Some personal observations on the striking characteristics of Morgan dollars by Mint.
CaptHenway
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Made these observations in a thread about how weak strikes can affect the grading of Morgan dollars, and wish to repeat them here to make it easier for people to find them. That and three dollars will get you a cup of coffee.
Ignoring for the moment what the TPG's are grading Morgan dollars at these days, let me throw out for discussion a personal observation as to the possible, and maybe even probable, cause of weakly struck centers on Morgan dollars.
Looking at the coins with the naked eye, the fields on the New Orleans coins with the weak centers seem to be a bit flatter relative to Philadelphia Mint coins, which I will use as an arbitrary standard for curvature. In other words the basining of the dies was shallower than the Philly coins. This left the centers of the dies slightly further apart in the press than the Philly coins. It also left the rims of the dies slightly closer together than the Philly dies, producing coins weak in their centers but strong at their rims.
By comparison, the Carson City coins appear to have fields that are more curved than the Philly coins, which would mean that they were basined more deeply than the Philly coins, which would cause the centers to be closer together in the press and the rims further apart. As a result the CC coins have well=struck centers and weak rims.
This is just one way that us old timers could usually tell the Mint of origin of a Morgan dollar from looking at the obverse,
A caveat on the discussion of the rims made above. While at ANACS we received in an off-center "clock" of Morgan dollars in a custom Capital Plastics frame, and many of the coins were identifiable by date and mint. Studying the upset rims of the unstruck areas, you could see that the raised bulges on the New Orleans mint coins were narrower than the Philly coins and closer to the edge of the planchet, which is why the Cajun coins typically have the solid part of the rim well struck, with corresponding wide, flat edges, but denticles that were not well struck up.
The CC coins, on the other hand, had the raised bulge pushed further in towards the center of the planchet than the Philly coins, with a beveled falloff zone outside the bulge towards the edge of the planchet. This is why CC coins often have great denticles but a weak solid ring outside them, and edges that have shorter reedings than the N.O. coins.
The S.F. planchets were very similar to Philly planchets. The only remarkable thing about them is that you could see how the gorgeous semi-proof-like surfaces of the early 1880's were created entirely by the dies on frosted planchets. The dies completely transformed the surface. No burnishing of the planchets was necessary.
TD
Comments
You are a wealth of knowledge. The off center clock set of Morgans must have been awesome to see. I wonder if that set is intact today?
Nice info! Thanks
Thanks for sharing!
It was. Fred might know if it is still intact, but that was a long time ago (circa 1979-1984).
@CaptHenway ... Thanks for that information.... Being a Morgan fan, it is very helpful with coin analysis. Cheers, RickO
Bookmarked. Posts like this should be archived in an "Advanced Reference" section.
I don't believe it's intact at this time,
but I'm not 100% certain.