By Jeff Starck COIN WORLD

A crown might be something a monarch wears, or a specifically British coin denomination, but to world coin collectors a “crown” is much more.

Crown-sized coins are generally those silver coins measuring in a range from 33 to 50 millimeters in diameter and weighing about 20 to 30 grams in weight. The term “crown” is sometimes used to describe the copper-nickel versions of the previously silver coins. Crowns are popular with collectors of “modern” world coins, generally defined as coins produced from A.D. 1500 to the present.

Crown-sized coins, issued by numerous countries, are available in numerous denominations – pesos, dinars, francs, shillings, reales, marks, dollars and, yes, even crowns.

The first modern European crown-sized silver coin, the taler, was issued in Austria in the mid-1480s. In a relatively short period, the silver crown gained wide popularity and was adopted nearly everywhere in Europe.

To hear most coin collectors tell it, the “good-ole-days” were back when they started collecting. It was a time when scarce coins were easy to find in circulation, prices were incredibly low, and bargains abounded at virtually any coin show.

Nowadays, of course, the same collectors will tell you that none of the above are true. Prices are “through the roof,” you can’t find anything in circulation, and bargains at coin shows don’t exist.

Obviously, if I agreed with these collectors, then I would have nothing more to write about in this article. Not only would the editor of this magazine think that I had lost my mind, but, as I’m paid by the word for my submissions, the pay for this submission would also be a check that wasn’t worth cashing.

By Mike Thorne for Numismaster

Carson City, Nev. The name conjures up visions of the Old West, gunfighters, playing cards in a saloon, with piles of silver dollars in the pot. And not just any silver dollars: These would undoubtedly be coins newly minted in either Carson City itself or San Francisco. In my mind’s eye, I see stacks of shiny cartwheels worth just a dollar apiece to their owners at the end of the 19th century but worth much more to their possessors a century later.

Amazingly, for all that’s been written about CC Morgans, a complete collection of them (not counting minting varieties of some of the dates) consists of just 13 different date/mintmark combinations.

By the time the Morgan dollar came along in 1878, the Carson City Mint was in full operational mode. It had begun minting coins in 1870. With Nevada then and now a relatively sparsely populated state, you might wonder why it deserved a mint at all.

Editor’s note: It is the opinion of the authors that revisionist theory about Gobrecht dollars is invalid. The Breen theory, that originals can be determined by noting that the eagle flies upward when the coin is properly rotated, they believe should be immediately restored. This article is an attempt to support the contention. It is divided into two parts, with a conclusion following. The first section, by R.W. Julian, deals with the historical aspects of the Gobrecht dollar coinage, while the second, by Craig Sholley, examines the critical areas of mint machinery, weights, die rotation and rarity.

Prior to about 1975 the Gobrecht silver dollars of 1836 through 1839 were all considered to be patterns. It was known that restrikes had been made in the late 1850s but until Walter Breen tackled the problem in the mid-1970s, no one knew how to distinguish the true originals. At the same time, documentary proof was published showing that some of the dollars of 1836 and 1839 were in fact coins issued for circulation.

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