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1921 Indochina Piastres struck at San Francisco-who made the dies?
Que_sai_je
Posts: 101 ✭✭✭
I hope a Morgan $ specialist might know this:
The top coin in the photo is the best struck FIC 1P 1921 SF mint in any grade that I can find a photo of. Compare to normal strike in the bottom of photo.
All the well struck ones I saw are from the exact same (cracked) die pair.
Trying to reason out why, and I came up with the following scenario:
SF Mint got finished dies from Paris, they cracked, and the striking pressure reduced for next 5 million coins to save the dies.
I'm not aware of lots of cracked dies for 1921 Morgans.
Any relatively painless way to find out if this, or the opposite (the SF Mint made their own dies which just failed) is true?
2
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I don' t have any info about the pictured examples, but I do know that Morgan dies in 1921 we constantly stretched to their limits and die cracks are pretty common for that particular date.
The United States Mint Report for fiscal year ending June 30, 1922 indicates 55 dies were manufactured at San Francisco for Indo-China coinage (5,000,000 pieces struck).
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112068051132&view=1up&seq=18
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112068051132&view=1up&seq=36
My PC 64 shows the same reverse die crack, but it was not as were developed as the crack on the 65 coin.
Jeff
Thank you Jeff- that settles it, just meh quality made-in-USA dies.
PS Just got the MS65 back from PCGS. It's not a full strike but reasonably close and has very few post striking marks.
@Que_sai_je
You're welcome. Your MS65 example is extremely attractive!
Jeff