Originally posted by BubbaZ
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This is great -- three minesweeper geeks on one thread!
Yes, I saw those level 4 examples with the dull left water crest and meant to change that to "sharp or dull" in the table but forgot to before posting.
Once we've collected more observations and corrections I'll post an updated table. And eventually obverse examples would indeed be a nice addition since perhaps it's possible to see progressive die wear -- although I would suspect that obverse die wear may be slower for these die cast badges than for die struck badges.
It's interesting to me that all the 9-wave variants, regardless of which of the 3 fonts that are seen with it, have the mark at the lowest three levels. And also perhaps noteworthy that the Level 7 with it's non-serif font seems to have more concavity to the water spout then either Levels 6 or 8 with the two different serif fonts, making Level 7 more similar to its Level 4,5 "brothers". My own Level 6 serif font badge is still en route so I'll have a better sense of it's relative concavity when it arrives, but it does seem to me that Level 7 with the non-serif font is more concave than Level 6.
Although I've currently placed them in consecutive descending order of the level of the maker mark, I suspect the true timeline may place level 7 before level 6, next to it's higher brothers with the same font.
I postulate the following train of events: After Level 5 production, the obverse die is altered or repaired by the graveur resulting in the next three 9-wave variants. The first "9-wavers" use the same reverse die as Levels 4 and 5 but with the mm moved down to the level 7 position. Perhaps after that, having gone through so many previous alterations, it was necessary to make a new reverse die for the Level 6 and 8 production resulting in a product with less concavity to the reverse of the water spout?
Best regards,
---Norm
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