March 2, 2009:

"Max Mehl in 1946"

Author:
D. Wnuck

Concept:
We tried to focus on what makes this coin so appealing, which to us would be its abject originality, and the fact that it is pedigreed to Wiliam Cutler Atwater (whose collection was sold my Max Mehl in 1946).

So we figured we’d combine all that and add the element of it having been lovingly preserved (i.e. not screwed up by some coin-doctoring idiot) in the intervening 63 years.

Captions that didn’t make the cut:
We briefly considered "Once part of the ‘Most Expensive Collection Ever Sold’ (so it must be pretty good)."

It’s also true, as Atwater’s vast collection sold for more money in 1946 than any other had up until that time. But the problems with that caption were four-fold:

It was awkward.
It had quotes within quotes (which we do not like).
We figured no one would understand what the heck we were talking about.
We don’t like to focus too much on money, or suggest that just because a coin is expensive it must be good. The fact is a lot of expensive coins are awful, and we wouldn’t want to own them.

So we opted for the originality angle instead.

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"Max Mehl in 1946"