Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/California Pacific International Exposition half dollar/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Ian Rose via FACBot (talk) 04:02, 17 November 2018 [1].

California Pacific International Exposition half dollar

Nominator(s): Wehwalt (talk) 19:42, 30 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about... a coin whose high mintage proved to be its undoing as relatively few sold. Unusually, the sponsors went back to Congress and got a second year of striking, but again, most wound up melted. Still, it's a beautiful design.Wehwalt (talk) 19:42, 30 September 2018 (UTC) Note: this will be transcluded tomorrow morning.[reply]

Support

Nice article in an impressive series. Two very minor points to consider, neither of which affect my support:

Lead

"the reverse buildings": I stumbled over this slightly; perhaps "the reverse shows buildings"?

Production

I was slightly confused by what the "1935–S half dollar" is and it took a little time and searching before it became clear. Maybe just a word or two to introduce the term (possibly when describing the mint mark)?

Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 15:12, 5 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I've done those things. Thank you for the review and support.--Wehwalt (talk) 19:37, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Tony1

1a, lead and first bit.

Comma splice: "Its obverse depicts Minerva and other elements of the Seal of California, the reverse shows buildings from the California Pacific International Exposition (held 1935–1936) which the coin was issued to honor." A semicolon would fix it.

Fixed.

"Left with over 180,000 pieces unsold as sales ground to a halt, the Exposition Commission went back to Congress for additional legislation so it could return the unsold pieces and have new coins, dated 1936, struck to sell in the second year of the fair's run."—"as sales ground to a halt" is dramatic and appears to mark something that isn't explained. If that's explained later, why not avoid raising a big question-mark in the lead? The sentence is quite long enough without. "Melting" is mentioned only for the second, 1936 tranche; but I presume the unsold 1935 version was melted too. I had to read it several times to work it out. If "many pieces of both dates were melted" in the final sentence were earlier in the paragraph, it would be much easier to apprehend. It begs the question of why there was such overestimation, twice. That's what is surprising historically ... but I had to think too hard to extract that. Also, you might think it's obvious, but the mint needed the excess metal to make the 1936 version. Can it be easier for readers?

There was often such overestimation, especially when the coin was proposed to be sold at a fair. The physical metal from the first coins were not necessarily used to make the second, indeed probably not because of the delay while the metal went through the processes. It was probably used to make other coins, but we wouldn't know what.

"One of the largest expositions of its kind, it was situated on 1,400 acres (570 ha), and cost $20 million. The fair attracted some 3.75 million people during its two-year run"—it was held? 3.75 million visitors?

I'm not sure what you're saying here.

I'm suggesting situated -> held, and people -> visitors. Tony (talk) 11:36, 11 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

That's done.--Wehwalt (talk) 20:20, 11 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The prose generally looks ok from a very quick look through. I'm sure I'd find more niggles, though. Tony (talk) 08:08, 10 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Possibly so. Thanks for reviewing.--Wehwalt (talk) 04:55, 11 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Spot-check, 1a, in "Production, distribution, and collecting":

"the mintage of a quarter million coins, far in excess of some other issues of the era, meant that ..." – not prose, but query over whether a reference (or link) is needed for the "other" numbers.

Not really, the motivation for not buying the coins is discussed in the sources.

Two instances of sentence-initial "Accordingly, ..." close by. I think the second one isn't needed. The first one doesn't need a comma, either.

I've changed the first to "Thus," I think the second one does need some sort of introduction as a bridge from the activities of the previous paragraph, thus the "Accordingly,"

Commas can be a personal choice, sure, but why not unbump the first one here: "Coin collectors would view this as a new variety, and possibly buy both, and ~~the~~ melting of the returned coins would decrease the supply and (hopefully) increase the attractiveness of the remaining 1935-S specimens."

Good thought. I've done that.

"G. Aubrey Davidson, chairman of the Exposition Commission, wrote to Acting Director of the Mint Mary M. O'Reilly on May 16, 1936,"—chairman, but caps for Acting Director? Simpler to downcase all, I think.

Director of the Mint is something I generally capitalize, even though the full title would be "Director of the United States Mint". I think caps for that title (including the acting) look best, and it's how the sources do it. I know they don't bind us, but I'm minded to go that way.

Fast coins? "asking that the coins (which were to be struck at the Denver Mint and bear its mint mark "D") be expedited"

Tweaked.

"as heavy traffic was expected at the fair around Memorial Day at the end of May."—cars or buses?

Changed to "attendance"

There's a lot of struck, strike, striking all at once. And this is very confusing: "The striking at the Denver Mint made the California Pacific half dollar the first commemorative to be struck at San Francisco and at Denver, but not at Philadelphia, and the only pre-1954 commemorative with that distinction." Please simplify and split up a bit.

It's sometimes hard to find an effective synonym for "Struck". "Minted" is the obvious but given that the striking takes place in a mint, sometimes I can't use that. I've changed a few.

"less than 30,000 of the 1936-D had been sold"—fewer.

OK

Mint Mint. And Davidson was blaming thus, not suggesting to Ross that this be the public story? It's unclear: "On January 27, 1937, Davidson wrote to the Director of the Mint, Nellie Tayloe Ross, asking if the Mint would accept some 150,000 coins for refund, with the glut blamed on having a relatively short period to sell them."

Yes, that was his excuse, but obviously that doesn't fully add up, had they had three times the time they still would not have sold all the coins. But I suppose he had to say something like that. I've altered the Mint/Mint

this This, and a slightly awkward within-sentence quoting: Swiatek, in his 2012 volume on commemoratives, stated that this was "to create the appearance of demand and future rarity. This didn't work."

Fixed.

Tony (talk) 10:46, 1 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Up to date again. Thank you for your comments.--Wehwalt (talk) 11:30, 1 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Support from Tim riley

Well up to the unflagging standard of Wehwalt's coin articles. Clear, comprehensive, well and widely sourced and well illustrated. Clearly of FA standard in my view. I have tried to find something to quibble about and the best I can come up with is "a number of medieval gold coins" – which is a bit vague, but if that's what the source says, so be it. I should like to put it on record that the sentence "A grizzly bear is to the left of Minerva" has made my day. We don't get that sort of thing on our coins in Britain. Tim riley talk 12:55, 15 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Support from Jim

Like Tim, I couldn't find anything worth quibbling over Jimfbleak - talk to me? 15:28, 20 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you both for the reviews and supports. Tim, I am traveling now and do not have immediate access to the source, but I don't think the source, which tends towards pithiness, would have gone into greater detail.--Wehwalt (talk) 00:56, 26 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Support from Moise

Have read through twice and made a few small edits. This is well written and I support on prose. Moisejp (talk) 05:12, 1 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your review and support, and for the article improvement.--Wehwalt (talk) 08:00, 1 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Sources

I'll pick up the review on the sources. Be with you a little later in the day. - SchroCat (talk) 08:27, 5 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Formatting

All good, aside from Authorize recoinage of 50-cent pieces in connection needs a 'subscription' tag, and the two Yeoman editions are published by "Whitman Publishing" and "Whitman Publishing, LLC", in Atlanta, Georgia and Atlanta, GA, both of which you should standardise.

Scope and reliability

As far as I can tell from examining the background of the sources/publishers, all sources used are reliable and high quality.
Searches (Google Books Internet Archive and JSTOR) show two other possible sources that are unused here. I suspect you've already considered them, and found them wanting against things you've used, but if you could confirm that is the case I'd be obliged

Numismatic notes & monographs (1938) – Page 123
The Numismatist – Volume 121, Issues 1-6 – Page 44

Spot checks

I don't have access to any of these sources, as they seem not to be readable on Google Books, or through the Amazon 'Look Inside' function, so would you be able to send me a photo or scan of the following just for a quick check:

Bowers, pp. 313–315
Swiatek, pp. 260 and 261
Swiatek & Breen, p. 38.
Vermeule, pp. 190–191

Cheers – SchroCat (talk) 16:42, 5 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry, I'm traveling at present and don't have the books with me. Can you check via Google books or similar? As for The Numismatist, can you give me a year and month?--Wehwalt (talk) 18:15, 5 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

2008 is the year, but I can't see the month. The Google Books link (only a snippet view from here) is here, which may help.

I didn't have much luck accessing the pages on Google Books, but I'll run through them again to see if I can pick same of them up. Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 18:22, 5 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Added one more point on the formatting for you. - SchroCat (talk) 18:49, 5 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I've looked at The Numismatist article (June 2008). I think I looked at it at the time. It's an article on Aitken, which has about four paragraphs on the California piece, none of which breaks any ground away from the existing sources. Numismatic Notes and Queries is actually David Bullowa's 1938 work on commemoratives, that I've cited in other articles, but was not aware was on JSTOR. I've added a quote box and used it in the article. Thanks.--Wehwalt (talk) 19:45, 5 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

OK, thanks for the downloads of the Congressional sources. I've done the spot checks on these, and they cover the information that has been cited for, with no close paraphrasing, etc. Formatting, scope and reliability, and spot checks now all good: Source review passed on that basis. Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 12:06, 6 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much.--Wehwalt (talk) 19:13, 6 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

All images are appropriately licensed
However File:Seal of California.svg has a redundant PD-US-not renewed license that could be profitably eliminated.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 15:06, 16 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the review. Out of caution, I'm going to leave the tag alone.--Wehwalt (talk) 21:47, 16 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Closing note: This candidate has been promoted, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see WP:FAC/ar, and leave the {{featured article candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. Ian Rose (talk) 04:02, 17 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.