1794 dollar and history of silver plugs (question)

Higashiyama

(I don't want to muck up that wonderful thread on the 1794 dollars with this tangential question, but would appreciate comments)


It is interesting that the Amon Carter specimen has a silver plug, and TDN's suggestion that it may have been a test of the silver plug concept is also interesting.

Since silver plugs were tested in 1794, but I believe not used in 1795 after the switch to the draped bust design, was use of the silver plug limited to the earlier strikings of the flowing hair design in 1795? What caused use of the silver plug to be so limited? What is the most credible guess as to how many silver plug dollars remain?

Nic

Great questions. Why a plug and adjustment marks on a "specimen" ? K

EVillageProwler

Why a plug and adjustment marks on a "specimen" ?

Hypothesizing just like everyone else who doesn't have a time machine... I offer the possibility that the modified planchets, whether with the weight adjusted downwards or plugged upwards (or both), were all mixed in a container with the other unadjusted blanks.

As Rittenhouse wrote in another thread, the quality of the surface (i.e., it's PL-ish) is no proof that the coin is an early strike for the date. Certainly, all we know that it's an early strike for that die state. (There are other reasons why researchers feel that the Carter specimen can indeed be the first silver specimen of that date struck.)

Anyway, assuming that the adjusted and unadjusted blanks were all mixed together, some Mint employee can, by chance, have picked up an adjusted blank and used that as the planchet for striking the Carter "specimen" coin.

This, of course, presumes that this coin is most likely a very early strike. If not -- if it's merely an early striking of an intermediate die state (right after the die polishing) -- then it seems unlikely that this was struck for presentation purposes.

I don't have my Red Book next to me, but I believe that there's officially somewhere between 1700 and 1800 1794-dated specimens struck. And, only a single known specimen with a silver plug. If you look at the population of known 1795-dated dollars, you'll see that the most plentiful die marriage with the silver plug is the BB-18 with BB-21, I think, not too far behind in numbers of known plugged specimens.

These two die marriages were probably used during the middle (or slightly earlier) of the year because they fall somewhere in the middle of the supposed emission sequence (as per Bowers and Borckardt) for that year. The most populous FH variety is the BB-27, but that accounts for ONE recently discovered plugged specimen.

Ahhh... where is H.G. Wells when we need him?!?

EVP