My New Half Dime Variety Acquisition - Misplaced Date

ms70

She's a little dirty but she's mine. The TrueView just came in. You can see the partial date just below the rock, just above the full date. One theory I read about how this happened is the punch may have been momentarily rested in that spot prior to punching the date and left behind the partial impression.

MPD FS-301 - AU50

Hemispherical

Congrats @ms70 on a your new variety!

Edit to your “My” @ms70.

ms70

@Hemispherical said:
Congrats @ms70 a new variety!

Thanks! I edited the title to add "My". I don't want to cause any confusion.

ricko

Congratulations...I had not heard of this one before... Good detail when magnified. Cheers, RickO

yosclimber

Very nice. I have not seen very many of these in the old CoinFacts photos, although the 1995 survey in Gobrecht Journal #62 listed 10 examples (none in MS).
Here is a page from the original discovery article from 1994, online at the Newman Numismatic Portal.

(photo by Tom Mulvaney)
https://archive.org/details/gobrechtjournalfn060libe/page/4

JasonGaming

Cool variety! Congrats!

Unknown

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ms70

Thanks for the article yosclimber. That's the first time I've seen it. It's interesting how he refers to it as 1853/1853/2.

jabba

Cool and crusty

yosclimber

@ms70 said:
... It's interesting how he refers to it as 1853/1853/2.

I'm not convinced it's really /2 .
Some people would make descriptions like that at the time without solid evidence.

scubafuel

I see definite raised impressions above the date. They line up with the numbers but don’t looks much like the bottoms of the date digits to me. Could they just be coincidentally placed die chips?

yosclimber

There was a similar MPD(?) variety discovered in 2005 - I put the photos together for comparison.
I agree, the extra raised areas do not match the date logo punch very well, so I'm not sure what their origin was.
Here's a link to the 2005 Gobrecht Journal article on the Newman Numismatic Portal:
https://archive.org/details/gobrechtjournalfn093libe/page/21

ms70

I agree as well. I was thinking if the theory of the date punch being rested there is true, I'm wondering if it was more than a simple impression and possibly it was moved around a couple of times making the marks wider than the date. The piece above the 5 is wider than any part of the displayed digits unless it was dead center and moved one digit right. Possibly that's the middle of the 8 above the 5?

Staircoins

Congrats on the pickup.

Perfect time to have had Mrhalfdime tell us all about it.

yosclimber

@ms70 said:
I agree as well. I was thinking if the theory of the date punch being rested there is true, I'm wondering if it was more than a simple impression and possibly it was moved around a couple of times making the marks wider than the date. The piece above the 5 is wider than any part of the displayed digits unless it was dead center and moved one digit right. Possibly that's the middle of the 8 above the 5?

That's roughly the theory that Blythe advanced in his article linked above - that the 3 main blobs are tops of the 1 8 5.
It would seem to require 2 impacts, though, because the spacing between the "1 top" and the center of the "8 top" is wider than on the date.

yosclimber

@Staircoins said:
Perfect time to have had Mrhalfdime tell us all about it.

Although @MrHalfDime is unable to post, the Notes from his impressive Reference Collection database have been saved, and I have a slightly truncated copy.
He listed his Coin #1552 as 1852/3/2, AU-50, acquired 6/22/2004.
His Note on this coin:
"A bona fide example of Al Blythe's "1853/3/2", but this is decidedly NOT a repunched date, but a crumbled die. All of the evidence that Al calls repunched numerals on his MS example can be seen to be die crumbling on this example. One of only three exampl [truncated at this point]"
So @MrHalfDime can still tell you all about it!
(and we are working on finding an untruncated copy of his Notes).

ms70

The two impact idea is exactly what I was pondering. Thanks @yosclimber for the info. That untruncated version of MrHalfDime's article would be greatly appreciated.

Staircoins

@yosclimber said:

@Staircoins said:
Perfect time to have had Mrhalfdime tell us all about it.

Although @MrHalfDime is unable to post, the Notes from his impressive Reference Collection database have been saved, and I have a slightly truncated copy.
He listed his Coin #1552 as 1852/3/2, AU-50, acquired 6/22/2004.
His Note on this coin:
"A bona fide example of Al Blythe's "1853/3/2", but this is decidedly NOT a repunched date, but a crumbled die. All of the evidence that Al calls repunched numerals on his MS example can be seen to be die crumbling on this example. One of only three exampl [truncated at this point]"
So @MrHalfDime can still tell you all about it!
(and we are working on finding an untruncated copy of his Notes).

Thank you. That confirms what I remember Steve saying ... that this was absolutely NOT a repunched date. I couldn't recall if this was the variety he was referencing when he made that remark or not though. (Of course, there may have been other so-called so-called RPDs he disproved, and about which he commented in the same way.)