them. The silver ones are tough to find now. I've got just a couple of each that I hope to hang onto for my own kids.

Tom Maringer
Shire Post Mint.

He is right most here will not, but many on ebay may perhaps, as I figure there would not be so much of this fractional silver for sale on ebay, if it was not selling....

Here is my theory on this, very simple. Many out there who just don't have enough spare cash to tie up in larger increments of silver, may buy a 1/10th just to appease the silver fix or make them just feel like they are adding some positive numbers to their hoard, all be small or not....

Say things are so tight you can't really even buy a 1 oz. round. But hey I can spare a few bucks an get a 1/10 oz. that I think will increase quickly in value an one day when silver hits that dream number of 200 per oz., that piece would actually at that point have more practical use and decent overall value, such as a 1/10 gold coin. Which translates to right about a decent five oz. of silver....

If a person that blows 3 bucks at the store each day on their way to work, suddenly took that money an put in a 1/10 oz. silver round, it would add up real fast if one did this for a long time....

An when you are just spending 3 an 6 bucks at a time, you never have big tabs to cover on pm buys....

A while back I started a 3/4 gram 24k Liberia proof coin collection of many different famous names from history. Did pretty well by selling it later on as a 10 coin set, up around five hundred bucks. Was not hard to accumulate either, as I had like 35 to 45 bucks in each coin, bout like buyin above average 1 oz. silver pieces....