1896-O/CC Morgan Silver Dollar
dcarr
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Yes, there is such a thing.
Just acquired this 1896-O/CC VAM-27 ("privately-made"). This is the highest-grade example I have seen so far. The pieces I own all have a grainy texture (as struck), especially on the reverse. They all have a weak strike on the lower part of the Eagle's breast.
This is actually a vintage "privately-made" coin, in the same family as the micro-o pieces.
For this particular die pairing the counterfeiters used, as a model for the reverse, a genuine 1900-O/CC VAM-11. The die crack across "TED" is proof.
Pictures of a genuine 1900-O/CC VAM-11:
Just acquired this 1896-O/CC VAM-27 ("privately-made"). This is the highest-grade example I have seen so far. The pieces I own all have a grainy texture (as struck), especially on the reverse. They all have a weak strike on the lower part of the Eagle's breast.
This is actually a vintage "privately-made" coin, in the same family as the micro-o pieces.
For this particular die pairing the counterfeiters used, as a model for the reverse, a genuine 1900-O/CC VAM-11. The die crack across "TED" is proof.
Pictures of a genuine 1900-O/CC VAM-11:
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bob
Keeper of the VAM Catalog • Professional Coin Imaging • Prime Number Set • World Coins in Early America • British Trade Dollars • Variety Attribution
pick, pick, pick, dig, dig, dig.
nice find.
.
Congrats! Nice pick up. Do you have the 1901-O/CC and counterfeit 1900-O/CC to go with it?
I do have a F-15 1901-O/CC VAM-44. It does not show the "CC" as well as this 1896-O/CC VAM-27. But the die crack across the top of "TED" is obviously the same. That coin is shown on the VAMworld 1901-O VAM-44 page:
1901-O VAM-44 listing
I do not have the privately-made 1900-O/CC VAM-59. I believe there is only one known specimen (the discovery coin) of that variety.
Do you have any feeling as to whether the family of counterfeits these were a part of were made all at once in one multi-day press run, or could they have been made and distributed in batches over several years? For the record I have no clue which it might have been.
My impression is that they were made over a span of several years, somewhere between 1909 and 1918. My rough calculation (estimate) indicates that possibly as many as a million or more may have been produced. I came to that estimate by looking at how many I find mixed in with genuine coins, and extrapolating that small percentage to the total original mintages of the dates involved. This was a HUGE operation and a "perfect crime", the scope of which was not generally and fully realized until after 2005. The counterfeiters mixed and matched numerous obverse and reverse dies. But there are two separate groups of die pairings with no known (at present) sharing of dies between the two groups. The "early" group contains all the 1893-O varieties and some of the 1896-O varieties. The "later" group includes all the rest (some 1896-O, all the 1900-O, all the 1901-O, and all the 1902-O). This later group includes all the "micro-o" coins.
I believe the real reason for the Pittman act of 1918 was that someone in the government suspected the enormity of the situation, and the solution was to cleanse all these coins from circulation. Why else would the government melt 270 million silver dollars, only to replace them with 275 million new coins within a few years ? And the coins they went after were ones from circulation. They didn't go after the easy pickings which would have been the numerous uncirculated bags of silver dollars in bank vaults and Treasury Department vaults. The chain of custody for those bags was known, from the mint to the vault. So there would be no counterfeits among those coins.
I also suspect that former New Orleans Mint employees, who would have been laid off in 1909 when that mint closed down, had a hand in making these. All 28 of the known die pairings in this "family" have an "O" mint mark.
Regardless of how many were made, they seem very scarce today. Most are well-worn, having spent considerable time in circulation alongside genuine coins. Higher-grade specimens are very rare. Only a single UNC coin is known. AUs are extremely rare. Several of the 28 die pairings have only one specimen currently known.
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I thought that the Pittman melt was primarily new, never-issued coins from the vaults, which explains the rarity of certain dates such as the 1903-O. It is highly unlikely that 1903-O's were released circa 1903 and then all recalled from circulation.
I doubt if any were made after 1915, as the price of silver escalated during WW1. As late as 1915 the average price of silver was still under 60 cents an ounce, which would allow a good profit for the counterfeiters.
FWIW, as I mentioned in my article I know a dealer that travels the country buying up coin shop surplus coins to wholesale. He had a box of about 30 of the "family" counterfeits that he has pulled out of lots he had bought over the years, which he loaned me to do my article. That is where I found the 1896-O/CC.
He said that most of them had come from coin shops in the New England-New York region, which suggests that the counterfeit ring released them into circulation there.
And also FWIW, this guy handled a lot of coins. It was not unusual for him to buy 500 to 1,000 generic dollars from us in one visit that we had bought in over the counter in the two or three months since his previous visit. Multiply this by all the other shops he visited regularly, and for him to have only pulled out some 30 counterfeits suggests that they are not that common out there.
Do you have any feeling as to whether the family of counterfeits these were a part of were made all at once in one multi-day press run, or could they have been made and distributed in batches over several years? For the record I have no clue which it might have been.
One theory I have, and I'm sticking with it for lack of other theories, is that each die marriage is a distinct, clandestine production run. There are 25 promiscuous and 2 or 3 monogamous die pairs in this family, and no sense of die marriage progressions. The scope of the entire operation had to be large enough to overcome the risk/reward analysis, so Dan's estimate of a million coins is definitely possible. I'm estimating a bit less, based on comparing the survival of these with that of coins available at the time they were manufactured. Those manufactured by the US Mint can have their mintages estimated more closely.
Anyway, the size of this operation requires an infrastructure good at preventing being caught, which points to organized crime. New Orleans was one of the earliest points of entry of the Mafia into the US. There could have been different people that didn't know about each other or the scope of the operation responsible for storing obverse and reverse dies. When the operation was clear for a production run, dies were summoned, used, and returned. Planchets were almost always Sterling silver, which was easily stolen as needed, and available to silversmiths without attracting attention.
I believe there is one coin, perhaps a 1902-O, known with "1905" engraved on it, although I haven't seen it.
If production ended because someone involved was arrested in connection with it, there should be arrest records to be found.
Keeper of the VAM Catalog • Professional Coin Imaging • Prime Number Set • World Coins in Early America • British Trade Dollars • Variety Attribution
Thanks for the feedback.
I thought that the Pittman melt was primarily new, never-issued coins from the vaults, which explains the rarity of certain dates such as the 1903-O. It is highly unlikely that 1903-O's were released circa 1903 and then all recalled from circulation.
I doubt if any were made after 1915, as the price of silver escalated during WW1. As late as 1915 the average price of silver was still under 60 cents an ounce, which would allow a good profit for the counterfeiters.
FWIW, as I mentioned in my article I know a dealer that travels the country buying up coin shop surplus coins to wholesale. He had a box of about 30 of the "family" counterfeits that he has pulled out of lots he had bought over the years, which he loaned me to do my article. That is where I found the 1896-O/CC.
He said that most of them had come from coin shops in the New England-New York region, which suggests that the counterfeit ring released them into circulation there.
And also FWIW, this guy handled a lot of coins. It was not unusual for him to buy 500 to 1,000 generic dollars from us in one visit that we had bought in over the counter in the two or three months since his previous visit. Multiply this by all the other shops he visited regularly, and for him to have only pulled out some 30 counterfeits suggests that they are not that common out there.
1903-O may have been an exception. But there are a LOT of UNC Morgan dollars out there, straight from original bank vault mint bags, that didn't get melted. The government (GSA) hoards were mostly UNC coins, with a few circs thrown in.
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I wrote about that in COINage back in the Spring of 2014. It had been previously written up in VAMWorld, though there was some controversy there as to whether it was an O/CC or not.
If there was a specific coin that you wrote about, what grade was it ?
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I wrote about that in COINage back in the Spring of 2014. It had been previously written up in VAMWorld, though there was some controversy there as to whether it was an O/CC or not.
If there was a specific coin that you wrote about, what grade was it ?
VF-30 or so.