The Importance of What's Missing: A Shield Variety

IGWT

Pictured here is an 1866 5c with nice luster underlying original surfaces (the dark line on the shield is a shadow of a scratch on the slab, and the line over TRUST is a slab scratch). But this coin is more than just a pretty piece (if any Shield can be considered pretty ). It’s missing part of its design.



Look at the second leaf cluster on the right. There are three instead of four laurel leaves in this cluster; the outer leaf in the cluster isn’t there. Here’s a close-up for better viewing:



The missing leaf is an important part of the Shield Nickel story. It tells us that the outer leaf in the second cluster must have been missing from the master hub (so, of course, it could not have been sculpted into the galvano by Longacre). If you look closely at the fourth leaf that’s not missing from Shields struck with dies from obverse Hub A (used from 1866 through part of 1869), you’ll notice that no two are exactly alike. The leaves were hand engraved in each and every working die. The numerous shapes and sizes of engraved leaves are important to Shield collectors because they – along with date placements – serve as die markers. The missing leaf is a major character in the story of the Shield Nickel even though it rarely shows up. It's the variety that explains the multitude of unique engraved leaves.

The missing leaf also calls into question the die-making process explained by Q. David Bowers in his recently released Guide Book of Shield and Liberty Head Nickels (2006) (“Guide Book”). Mr. Bowers theorizes that numerous steps were involved in production of Shield dies: (1) Master Hub (shield device with leaves but without lines for chief or paleways); (2) First-Generation Master Die (IGWT, horizontal and vertical lines of shield, denticles, and possibly the berries were added); (3) Second-Generation Master Hub; (4) Second-Generation Master Die (arrowhead, arrow fletches, and possibly cross added); (5) Working Hub; and (6) Working Die (dated added). See Guide Book at 64-65.

Mr. Bowers accounts for the minor differences in Shield obverses by suggesting that changes were made to the Second-Generation Master Die in 1869 and again in 1872. There’s no doubt that the problem of the missing leaf was solved in 1869; the fourth leaf was no longer hand engraved on each and every working die. But Mr. Bower’s theory runs counter to a consensus among students of the Shield series that the differences are attributable to different hubs, not to different dies.

Now, if you’re still with me, you may be wondering what on earth the missing leaf means in all this. The point is made best by asking this question: If there were First- and Second-Generation Master Dies as Mr. Bowers suggests, then why wasn’t the problem of the missing leaf fixed earlier than 1869. That is, the die makers could have engraved the missing leaf into a master die instead of into each and every working die. Let's remember that mintages for 1866-1868 total about 74,500,000 nickels. The working dies lasted on average for 20,000 strikes at most (Ed Fletcher says 10-15,000 coins per die ). The math shows that the die makers would have had to produce no fewer 3,700 obverse dies for those years (and even more if you consider that obverse A was used through most of 1869). It's hard to conceive of the stupidity involved in hand engraving the fourth leaf into that number of working dies (except for the 30 or so missing-leaf dies) if the change easily could have been made on a master die. In other words, the telltale missing leaf suggests that working dies were pressed directly from the master hub.

I'm pretty well convinced that we'll never "reverse engineer" the die-making process by looking at the finished product. There's no way to tell with a reasonable degree of certainty what the exact process was without original source documentation from the mint as corroboration. Anything presented on this topic at this point in time, with all due respect and IMHO, ought to be acknowledged as a mere a possibility.

Bochiman

No problem...you have them in your post now so I am removing them from mine

IGWT

I'm not sure what went wrong; they showed up in my preview! Thank you.

ms70

Thanks for a very interesting post. I did not know this!

pharmer

Very interesting and informative thread.

DNADave

Thank you. VERY intersting and something new for me.
Enjoyed reading and searching through Heritage archives, looking at the 4th leaf variation.

Shamika

Even though I'm not interested in Shield coinage, this is a great post.

Connecticoin

IGWT, very interesting, thanks for sharing. I will print this, fold it, and place in my new QDB Shield/Liberty nickel book, which I have not had a chance to read yet.

Maybe you can spice up the title a tad:
Shield Nickel "Missing Leaf" Variety -- after 100+ years, still shrouded in mystery!!

mgoodm3

Interesting. I mustered the necessary attention span and read it.

IGWT

<< <i>Interesting. I mustered the necessary attention span and read it. >>



That's the least you could do since I mustered the attention span to read your entire article on photography.

mgoodm3

Wow, you read that drivel? You must have a bigger attention span than me.

messydesk

Interesting. Being one of those with VAM's disease, I'm used to seeing the small, hand-engraved feathers below the eagle's wings on 1878 8TF, 1878-S and 1879-S Rev. of 78 coins. The touch-up job appears to have been done as the dies were being used, since there are fundamental differences between the engraving on the 78-S coins and that on the 78 8TF. Among the 8TF, there appears to be a couple different styles that could suggest more than one touch-up engraver in Philadelphia.

Your point about the math is well taken. Hand-engraving a major design element on 3700 working dies over the course of 3 years seems a waste of time. In the case of the Morgan dollars, there were 17 reverse 8TF dies used over the course of 2 weeks. 14 have notable engraved feathes, all of which are easily discernable from each other. Considering the scope of the work that went into making dollars at the time, minor touch-up engravng on one die each day seems not a big deal. Major engraving on over 3 dies per day for 3 years, on the other hand, seems foolish.

Are all 4th leaf coins discernable from each other? Could a "4th leaf" punch have been created for this purpose? Do variations in the 4th leaf number fewer in 1868, suggesting that eventually the 2nd generation master die was hand-engraved? Are there identical hand engraving "fingerprints" that have different die cracks in the coins that could also suggest this? Can you post a few engraved 4th leaves for us to see?

MikeInFL

A great post worth bumping for the daytime crowd...Mike

Sunnywood

The multi-step sequence of master & working hubs and dies was clearly NOT introduced until 1869-1870. I had the privilege of contributing heavily to the discussions that went into the recenlty published book, but this particular aspect of the discussions was not included.

The original gerneration of shield nickel dies (one obverse, one With Rays reverse, and one No Rays reverse) were hand made prototypes, and are distinguished by a raised center dot. Those can be found on 1866 proofs, and on the J-507 1866 No Rays transitional pattern, and the rare 1867 No Rays regular issue proo with the transitional pattern raverse (with the center dot). After that, the first production working dies were made, I believe directly from a master. So instead of master hub (riased devices), to master die (incuse devices), to working master (raised devices) to working die (incuse devices), I believe from 1866 to 1869, the process only included master hub (raised devices) to working die (incuse devices). BECAUSE of some of the screw-ups, including the missing leaf obverse hub, and the rapid demise of the reverse of 1868 reverse hub with its succession of broken letters, the Mint switched to the four-step process.

Here is my proof for this: in 1868 a new reverse hub was introduced (the Reverse of 1868). But the hub was not heat treated properly, and the raised lettering (UNITED STATES OF AMERICA) began to chip off with the production of more and more reverse working dies. Thus it is EXTREMELY RARE to find an 1868 with the Reverse of '68 hub (as determined by star positions), which also has NO BROKEN LETTERS. (By contrast, it is easy to fin a "garden variety" 1868 with the reverse of 1867 hub that has no broken letters). A succession of dies was produced with more broken letters, until the 1868 reverse hub was taken out of service, and the Mint went back to using the 1867 hub.

(Why did they try to replace the 1867 hub in the first place? Because the stars never struck up well ... they are always rounded and puffy, instead of sharp and well-defined. The 1868 hub improved the star deisgn, with lower relief and sharper radials.)

But then an interesting thing happens in 1870. A completely new reverse hub is introduced, the Reverse of 1870. And it too begins to produce a succession of chipped and broken letters. Infact, examples may be found with up to SIX broken letters. But then the Mint corrects this, and starts producing perfect reverse coins again, with no broken letters, FROM THE SAME HUB. How is that possible? Because, in 1870, they must have been using the four step process. The letters were breaking on the working master, NOT on the hub. So all they had to do was make a new working master FROM THE SAME HUB. Problem solved. Converserly, in 1868, once the letters broke off the hub, they couldn't fix it.

Thus the difference between the succession of broken letters in 1868 (which resulted in the hub being retired and replaced), versus the succession of broken letters in 1870 (which was able to be fixed WITHOUT changing the reverse hub) proves that the Mint changed the die-making process after 1868, presumably BECAUSE of the problem.

Similarly, a new obverse hub solved the missing leaf problem. The missing leaf makes it obvious that the obverses were also only a two-step process prior to 1869.

Best,
Sunnywood

66Tbird

Well that was a good read. Thanks.

keets

an interesting thread but not one worthy of begging for replies.

just because noone replied didn't mean noone read it. the nature of the post was to be informative and not one that asked a question, asked for feedback/help or anything. it simply stated some good factual information. why get bunched up when we don't acknowledge it??

IGWT

Hey, Sunnywood, not surprised that this thread prompted a response from you. I was saving the rev of '68 argument as my second punch in combination with the missing leaf, but glad to have you make it.

eyoung429

After reading through this wonderful article, I have to take a look at the coin now as I would with my VAM experience. You may be correct in the logic behind the "missing 4th leaf" but I want to point a couple of things out that I have some questions regarding.

To me, this looks almost like a grease filled die issue.

If you take a look at the specimen provided, you will notice that there is a portion of the stem protruding into the area where the design is missing. If this were anything other than tapered off, I might go with the design missing from the die. But if you look into the green circled area, you can see a portion of the stem.

I also disagree that the leaf itself is missing from the die in regards to the blue circled area that shows the buildup ABOVE the existing device where extra material is/was either shaped or forced from the device feature that is filled. This would not exist if there was no design or cavity in the die itself...this would be just the leaf below.

If you look at the area circled in red, you will notice that there is a lot of movement of metal in this area...if I put that under a higher magnification, you would notice that the area is slightly larger than the design of the leaf that was supposed to be there. (Shylock may be able to provide a tranparent overlay of an actual leaf).

I may be wrong, but I am very certain that this coin is the result of a filled die issue rather than an actual missing relief from a design on the die.

Conder101

You might think "filled die" at first, but if you examine number of coins from that period you do to find that the fourth leaf does vary in size and design and is obviously hand cut into each die. So while it MAY be possible that sometimes a "no leaf die" could be a filled die, once you start to find multiple examples from the same dies in different die states it becomes clear that they are not filled dies.

eyoung429

That I can understand. I was merely pointing out that the specimen that was given in the discussion thread, HAS the traits of a die fill and not just merely a missing design feature.

IGWT

The piece in the opening post is an example of 1866 F-24.

Sunnywood

By the way, this is NOT a filled die under any circumstances ... but I have the benefit of having studied literally hundreds of shield nickels, and having seen first hand the fact that ALL obverse dies produced from that hub either have a missing leaf, or a crudely hand-tooled replacement leaf to make up for it.

Best,
Sunnywood

howards

The coin in question is not a filled die. Multiple examples of the same die are known, and all show the same missing leaf.

In addition to IGWT's excellent introduction, the other posters (Conder101, Sunnywood) also provided correct information about missing leaf shield nickels.

JadeRareCoin

Great thread!

There's some valuable information in this thread, which is really an extension of this thread. Sorry for hijacking the other thread.

Sunnywood, that's some great information you posted....

messydesk

To bring thoughts from the other thread back into this one, you find it interesting how much money was spent making $500 worth of change if dies lasted for only 10,000 coins. Would this really have been a surprise, since 3c nickels were being made in quantity in 1865, many of which show plenty of die cracks? This should have served as a warning that trying to strike a larger coin out of the same metal would be a bigger challenge. Was the 3CN series started a year earlier than the Shield Nickels as sort of a feasibility study on the mass production of coins of that composition?

Given mint records, it should be possible to determine the cost of manufacturing a Shield Nickel in 1867. I'd assume the highest cost was that of the dies if only 10,000 coins could be struck from a pair. Labor was quite cheap then, even if you did have to have someone dedicated to crudely hacking an extra leaf into a few dies a day.

To reiterate a request I had earlier in the thread, can someone post a few pictures of some hand-engraved leaves?

Cladiator

Good post. A close friend of mine is a Shield Nickel freakazoid...it's the one and only coin he collects. I remember some time ago we were at a local coin shop and he bought 1 nickel, I got 1 half dime. When we left he got very excited and informed me that it was the "missing leaf" variety. I didn't rightly know what he was talking about but appreciated the excitment of locating a rarity.

IGWT

-- "To reiterate a request I had earlier in the thread, can someone post a few pictures of some hand-engraved leaves?" --

Hi John -- I can take some shots and post them, but it might be easier to simply visit the Heritage archives. Every outer leaf of the second cluster is hand engraved for 1866-1868. Once you're aware of it, you'll immediately pick up on the different shapes and sizes.

howards

<< <i>Was the 3CN series started a year earlier than the Shield Nickels as sort of a feasibility study on the mass production of coins of that composition? >>



No. The three cent nickel coin started due to the influence of Joseph Wharton, owner of a nickel mine (and founder of the Wharton School of Business). His cronies in Congress introduced legislation to start making coins that had no intrinsic metal content, and specifically to use nickel so that Wharton would benefit. At the time, silver and gold coins were being hoarded.

The three cent nickel proved popular with the public, and the five cent nickel was introduced as a result.

Minting the three cent pieces was not nearly as big a problem for the mint as the five cent pieces. The three cent pieces were fairly thin disks of metal that did not impede metal flow like the five cent pieces, and did not wear out dies as fast as the five cent pieces. The five cent pieces were thick, hard planchets that played havoc with dies. The planchets for shield nickels were slightly smaller in diameter than a modern nickel but of the same weight, which made them even harder to strike than a modern nickel.

The five cent pieces were also popular with the public. This is why the mint continued to churn them out despite the demands on the die shop to try to keep up with die breakages in the minting shop.