Charliemouse

Horse

Link to the other thread.

St George's face.  Again, which you prefer is subjective.  There is definitely not the same obvious quality drop that there was with the full sovereigns in the other thread.

The 1980 again is coarser, but the figure is 'rounder' and more 3 dimensional (curved in relief).  The 2021 has  obviously been redesigned to be flatter, fewer curves, but with finer grain.  

18 minutes ago, CazLikesCoins said:

Agreed. Will bugger off. In my defence I did get drawn back in. But I'm off properly this time.

Go to the photography section.  Sounds like you would have a lot of great experience to share.

@Silverlocks and @CazLikesCoins . Hate to be that guy, but you know there's a whole section for discussing coin photography, and this isn't it.  We're spamming lots of people's feeds here.

3 minutes ago, bobski said:

What’s PF photography? Excuse my specialness

I think it was a typo.  "a lot of photography"  If it wasn't, I haven't heard of it.

2 hours ago, Zeton said:

hmm I wasn't sure if it was supposed to be this way, thanks for the tip 👍

I guess technically it should be "The Queen's Beasts".  Cool idea.  Love the idea of 3D printing, but never pulled the trigger.

1 hour ago, TeaTime said:

I have been collecting US quarters for a number of years and that is the first time i have noticed the lower case 'u' used in the lettering.

Looks like i haven't been scrutinising my coins as diligently as i thought...

Just for interest, the quarter uses a font called Albertus (Identifont - Albertus).  It has a stem on the capital U, which does make it look lower case.

2 hours ago, Upsidedown said:

I'd argue liberty has a torch to see in the dark however britannia is ill-equipped for such nocturnal activities.

Perhaps this version...

(It's not real.  But I'd buy it if it was.)

9 minutes ago, timsk said:

If I were from t'other side of the pond, I would take exception to Charliemouse's pic' on the grounds that it's biased towards the U.K., as Britannia is bathed in full light while Liberty is in the shade. Needless to say, I think that is as it should be and it's a fine pic'!

 😄

It's art, init.

This is what I mean by number 2 above.  It has nothing to do with 'faults', which is number 3.  It is about depth and intricacy of the design.  Every individual coin for each year will be about the same.

11 hours ago, NGMD said:

@Charliemouse showed some close ups and even though technology has improved, RM has gone backwards. Enough people have complained publicly and are the laughing stock of the industry. Top or bottom, it must be costing them financially. 
Case in point, the returns on the new GE, It's horrendous.

In an effort to get this thread back on track, and move the 'quality' discussion somewhere else...

People mean lots of different things when they talk about quality.  Probably not an exhaustive list, but here is how I would break it down.

1. Intricacy and fineness of the design.  This is a factor of the time and skill invested into the design and 'mastering'.  Constant across all individual coins of the same design.
2. Depth and detail in the coin.  This is a factor of the capability of the machines, and the ambition of the design.  Could vary between first and last strike.
3. Chance of individual coins having acceptable levels of faults.  This is a factor of the quality and maintenance of the machines and raw materials, the quality of handling, the ability and willingness of the QC process to find issues.  Varies coin to coin.

Number 1 is going to be very subjective.  RM release a lot more designs each year than they used to, and whether one is better than another varies with personal opinion.

Number 2, the relief and detail inherent in the designs, have clearly worsened.  e.g. In bullion, it is obvious to see the newer sovereigns are flatter and more 'jelly' like than they used to be.  I don't think that is disputable.  And with the albeit limited sample of microscope photos I have taken, you can clearly see the detail in proof sovereigns has diminished over the last e.g. 30 years.  And there is an obvious trade off in the real world.  A highly ambitious design will probably cost more, be harder to mint, and will generate more faulty coins.

Before this is a 100% Royal Mint bashing exercise, I would say that I saw similar reduction in detail with Perth Mint coins across the same time period.

Whether 3 has become worse in absolute terms, I honestly don't know.  From all the voices on the forum, clearly it has.  But I haven't been collecting long enough, and I don't own enough 'older' proof coins to see that objectively.  Coin for coin, I have no idea what the return rates used to be.  I think the return rates for everything, from cars to lightbulbs, is much higher than it used to be (for all sorts of reasons), so again that is very difficult to compare.  I know that people are now able to scrutinise coins in far more detail.  I also know that people on this forum are far more discerning than the average punter.

My personal experience buying proof coins from RM is that the first time I receive a proof it probably has a 70% chance of having unacceptable levels of faults.  I will send it back and the second time it will have maybe a 20% chance of having unacceptable faults.  This has happened multiple times.  The difference between those numbers is too large to be a coincidence.

So... one must conclude that RM has a systemic bias, either intentional or not, between the first release of coins and later fulfilling of returns.  I am sure conspiracy theories abound.  To be explicit, an example of an unintentional bias could be that the returns are fulfilled with later runs, where they have learned about the characteristics of the coin, are producing lower numbers, and therefore the chance of coins having errors is reduced.  And example of an intentional bias could be that they believe the majority of their sales will be to people who don't scrutinise the coins closely, so they hold back the higher quality coins for those that bother to complain.

Discuss.

14 minutes ago, Upsidedown said:

What actually is frosting?

Excuse my ignorance as I don't collect proof/frosted coins.

I was under the impression a rougher part of the die causes the effect, or is it just stuck on by I assume knowing the royal mint, PVA

How does frosting come off?

My understanding is that it is created by laser etching, sand or bead blasting the surface of the die with various materials.

Because it forms a very fine 'detailed' surface, it is very fragile, and tends to go missing on sharp edges and bends in the design.  Plus it can break off.