peace dollar experts on a 1928

lasvegasteddy

hi,
i have a question or 2 that probably only experts may aide me with here.in the pcgs book "coin grading and counterfeit detection" 2nd edition for a 1928 they claim on pages 342-343 that there were 3 dies used and genuine 1928 peace dollars will have die charactoristics but they note "anacs" as reviewing a 4th die attributed to be genuine too but give no charactoristics of it."question" was the mint really getting over 100,000 pieces off each die as the 3 die statement leads or even over 80,000 with this "4th" die of an anacs screening?is it written anywhere charactoristics of the 4th die if 1928-p's were contained to only rolling off 4 dies?...uh if anyone can aide me here thanks"many thanks"in advance

Coxe

It is my understanding that only 2 obverse dies(II1 and II2) and one reverse die (B2a) have been identified thusfar. Likely the VAM-2 actually used a different reverse from the VAM-1 but is within Leroy Van Allen's tolerances of similarity to be considered the same -- very common especially on Philadelphia issues. If so, two die pairs would have been used. The same tolerance argument with indiscernable difference to the naked eye might account for an oversight. the four dies might be a documentation formt he Mint archives of fours pairs used.

This is actually and excellent date to perform a detailed study of things like the date position to high precision to determine dies represented in the extant populations. Reverse are much harder. You need to look at things like polish lines which can result from intermediate cleaning and usage not just post hubbing handling.

Conder101

I don't think date position will be of any use since the date was in the master hub and would be the same on all of the dies. The only way to tell the dies apart are by differences in how they were handled after they were made such as scratches, tool marks, polishing lines and scratches, and die cracks. And you also have to be aware of the possibility of some marks fading through use do to wear and new marks appearing so that you don't identify a early and late state of the same die as being two different dies. (Many late date large cent varieties have been delisted over the years for that very reason. Intermediate die states would be found that show the die markers of two different previously known varieties.) Die cracks are very good for identifying different dies because die cracks don't "heal" but only get worse. So if you have two coins and they have different die cracks you KNOW they are two different dies. Two cavets though. If you have a die with a crack and one with no crack that does not mean they are different dies, and dies will aften tend to crack in the same place so you must be careful not to identify two coins with very similar cracks as the same die. For example the state quarter commonly has cracks through the bast of Washingtons bust and running to the rim through the QU.

CaptHenway

Conder is correct that date position doesn't work. The Mint began using dated hubs on everything in 1908.

I was with ANACS when we id'd the fourth obverse die for the 1928-P dollars, but I cannot remember what the characteristics were. We spent a lot of time on it, because we had been teaching at seminars for years that there were only three obverses, but this one was definitely a fourth.

Remember the circumstances of the 1928-P&S coinage. The U.S. had melted down huundreds of millions of dollars in 1918 in order to loan the silver to Great Britain. In 1921 we began coining dollars, starting with the Morgans, to replace this melting. In 1928 the combined 1921-1928 coinage reached this number, and so they stopped. Before that point was reached, multiple dies would have been prepared.

Let us assume that three dies were used to produce the bulk of the 1928-P's, after which they stopped. San Francisco did its thing, and then stopped. The good coins were counted and the accountants did their thing, upon which it was discovered that they were "x" coins short of hitting the exact number melted. Philadelphia grabbed a pair of dies off of the shelf and resumed coining until they had the "x" number of coins needed, and then stopped. From the Mint's point of view, this would be perfectly normal operation.

All of this is conjecture, of course, but it could explain why one die pair had a very low mintage. I have no idea what the "x" mintage might have been.

Tom DeLorey

DorkGirl

Tom, that was very interesting, thanks for sharing.