#wire rim

[sspacegodd]

Have you seen my glasses?

[mudwerks]

(via 1907 $10 Wire Rim MS64 NGC. The 1907 Wire Rim tens are | LotID #11001 | Heritage Auctions)

1907 $10 Wire Rim MS64 NGC. The 1907 Wire Rim tens are technically patterns (Judd-1901) yet are collected alongside the regular-issue coins in the series. The coins were struck in an amount of roughly 500 pieces (some sources number 472). When one stops to consider the 1907 "Wire Rim" tens versus the MCMVII "High Relief" twenties, the nomenclature of the former feels a bit ironic. Both represent the issues that are most faithful to the original Saint-Gaudens design concept, translated into coins that were still of high relief and that required special care for striking -- coins that would never have been struck without the "bully pulpit" of President Theodore Roosevelt and the superb skill of Augustus Saint-Gaudens.

These were never coins that could be produced on high-speed production presses, as Mint Engraver Charles Barber ceaselessly pointed out. But to call the 1907 "Wire Rims" such is to overemphasize what is, in reality, a rather minor feature. In fact, most of the MCMVII High Reliefs also feature a wire rim, and they are called as such to distinguish them from the Flat Rim pieces -- yet again, that terminology somewhat misses the point...