How were dates added to seated liberty coinage dies?
Batman23
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I was looking over a few seated liberty quarters and comparing with the Briggs book. I note that the stars, seated liberty and dentils appear to be identical between dies yet the year is located in different positions compared to Liberty and rim. They used master hubs for many years in a row. I know that mintmarks were added by hand but what about the date? Were all four numbers pressed in at the same time keeping them spaced and aligned consistently as a unit?
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Yes (starting in 1840) - all four numerals were put together in a "gang punch",
so they will have the same relative postions to each other,
no matter if the date is high, low, left, right, uphill, etc.
Often the 4th digit is a bit low as well.
For 1837 - part of 1840, the stars were not part of the hub, and date numerals were not in a gang punch.
Also, for 1853 Arrows dimes, for some dies the date and arrows were part of the hub.
This topic was researched by members of the Liberty Seated Collector's Club and published in their Gobrecht Journal.
lsccweb.org/
For example, see John McCloskey's article in Gobrecht Journal #116 (2013), "Four Digit Date Punches for Liberty Seated Coinage". https://archive.org/details/gobrechtjournalfn116libe
Thanks for the information and the link!