Personal stuff first. Work and life have been crazy busy for 6+ months. Thus, I haven't had time to sit down to work on the next Bad Metal book except for a little stuff here and there.
WELL, this Labor Day weekend has been a 4-day weekend for me. I've basically locked myself in my office to work on nothing but Bad Metal Silver: 50c and S$ updates for the prior 3 days and today will be even more progress. On last Friday morning, my book progress spreadsheet said I was about 91% complete. I gave myself a goal to make an additional 1% progress every day over 4 days to get to at least 95% complete (1% progress is completing 4 pages). Progress has involved writing, researching, photo editing, data collection, and other tedious (but braindead simple) book related tasks. Well, I'm very pleased to report that at the completion of day 3 (yesterday/Sunday) my spreadsheet said I was just over 96% complete; all those tedious and braindead tasks added up to quick progress. My spreadsheet says I have about 15 pages left to complete to get to 100%. Today, I can probably get 3 more pages of progress, and outline some of the incomplete sections so when I get free time again I can knock out more progress.
Total page count right now is about 380 pages.
I'm still hunting for an XRF analyzer/gun to use. Do you know where I can go to use one? I'm almost ready to travel somewhere just to get the 150-odd varieties scanned to confirm planchet alloy.
Do you have counterfeit die struck half dollars and silver dollars you want attributed? If so, contact me because I also want to know if you may have a variety that is not yet listed in this draft publication.
When will this book go to print? I don't know. Potentially winter 2025 at the earliest.
OTHER Updates
I continue to sort through photos of counterfeit coins. I overlooked 1 previously unpublished hand-made Seated dime variety. This is an 1857 dated piece. Die work is very good. I need to create a Z-attribution code for it in the near future. A photo of the obverse is shown in this post
Bad Metal Gold. Technically parts have been drafted but it is probably less than 10% complete. I doubt I will make much progress until Bad Metal Silver: 50c and S$Â is at the printers.
I'm going to the November Whitman Baltimore coin show! This has been the only coin show I have had time to go to for the last 3 years. I can't wait to go, catch-up with people in-person, and do some buying, selling, trading, etc.
Next blog post has been drafted (I might be able to finalize it next weekend)! It will be about contemporary counterfeit Morgan dollars. It could initiate some interesting conversations about the collectability of this numismatic subject.
Thanks for reading! Let me know if you have topic ideas to post. AND of course, I hope you have a relaxing and enjoyable Labor Day
-Winston
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