1875 S/S Twent Cent Piece...a listed variety?

MisterTicToc

One of my recent purchases included this nice twenty center. Looking at the mint mark I noted that it is clearly an S over S. I did the best that I could with the close-ups and you can clearly see another set of serifs for the underlying S. I checked Cherrypickers and there isn't much on the 20centers...is this a common variety?

crypto79

yes.

Barndog

common. Your pics also show the top of a digit from a misplaced date (in the dentils below the date)

RBinTex

FS-20-1875S-302 RPM#1, MPD#1, S/S "$"



Worthy of a slight premium (10-25% IMO).

MisterTicToc

Thanks to all for your expert opinions. One more question...is this a vf or does it merit an xf designation?

CaptHenway

I believe that the reason it is not listed in the Cherrypickers Guide is that it is so common it has no premium, and therefore buying one is not considered a cherry pick.
TD

RBinTex

Capt,

It IS a Cherrypicker variety - at least the misplaced date part of it is (although I find the $ S/S more interesting).

While the date without the MPD is scarcer than one with, ones with both the MPD & RPM are scarcer than both I believe.

astrorat

You have what is commonly referred to as the "$" variety. So far, it is only known to be married with the "5 in the dentils" obverse die. Occasionally, a rotated reverse with the same die marriage can be found.

Some dealers do charge a premium as it is a "scarce" variety. However, nobody really collects this denomination by variety (or even collects the denomination!) so it is very easy to cherrypick. Far more common are double dimes with a clear, distinct mintmark.

A study I did in 1993 looked at the mintmark varieties in a collection of double dimes yielded the following:

Table: Sampling of 195 1875-S Twenty Cent Piece Mintmarks

Mintmark Style --- Number --- Percent
Clear S --- 129 --- 66.2%
Clear S/S --- 17 --- 8.7%
Filled S/S --- 14 --- 7.2%
“$ Variety” --- 35 --- 17.9%
From: "Mintmark varieties of the 1875-S twenty-cent piece. Errorscope 2003;12(3):5-7."

Here are examples of the mintmarks (sorry for the large images)...

Clear S


Clear S/S


Filled S/S


"$ Variety"


Lane

P.S. Your coin is a cleaned EF-40

Edited to try and fix the table...

astrorat

Duplicate post ...

LanceNewmanOCC

.
i saw half a dozen of the various s/s today and passed on them all. if they were in holders and/or were uncleaned i probably woulda picked them up.
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