I sent an email to Daniel Carr with some questions yesterday, and he replied pretty quick. We should be able to get the price for the plain proof and satin finishes pretty close to last years prices by having a lot of fancy after finish types to spread the cost. The costs of the fancy finishes will be as listed on the moonlight mint custom minting page, these are higher than last year so keep that in mind while ordering. I will be sending a down payment for the design and sculpting portions so that he can start to work on it. I will also start a new thread for people to place the orders for the types of medals that they would like and will keep it updated as orders come. As far as the 50mm medals, it would be too expensive to have two dies made if the orders were about the same for large medals as last year. Here is the email and response:
Hi Daniel,
We have just started the ball rolling for the 2016 medals for the Knights of the Coin table. Sorry it is later in the year this time, I just moved into a new house at the beginning of the year, so things have been pretty hectic. So far it looks like we would like to go with a Merlin design of some type since it has not been done on any of the previous medals. Any design ideas or sketches would be greatly appreciated on the forum.
I also had a few other ideas to help spread the design, sculpting, and die costs among more medals. My first thought was to gather up some Morgan Dollars for some overstrikes and send them to you. I think this would be pretty cool if you think it is doable.
I think it would also be cool to have some medals with gold electro-plating, and rhodium electro-plating. Hopefully these two things will help with the costs since we are not going to be doing the large medals anymore.
With all that said, I have a few questions for you:
1) Is the 39mm reverse die still available to use so we would only have to have one new die made?
2) Would you have any idea of a range (I know it will change, but would be good to have an estimate for some kind of range) for the cost of the design and sculpting portion of the new Merlin Die?
3) I believe we qualify for the 15% discount off the listed prices on your custom minting page for design, sculpting, engraving, striking, and marking, but I just wanted to be sure.
4) Which finishes on which medals do you recommend for selective plating. Proof, satin, etc.
5) What would be the cost per Morgan overstrike if I send the Morgans, what grade do you recommend for overstrikes, and are they doable?
6) Will there be any discounts for coin clubs for the post strike finishes this time around?
7) Would the price for putting each medal to into a signed coin flip still be $1.50. I know that you cut the price in half for almost everything last year, so if this price needs to be more it is understandable. I would still like to do this this time around, as it helped a lot with sorting the last time.
Do we still have time to get them done this year?
Any thoughts or posts on the new thread on our forum would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Jim Sorah
And Daniel's response:
Hello James,
1) Yes.
2) I would like to put a significant effort into the design so as to do justice to the Merlin theme. As such, I think the design & sculpting for that would be perhaps $900 to $1200 (after 15% discount).
3) Yes.
4) Selective plating is best on portions of the medal that are not mirror-polished. So anywhere on a satin medal, and on the frosted devices only of a proof-like medal. Plating on sandblasted “matte finish) medals is also possible, but they tend to look better if patina is applied over that, but often a second round of plating is required after the patina. So an antiqued (copper, for example) medal with gold accents costs twice as much for the plating since it has to be done twice. But note that the selective plating works best when there is a clear delineation between the design devices of the area being plated and the areas not plated. In other words, it is better to plate areas that are in separate “compartments” of the design. I also just today ordered some blue rhodium plating solution – it will be interesting to see how that works. In the past I have used “black” rhodium (actually brilliant gray on satin-finish medals) and gold. I would not recommend gold on brass (too hard to see the difference wile plating. Rhodium on brass/copper/silver works. Gold on copper/silver works. Silver on copper/brass works.
5) Over-strike Morgan dollars are possible. I have done that for several other coin club medals. Peace and Eisenhower dollars are also possible. The coins usually require additional processing (sandblasting, wire-brushing) before over-striking. They usually need to be aligned in the coining chamber to be upright in relation to the over-strike. The cost for this would be $8 each to process and over-strike them. Any grade is ok, so long as the coin isn’t gouged or badly edge-dinged. Polished coins work fine, generally.
6) I pretty much only do the special post-strike finishes for coin clubs. And they take a lot of processing by hand, so I haven’t been discounting that.
7) I know it probably doesn’t seem like all that much to make them, but when there are so many different versions and signing and assembly, it does take a fair amount of time and is generally tedious. I could discount that about 15% to 20% (to $1.25 each).
Yes.
Daniel Carr
PS:
I have generally moved away from doing 63mm medals (I didn’t like working with pewter that much and those blanks aren’t available anymore anyway), and silver/copper/brass medals require too much force to strike at the 63mm size. 63mm aluminum might be possible, however. But there is another option and that is 50mm (which is 2 troy oz in silver). I have the tooling to do that size. But a there is no reverse die in the 50mm size, so that would have to be engraved to do 50mm medals.
Any thoughts?
