The Stone Mountain Memorial commemorative half dollar is one of my all-time favorite coin designs. A wide range of condition and quality of these coins is available to discerning collectors.
From the time when I was 11 or 12 in the forested foothills of the western Oregon Willamette Valley and found my first arrowhead, an obsidian "bird point", in a field my dad had plowed for an experimental crop of maize, I have always wondered about the people who used these stone tools, and how they produced them.
When I found a chip of obsidian in a roadside park along the McKenzie River upstream from Springfield on a day trip to the mountains I decided to attempt to make my own arrowhead.
That first point, with the broken wings of its base, still sits somewhere in an old footlocker, along with a collection of several dozen points and blades.
I eventually discovered that the world wide web has made wide spread connections to top quality stone more readily available than ever was dreamed of by the ancient, foot-weary practitioners of this fascinating craft. It also makes available to the student a wonderful range of teachers and mentors, who are dedicated to making certain that the hard-won skills which have been rediscovered by chance, study and experimentation over the past century or so are not soon lost.