"Dennis Tucker's article about where to place the 2021 Morgan and Peace Dollars within the Red Book recalls a similar debate at NGC. Among my jobs there is creating the data numbers for USA coins, and in recent years that's been quite a task with so many new issues coming out from multiple mints and with multiple finishes. When it was time to produce numbers for the centennial dollars so that our Marketing Department could generate mock-up labels, I suggested that collectors of vintage Morgan and Peace Dollars would be big buyers and would naturally want the new coins to appear as a continuation of those series. After a brief discussion this plan was approved, and I created and sorted the numbers following the last original issues for their respective series.

A few months later the subject was brought up again, and it was the view of the marketing folks that customers preferred to see them listed separately. I suspect that this challenge came from those having NGC Registry sets of Morgan and Peace Dollars and who were not interested in adding the new pieces to make their sets complete again. The decision was thus made to move the new coins out of the Morgan and Peace data summaries and into one we've been using for several years titled Anniversary Coins and Medals. This is where things such as the American Liberty coins and medals go, along with the 2009 Ultra High Relief St. Gaudens Double Eagle and other pieces that defy exact categorizing. Since the U. S. Mint has been hinting that the new Morgan and Peace Dollars will become annual editions, I suspect they may get their own categories within the NGC Census at some point."

Thanks for the great background. Classification is a tricky business. While the basics can be straightforward, the real world is always throwing curve balls, producing variants that could fit under multiple headings, leading to sometimes difficult tradeoffs. -Editor

"On a somewhat related matter, I'd like to comment on Wayne Pearson's suggestion that quarter dollars featuring the Fraser eagle reverse be added to the Mint's roster alongside the American Woman Quarters. I would amend his suggestion to reserve that design for when the current quarter program is concluded in four years' time. It would be nice to see both sides of Fraser's models used for a regular issue quarter dollar going forward.

Of course, this assumes that there won't be yet another themed series of quarters to tie up the reverse of this coin for several years further. It's rumored that there's a proposed series of quarters honoring Congressmen who amass the greatest tax funds for their home states. This is to be called the American Pork series."

Everybody's a comedian. Better than everybody being a politician. There'd be no one left to tax! But I like Dave's suggestion - it would be nice to have a respite from the circulating commemoratives, but this juggernaut could be hard to stop. Everybody loves it when their pet design is chosen, and who could blame them? And while many of the designs are uninspiring, many are also quite worthy of the ages. -Editor

"Doug Ward's excellent presentation at the Pacific Coast Numismatic Society of the high relief double deuce Peace dollars can be viewed on YouTube. I highly recommend it."

Thanks! Check it out. -Editor

"I read with interest the article on the NAACP Spingarn medals. While the several prices quoted might seem quite low, a significant factor is that the modern medals are essentially cheap imitations of the early issues. At the close of the article it notes that "the earliest examples were likely gold". This is in fact true.

"In the summer of 2011 I purchased (at Cowan's) the second Spingarn medal issued, given in 1916 to Colonel Charles Young, who at the time was the highest ranking colored soldier in the U. S. military. I paid $7600 at Cowan's, and offered it in my own catalog a few months later. It sold instantly for $9750 to a well-known institution."

Glad this found a good home. Rex kindly provided the above image and description from his catalog #71. Thanks! -Editor

"I've seen quite a few dies such as these on eBay over the years. Some types are more collected than others. In the 1960s thousands of old trade token dies from a Philadelphia die sinker (Quint) came on the market. I purchased the Virginia token dies.

"Quite a while back Dave Gladfelter wrote a good article on the Quint company."

"I have heard of this company because I like to visit metal detecting forums and help identify dug finds. Items with the Lilley name come up often."

"I looked through the M.C. Lilley listings again and found some printing blocks of the company's factory. They may have been used for advertising or on letterheads and company documents. The three blocks differ in size. These are great finds for historians and perhaps people that place competitive tokens/medals exhibits at coin shows."

Nice. Thanks. -Editor

"You asked if anyone has examples of the First American Coin Collector medal. I don't have one, but in the last few months, I've seen two for sale on Ebay. The first was several months ago. I researched but didn't buy that example. As I recall, I matched the name engraved on the piece, which was an unusual one, to someone who lived near Richmond. I've forgotten his name but do recall that the medal took a while to sell and that the seller reduced the price considerably before someone purchased it as a Buy It Now. There currently is an example, engraved with the name Vernon M. Jepson, open for bidding on eBay.

"I did a small amount of research on Vernon M. Jepson using Familysearch.org and found one good match - a Civil War veteran, born in 1843, who initially lived in the Worcester, MA area but in the early 20th century moved to Connecticut and finally to Osceola, FL where he died in 1932. He was described as a florist in the 1880 Census but later became a carpenter. In what little research I did, I found nothing to link him to numismatics."

Thanks. Glad to know there are some more examples. -Editor

"I am a fan of the newsletter, but I have not been able to see the images attached to the newsletter for a year now. Is there something that I should do to be able to see the images?"

I responded: Between the table of contents and Wayne's Words is a grey box with links including this one: Click here to read this issue on the web.

Follow the link and let me know if you can see the images there. That's one option.

Everyone's email reader is different. Some will suppress images from the web and you have to find and click a link that says something like "Show images" or "This looks OK" to tell it you don't think it's spam. It's usually at the top or bottom of the email. -Editor

"I will use the web version from now on. Thanks for the "pro tip"!"

Thanks are due our webmaster Bruce Perdue, who formats and posts the full issue each Sunday night before sending out the email blast. When my work ends, his is just beginning. We couldn't keep this train on the tracks without his tireless assistance. -Editor

"As one who particularly collects and researches inscribed medals, I read the articles on the engraved Morgan and Flowing Hair dollars with great interest. My views on the attributions are as follows. I think the attribution of the engraved Morgan is right on point. Even though Ms. Casey only had initials to go on, she also had the place name of a relatively small locality (even today, Middletown RI has fewer than 20,000 people) as well as a date and the newspaper article she was able to locate clearly matches the initials on the piece to people who lived in Middletown in that era. US Census records for 1900 and 1910 available on Familysearch.org confirm her findings. They identify Hunter as a farmer living in Middletown who was born in 1857 and had a wife named Edith. He was apparently fairly wealthy since his household in 1900 included four servants. And Sunnyfield Farm was bought in the 1920s by a wealthy New Yorker so it presumably was a substantial residence.

"When it comes to the Flowing Hair dollar, Ms. Casey's suggested attribution is possible. But the link between William Bradley, the wealthy builder, and either Henry Hendrickson is speculative in my opinion. Possible but not probable and definitely far from certain. Unfortunately, the medal contains very little information to work with. The donor had a fairly common first and last name (Trow's 1863 NYC Directory, covering Manhattan only, includes ten William Bradleys). The recipient's surname is much less common but hardly unique and it is not even certain whether Hendrickson was male or female. The only date present is the date the host coin was struck so the engraving could have been done at any time in the 19th or early 20th Centuries.

"Likewise, there is no indication on the coin as to why it was given to Hendrickson or what relationship the donor had to the recipient (employer to employee, teacher to student, friend to friend, aunt or uncle to nephew or niece, grandfather to grandchild, etc.). . Perhaps with a huge amount of research, checking 19th Century census records, city directories, county histories, newspapers, and other resources for the entire state of New York, and even adjacent states, someone might be able to at least narrow things down if he or she found a William Bradley who lived in the same place as an H.D. Hendrickson and at roughly the same time. A difficult if not impossible task.

"Admittedly, I'm very conservative when it comes to attributing awarded/engraved medals but in my opinion, to be fairly certain of an attribution, one typically needs an exact name (and preferably one that is not very common), a specific place of residence, and a date as well as other information to tie the medal to someone specific, such as an occupation, college or school affiliation, or membership in a fraternal organization. Having an approximate date of birth is also extremely helpful and often essential. (School medals can often be attributed since one can usually estimate a birth date based on the year the medal was awarded, which usually is on such medals ) This level of data is typically missing on engraved coins but is often found on struck award medals, such as the medals given as prizes at annual exhibitions held by agricultural and mechanical societies. Even with award medals, researching the recipient can be difficult. When researching such medals, I've often found several people with the same name who lived in the same place at the same time who conceivably could have been a medal's recipient."

"I agree with Mr. Nashorn's comments! It should be noted that is why I premised my attribution by stating it was "my guess." Though I continue to support the "Wm Bradley of New York" to be the individual I highlighted. If it wasn't apparent by my post last issue, I did a real "deep-dive" into this William Bradley's biography and there was much minutiae that I could not put into my reply. However, suffice to say, he seems very much like a man that would refer to himself this way.

"Regarding this aspect. -- "Perhaps with a huge amount of research, checking 19th Century census records, city directories, county histories, newspapers, and other resources for the entire state of New York, and even adjacent states, someone might be able to at least narrow things down if he or she found a William Bradley who lived in the same place as an H.D. Hendrickson and at roughly the same time."

"I agree! And this is exactly what I did. The William Bradley and H.D. Hendrickson, Jr. mentioned were both living in New York City in the early 1900s. The 1905 New York State Census shows William Bradley at 320 West 86th Street and Henry D. Hendrickson, Jr. at 340 West 40th Street in Manhattan. Hendrickson is indexed as "Henry B. Hendricksen" but I used other records to match him to be the same man I wrote about last week.

"However, this all does remain "my guess.""

Thanks, everyone! -Editor