New Guide to Grading Hammered Coinage

[Red Riley]

This project does sound incredibly interesting.

Look, I know it's my fault for bringing down the tone of this discussion, but there does seem to be the germ of a very good idea here. So, just to recap, the idea was to obtain a large number of images of hammered coins and to let the experts on the board decide their grade, and then publish the results.

Wear on hammered coins is so random that anything too structured could end up by posing more questions than it solves but a large number of examples with, where necessary, considered opinions would be an extremely useful tool.

I would be quite happy to contribute in terms of writing and photography, but the technical expertise will have to come from the specialists. Chris has already said (I hope not too tongue in cheek!) that he sees the project as viable, so how about it?

I will also attempt to post this as a separate subject.

[Chris Perkins]

Wasn't tongue in cheek at all, there really could be a book here. Even just 100 'ordinary' hammered coins in chronological order presented as nice large images and graded (with desriptions of the wear, damage and nastiness etc). And as it's likely to be something for the novice to nearly experienced collector there would be no need to show gold coins or anything hugely expensive.

[scott]

could always run through most common hammered first, that would get a good base.

[Rob]

It may or may not work because the 150Kb attachment limit could prevent really good detail being shown.

[Chris Perkins]

That's true. Any images suitable for print will not fit in the forum. But we could look at reduced size versions.

I suspect though that many images will not be good enough to print anyway (scans certainly aren't). So ideally we will need someone to take pictures of the coins and I'd certainly recommend Red Riley for this. Inexpensive coins can be sent, photographed and returned. For members that have a larger collection of hammered I'm sure he could visit if the quantity of coins justify the distance.

[TomGoodheart]

I'm more than happy to 'contribute' any of my Charles I shillings. Many are in the gallery section here so if whoever might want to put this together wants to use one or more as an example of late hammered that'd be fine. As are most of the coins (joke).

[Red Riley]

It may or may not work because the 150Kb attachment limit could prevent really good detail being shown.

Certainly something better than that will be required. I have found that approx. 5mb JPEGs are about the base level needed to produce decent pictures. The vast bulk of the coins to be imaged will be silver, and it is much easier to produce good images of these than copper/bronze. In some instances, high resolution scans will be sufficient.

There are a lot of ground rules which will need to be laid down about this project, and perhaps we should all spend a few days thinking about what we want out of it and how this can best be achieved. Nonetheless, the ball has begun rolling and it looks like a goer.