1871-s Half Dime die states
yosclimber
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Over the holidays, I've been having fun - working through the Gobrecht Journals downloaded from the Newman Numismatic Portal in August 2015, and extending my spreadsheet of known Liberty Seated Half Dime die marriages and states (427 at present).
To really learn the die marriages, I've been choosing some dates at random, downloading all the images I can find on the web, and attempting to attribute each one. A few days ago I worked on 1858-O and 1857.
Last night I worked on 1871-s, starting with MrHalfDime's excellent article in Gobrecht Journal # 67 (1996, only 21 years ago!).
Examining many high quality images from the web, I found a few die states that he didn't report in his original article.
Most likely he has known about them for some time now, but I haven't seen them reported in the journal or on forums,
so I thought I'd share, and hopefully he'll comment as well.
V-1 ( obv 1.1, rev A.1 ) was listed with just one reverse crack. I found 7 reverse cracks on the sole web image (Gardner).
V-2 ( obv 1.2, rev B ) was listed with no cracks. I found that state (difficult to attribute since it is only by the mintmark position, Gardner).
But I also found two examples with no obverse cracks and 3 reverse cracks (I called them V-2a).
I also found four examples with an obverse crack and 3 reverse cracks (V-2b).
One V-2b was just posted on December 30 by Voyageur on the "Please posted your Seated Liberty images" thread.
V-3 ( obv 2, rev A.2 ) was listed with 4 die cracks. I found one example (Bently) with the same 7 reverse cracks as V-1 plus clashing, and a second example where the image did not have enough resolution to be sure about the cracks.
Since some of the reverse cracks occur in similar locations, I found it useful to label the individual dentils for comparison.
I made additional diagrams to verify the date and mintmark positions, but I'll refrain from posting them unless folks are interested.
Thanks to MrHalfDime for his longtime dedication and sharing of his discoveries, which inspired this holiday numismatic fun.
Comments
Wow, a lot of work and nice photos.
Now I gotta get out mine to see if it matches anything here.