1854 Half Dime - Date covered by base

Windycity

Note in the below images that the date is partially covered by the base of the Seated Liberty. Haven't seen this before... enough to be considered a collectible variety?

amwldcoin

Yes, It is a known variety.

edwardjulio

V-1?
Obv. High wide date. All the tops of the numerals merge with the base. Right arrow touches crosslet of 4 and the milling. Left arrow is clear and the shaft is half way down the standard of the 1.
Rev. Heavy lettering. Die crack at U of UNITED to edge.

Valentine.

Barndog

Steve Crain had three that were documented: https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/imagecollection/514182

screen shot

Windycity

You guys are a wealth of knowledge. Thanks!!

ms70

I just checked and the one in my collection just happens to be that variety.

XF45

yosclimber

[PCGS CoinFacts photo, AU-58]
Yes, it's V-1, one of the best "naked eye" varieties that year.
On the reverse you may be able to see die cracks at U and T of UNITED.
It reminds me of the 1848 V-1 "Large Date" where the date overlaps the base similarly.
It is not a rare variety; there are usually several available on ebay for example.

[Heritage photos]
The other easily identifiable (but somewhat rare) variety for 1854 has big diagonal reverse cracks.
Steve Crain (@MrHalfDime) had 6 of these in his collection.
He wrote:

Heavily clashed and then severely shattered reverse die. Clashing first appeared in lower right wreath, and up through E of DIME and F of HALF. Extensive die cracks developed along the clash lines, and later throughout much of the reverse die. See coins #

It's not in Valentine's book, and does not have an official V- number yet.

As usual in this series, there are several 1854 die pairs distinguished by date position and some small cracks.
Valentine (1931) identified 6. I have found auction photos for about 4 of these, plus another 5 or so.

Coinosaurus

Cool variety. Is the date the same as the date punch on the dime? It's clearly too large for the denomination.

ms70

It looks as if another common marker is what appears to be a die chip inside the lower loop of the "8" at 6:00.

yosclimber

@Coinosaurus said:
Cool variety. Is the date the same as the date punch on the dime? It's clearly too large for the denomination.

The 1854 V-1 did not use the dime date punch (like the 1848 V-1 has been claimed to use), as far as I know.
It's a tad large, having to fit in with the arrows, but it only has to move down a little to fit in.

[PCGS CoinFacts photo, MS-64]
Here is the date location for another variety (maybe the V-7 with RP 18 west), where everything pretty much fits.
Admittedly, the fit can often be fairly tight in some years for half dimes.

@ms70, I am not sure if the uneven edge in the lower loop of the 8 is part of the date gang punch, or in the V-1 obverse die.

yosclimber

Here is a correctly scaled comparison of the 1854 V-1 half dime (top) and a dime (bottom) date punches from two coins.
The dime punch is slightly bigger.
Unless there were other dime date punches which were smaller, this suggests a dime date punch was not
used on the 1854 V-1 half dime obverse.

Here is an unscaled comparison of 1854 half dime (top) and dime (bottom) date areas.
It shows the relative crowding on each.
It also shows the tops of the 1 and 5 are slightly different styles.
Note that the half dime arrows were smaller relative to the date, compared with the dime.

Jimnight

Cool.

yosclimber

As a check, I also made a correctly(?) scaled comparison of the dates for 1848 V-1 half dime (top) and an 1848 dime (bottom).
Both original photos have 2905 pixels vertically.
Since the half dime had diameter 15.9 mm, and the dime 17.9 mm, I shrunk the half dime photo to 15.9/17.9 = .8882 = 88.82% of its original size.

The photo array suggests these are not the same date punch.
The V-1 half dime date punch is actually larger than the dime punch for this dime obverse.
And the height of the 4 crosslet (or serif) is different relative to the 8 loops to its right.
There might be other dime punches; I did not check this.
Alternatively, the V-1 half dime punch might be from a gold denomination.
Some of the size difference could be due to how the half dime date seems more deeply impressed in the die;
this could explain the taller crosslet on the 4.
I might have also made some error in the way I scaled the photos.

A second curiosity is that on the 1848 V-1 half dime, the tops of the digits are visible, on top of the base.
But on the 1854 V-1, the base is on top of the digits.
This suggests that the date was punched more deeply into the die on the 1848.

Here is an alternative photo comparison,
where the dime is the upper layer, at 50% opacity.
I lined up the 1 on both dates. By the time you reach the final 8, the dime date is again shorter than the half dime date.
However, they seem quite proportional.
So I might not have scaled them correctly; for example if the borders in the photos were not proportional.

Thanks to @PCGSPhoto and PCGS CoinFacts for creating and sharing quality photos that make this type of study possible!

BuffaloIronTail

Nice pics and great input and explanation on this variety.

Pete

ricko

Great pictures... and good to see the enlargement feature has been restored....Cheers, RickO

johnny9434

I like

Coinosaurus

Great photo work.

At some point the superintendent must have pulled the coiner into his office and said something to the effect of "who the f--- makes half dime digit punches LARGER than the dime punches?? And what idiot decided to actually use them??"

The correspondence of this period tends to be all polite. I'm guessing it was not always so in person.

yosclimber

I'm thinking, most likely the 1848 V-1 really was made with the dime date punch,
but I just didn't properly account for how the photos I used do not include the full diameter of the dime or half dime.
So my 88.8% shrinkage was maybe not enough.
Best way to tell for sure would be to shoot both the 1848 V-1 and an 1848 dime in the same photo;
that way no rescaling is needed.
Or shoot them in 2 consecutive photos where you don't change the zoom (this is what I did below).

Here's what I got with the pretty low grade examples in my collection (V-1 half dime on top, dime on bottom).
They are closer in size than my previous scaling attempt.

The pixel diameters of the coins in the uncropped versions of these photos are
half dime = 3529
dime = 4077
ratio = .8656 , which is smaller than the .8882 that I used for scaling before.

All the shapes and positions are looking very proportional, and very close in size.
I think the V-1 really did use a dime date punch.