Why Branch Mint 20th Century coins were poorly struck
BuffaloIronTail
Posts: 7,556 ✭✭✭✭✭
We all know Denver and San Francisco coins were seldom struck to the same quality as Philadelphia coins. There are a lot of reasons. Die set distance, overused dies and a lower acceptance of "quality" coins are some.
The most telling reason are the dies themselves.
Denver and San Francisco employees had only recently been tasked with striking minor coins: Cents and Nickels. Those planchets are made of a harder metal, and employees were not used to producing them.
The first nickels were struck in San Francisco in 1912, and the first Cents in 1908. In Denver, the first nickels came in 1912, and it wasn't till 1911 that they struck the first Cent..
Of course both mints had to deal with production quotas with only a limited amount of dies. Overuse became a common thing. They did not have the luxury of the Philadelphia Mint, which produced all dies in their die shop.
All of the above reasons are valid, but the main reason is because the dies at the Branch Mints were not properly stress hardened.
It turns out that all the Philadelphia Mint had to do was produce and ship the dies. Everything else what up to the Mint that received them. The dies were pretty much "raw" when shipped. The reason Philadelphia sent them that way was because of the possibility that they might be stolen. Not completely stress hardening them was an intentional security measure that would limit the amount of coins that could be struck by the robbers because of the rapid deterioration of the dies.
The Branch Mints got away with a lot of things before the new harder metals had to be struck. Silver and Gold were much softer and easier on the dies. When the new minor coins came along the problems became apparent.
The strange thing is the Branch Mints didn't realize it, or just didn't care for years afterward, hence the bad quality coins we all see today.
Pete
Comments
Nice post
Nice try. Can't really agree with most of it, though.
Added: I'm sorry for the way the comment was worded. I want to encourage collectors to dig into subjects and research; my remarks were inappropriate and counter productive.
Sorry about that, Roger. But MOST of it? Well..........I tried.
Pete
What I alluded to was that the Branch Mints had to stress harden the dies after receiving them, and they had to be heated further before use to harden them. When the new Chromium dies came along in 1928 that lessened the problem.
Pete
Very informative post. Explains all these different die cracks in my 1915-Ds
I think New Orleans had been let in on the secret... based on the 3 cent silvers of 1851.
Philly struck 5.4 million coins using 40 obverse and 36 reverse dies or 136k-151k per die.
New Orleans struck 720K using 7 die pairs, or 102k per.
Seems about the same, right?
The next year, 1852, Philly struck 18.6M coins (3.4x as many) and used only 109/94 dies - or 171K - 198K per die.
ANA 50 year/Life Member (now "Emeritus")
Pete -- I'm sorry. I know you tried and that is the most important part. Your post has a lot of good points, too.