Bessie Coleman quarters with reverse die gouges of feeder finger origin, and the "Spitting Bessie"

SPalladino

I just completed a study of 82 Bessie Coleman quarters with reverse die gouges of feeder finger origin. Nine different dies were identified - seven from the Denver mint and a two from the Philadelphia mint. If you are interested in this sort of thing, here is the write-up (with lots of photos) on Google Docs: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vR7NYT7y_kRHc--jIPcinnaz9yxfCvrquIc7m_M5cKTEgPdHqk0a1FdRE318r59kMbJ0e4hl-S1d2TE/pub

joeykoins

Hey, those were the first spotted.
Very cool!

ricko

@SPalladino... Thanks for the great pictures and the link. Cheers, RickO

messydesk

Interesting. You state that none are progressive in nature. Are there other die markers you have found to demonstrate this? A second feed finger gouge on the same die can change the appearance of the first one.

SPalladino

@messydesk said:
Interesting. You state that none are progressive in nature. Are there other die markers you have found to demonstrate this? A second feed finger gouge on the same die can change the appearance of the first one.

Great point. All markers were stable for each die. Of course, you can see that in some cases, the number of coins examined bearing unique die markers (eg, Denver dies 4-7 and Philly dies 1&2) were few, so I cannot account for other manifestations not included.
And to be clear, when I wrote:

none of the gouges have demonstrated progression in length, or extension into the devices

I was distinguishing the gouge(s) from what has been claimed to be a die crack by some eBay sellers, which is simply not the case.