Smarties Bar & Grill #77

I also have the Charleston Grey. It is sugar baby and Charleston Grey. Here is the Grey

 

I like to get a watermelon at the peak of ripeness. Put it in the fridge for a day and slice. The perfect cut is when the melon splits ahead of the knife and opens right up.

 

LOL - The last time I was at Clearwater Beach I got frizzle-fried in half an hour. The sun down in Florida is nothing to play with.

 

I'm not even a watermelon guy and that sounds awesome.

There's no beating homegrown produce.

 

I forgot to bring my light colored 100% cotton button up shirt with long sleeves.... Usually I spread that out fully open and wet across my legs...

Did not do that today and burnt the hell out of my shins and ankles.

The next time I go out I'm going to have a large straw hat something like the itinerate harvesters might wear while picking oranges

 

@JohnHamilton

Acquired a 1904 Morgan silver dollar in very good condition last night for $20.

I looked up the value of it and that seems to be somewhere in the middle. Even if I might have overpaid a bit I am glad to add it to my collection. My first one

 

$20 is fine, a bargain in fact, if it’s genuine. Sadly the Chinese have sent millions of counterfeit collector coins into the American market. Most Chinese fakes look “circulated” and don’t contain any silver. You might try to post pictures of both sides. They used to be attracted to a magnet, but the Chinese have addressed that problem.

I am going to be tied up for the next two days. I could post pictures of a couple of Chinese counterfeit Morgan Dollars over the weekend.

 

I'll Post some pictures of it tomorrow. Definitely non-ferrous and has that typical sound of silver clanging together. He had three of them but I was not interested in all of them, friend of mine purchased the other two

 

I have a couple of minutes this morning, so here are a couple of pictures.

This is a genuine Morgan Dollar. This was minted toward the end of 1878 which was the year the government introduced the coin. There is no mint mark, so this is a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Mint coin.



This is counterfeit 1878-CC Morgan Dollar. The "tells" are the fuzzy look at the top of the obverse and the reverse is wrong. The breast feathers on the eagle are convex like the one above. All genuine 1878-CC dollars had feathers that were somewhat concave.



The reeding on the edge is also wrong. The reeds are too sharp.


Here is a genuine 1878-CC dollar. BTW "CC" stands for the Carson City, Nevada Mint. You can check out the differences between this piece and the one above.



I am a student of counterfeit coins. I've been at this for 65 years, and I will always be a student. I will never be an expert of a "professor." There are so many counterfeits, no one will ever master them all.

 

That is interesting a person never thinks of people counterfeiting coins.

 

Hope everyone is cool in this weather. We went down by the branch yesterday at the bottom of the hill and there was nice breeze blowing..like nature's air conditioner.. Cool and peaceful.

 

Sounds delightful - the Mid-Atlantic is going to turn into a blast furnace tomorrow and through the weekend. The air temps are going to be in the upper 90s, and with the high humidity it's going to feel like 105+.

How's that little tomato plant of yours that we've been talking about holding up? Did it pull through?

 

I popped the top on the shade cloth covering my plants last night and the plants are doing better than I thought they would. I guess the 30-40% shade the cloth is providing is just about right - despite the temps being in the 90s all the plants are flowering and the tomatoes are cranking out fruit. To my glee, I'm going to have Brandywine tomatoes this year - the high heat OTV variety is turning out to be a lot more productive than an ordinary Brandywine. The only plants that haven't produced fruit yet are the Virginia Sweets, but they're a late determinate and they're flowering, so they're on schedule. Hopefully, I'll see tomatoes on them next week.

The only negative thing I saw was a surprisingly early appearance by the tomato hornworms. Fortunately, I caught them early and picked them off, then I gave the plants a good soaking in Thuracide (Bt).

So far, this year's experiments are panning out nicely, but the real test is coming this weekend with the big heat blast, followed by more days in the 90s. Now that the hornworms have been dealt with all I can do is keep 'em watered and see what happens.

 

The damn Chinese would counterfeit pennies if they could do it for 1/3 of a cent.

 

They already have counterfeited a U.S. cent, which has no numismatic (collector) value.

I call this "the thumb to the eye." The 1958 U.S. cent has no numismatic value. It might be worth four cents for the copper speculation price. This thing is a Chinese counterfeit. Why they made it is beyond me. It'is like "See we can make this, and you can't do anything about it."



Here is a genuine 1958 cent.

 

Doesn't surprise me in the slightest. I hoard all of the copper pennies I find at work and in daily life.

I'm sure you know that sometime between 82 the composition went from 95% copper to 97 point something percent zinc.

I've got about two and a half dollars worth of wheat pennies.

Last night shortly after speaking to you I also acquired a 2010 walking Lady Liberty silver dollar from the same friend for $20.

I truly hope they're not counterfeit because if they are they did an excellent job. I'm not any expert on the topic but as far as I know it will be very difficult to counterfeit a silver coin that actually sounds like silver when hitting a table top or another silver coin.

I'm not home right now but I will be sure to post pictures of them soon of the obverse and the other side

 

Speaking of counterfeiting.... I do not even depend on a currency marker because bleaching and reprinting bills is very common.

I look for the strip in the proper location for its denomination and also the hologram and the texture on the clothing of the president that you can feel with a thumbnail.

If you really want to get all secret service about it, not only does every denomination have the strip in a certain location, but they all glow a particular color under UV light

 

Walking Liberty is worth the silver spot price at minimum.

 

Yes sir.... Worth $29 and some cent right now.

99.9% pure silver one troy ounce. I believe most of the other silver coins are 90%

 

But they also have collector value. I have a bag of Morgan and Peace dollars under the bed. I also have other coins. Mercury dimes are really nice looking to me.

 

I would like to run a cash register just to look for old coins.

 

I have heard that the best way to learn counterfeit is to study legitimate bills. I remember when every once in a while we would get a silver certificate every now and then. We would also get an Indian head penny now and then. Or a Buffalo nickel with date.

 

In 1965 quarters stopped having silver. If I had only known.

 

More than that, as long it’s not damaged. There are a lot of collectors who maintain sets of American Silver Eagles. The “big one” is the 1995-W, which was only sold with the 1995 Gold Eagle Proof set, which has sold for five figures.

 

Yes, the best way to spot counterfeits is to have the appearance of the genuine piece down pat. There are infinite numbers of counterfeits. You can’t remember them all.