What are the truly rare Morgan Dollar varieties that command a healthy premium and are in demand?
CivilWarBuff
Posts: 54 ✭✭
It seems VAMS imo are out of control, it is pretty much agreed that every Morgan seems to have become a VAM variety diluting the VAM designation of the variety space and bringing down the significance of what should be appreciated to collectors imo. With every Morgan having a VAM number and their associated antiquated rarity number assigned to each dating way back from the early years of each of their discoveries that watering down effect has reduced their numismatic significance.
I would like to find out from the forum members which are the rarest legitimate varieties that have stood the test of time and could be classified as the true rarities and something that is genuinely challenging to find for within the Morgan Dollar space.
100's of VAM's and unreliable rarity numbers developed years ago that have never been updated has unwillingly become a false guide and reference point to the Morgan Dollar collectors. It was not intentional but the VAM website is out there and it has never been updated so it stands to lead many collectors down the wrong road of true rarity of each variety that has been accounted for in the entire series. These are great American coins and hold a wonderful history and there should be a place that corrects the record.
I enjoy Morgan's design and feel that these beautiful silver pieces of our history has been let down by some noted researchers getting lost in the weeds. and never updating their findings. There are just too many to collect and while it is beneficial to have a guide to all types only a small number of chosen legitimate examples should be highlighted as rare examples. The Sheldon Scale of rarity should be the main guide and even though the Morgan Dollar series has extremely high mintages true rarities need to be singled out and not out and made to be a mystery and above all be defined over what is and isn't truly accurately accounted for numerically. The books on the rarity of the Morgan Dollar are just too antiquated imo.
That all being said I absolutely dig the Morgan series and appreciate any commentary and assistance on this subject.
Comments
Your post is silly and uninformed.
Silly post aside, if you are serious about the question, you can begin searching auction records of 1878 8TF varieties for a start. It will be good practice for you to answer your own question. Take some time to think about how you can improve your posts, as well.
Another way to find out would be to scroll through the Morgan Dollar sections of the PCGS price guide and population reports.
Mark Feld* of Heritage Auctions*Unless otherwise noted, my posts here represent my personal opinions.
What are the truly rare Morgan Dollar varieties that command a healthy premium and are in demand?
Information like you are asking for is not going to be shared freely in this forum. Isn't there a top 100 list of VAMs for Morgan Dollars? Start there first and then try to actually find them in dealer cases and inventories. Dealers might let you look through the Morgans they have in 2x2s in boxes. But it's not free so spend some money with the dealer who allows you to do this. There is no better way to get a sense for rarity then trying to find rarities that interest you.
“Never let yesterday use up too much of today.”
Will Rogers
That is silly and harsche.
VAMs are not meant to highlight which die pairings are rare and valuable, although that can be a consequence of VAMs existing.
VAMs are used to attribute coins to a die pair, so your first couple of sentences make zero sense. Of course there are thousands of VAMs, given that there were many thousands of die pairs. Objectively there are not enough VAMs.
Coin Photography
Nothing is being diluted. A VAM identifies a die pair or a stage in the life of a die. It is not meant to be popular, significant, or rare. You, as a collector, need to do the research and determine what you consider rare or significant. I suggest a free account on the ANACS website (they VAM everything) and I use their VAM population database often. A membership to SSDC would also help but its also antiquated. Hot Lips, Scarface, etc are well documented and exactly why I DON'T want them. As to VamWorld, yes its a bit sloppy and outdated but its also free and managed by volunteers. I appreciate its existence.
As an example, I have a rare Morgan VAM on my radar for an auction tonight; only three recorded and it will be top pop as
to grade. It is a common coin in a common grade but I want it. I suggest you create your own criteria for VAMing. The true rarities, the ones that have yet to be discovered, are still out there. I have found 5 in the last 4 years.
USAF veteran 1984-2005
IkesT, you are not in a good position to be accusing folks of making silly posts. Do we need to direct the OP to the uber silly harschepuppy papers authored by you in this very forum?
fyi, IkesT is very knowledgeable about varieties in general but he might be out of his lane somewhat when it comes to helping a collector with VAMs, a vast area that more-or-less demands one be a VAM specialist in order to truly understand them.
The reason you got the rudeness about your post from IkesT is he knows he's out of his lane with VAMs so is using his old, tired stunts to try to confound you.
“Never let yesterday use up too much of today.”
Will Rogers
There is nothing "confounding" about my comment; the OP will benefit most from answering the question on his own, as I suggested. It will also hopefully teach him that his preconceptions about VAMs are incorrect.
It appears that I have showed my ignorance in Morgan Dollars in my misunderstand and poorly worded thread. I misinterpreted the VAMS thinking that each varieties listed and pictured were for collectors to obtain not thinking that they were just die states that are just being accounted for as they are discovered. What through me I guess was each were assigned a rarity number based on only what they have seen and not what is realistically accounted for or known. And I might still be confused with this observation.
I have seen old anacs holders slabbing a great amount of VAMS and understand that they have been holdering them and consequently accounting for them for years if not by their own records but just having the info on the label. I remember Gene L. Henry selling tons of inventory and getting them into ANACS holders with their respective VAM numbers.
I would like to collect only the bold & rarities and have found the following to be true, and correct me if I am wrong. I do not want to get into the weeds and get lost with all the so-called varieties that exist but only the worthwhile ones. I do also appreciate the proof Morgans due to their individual beauty and lower mintage.
1878-P VAM 9
1888-o VAM 1B4
1888-o VAM 4
If you are serious collecting key Vams, I'd suggest buying the monthly Greysheet for $40. It list the Morgan prices in 2 pages and has an additional 5 pages for Vam prices. So if a regular 1878 7/8 weak Morgan in MS63 is around $$150 but the Vam 44 is $9,000 +, you know it is rare commanding such a premium.
You also cast aspersions on the website without apparently ever having looked at it. The website certainly is updated and does not even list rarity numbers, as you appear to believe. By the way, those that run the website are here and are our friends and colleagues.
You've been given some good leads here already, so go ahead and follow them. You should easily be able to come up with more than three top varieties.
Collect what you like. There are rare VAMs that are worth huge premiums that are rather uninteresting, like the 1878 VAM 14.17, and there are great doubled dies that are common and not really worth a premium, like 1878-S VAM 6. This is the case with any type that can be collected by variety, not just Morgans. Auction records are the best place to start looking at values and the "chase lists" (Top 100, Hot 50, Hit List 40) are the best places to look for what interests you. The three you mention are great varieties.
The rarity numbers were abandoned a few years ago because they were guesses from when the variety was first cataloged. If updated, it would not be possible to tell if it was or not, so they were almost never updated. The methodology for assigning them evolved over the years resulting in the default rarity of R-5 being assigned to new varieties, meaning of average rarity. These numbers were often abused by people inferring value from them, either selling or thinking they found a really good variety. They've been mostly, if not entirely, removed from VAMWorld.
Keeper of the VAM Catalog • Professional Coin Imaging • Prime Number Set • World Coins in Early America • British Trade Dollars • Variety Attribution
Thank you Messydesk, I have not visited Vamworld for years and that was what I remember. I just went on to the site and saw the numerous changes, I assumed everything was still the same as years ago. Which is what originally turned me off to Morgans but now I have a new appreciation for the series.
Contrary to what you posted, information of the type the OP was asking for was provided in responses before your post, as well as additional responses after your post.
Mark Feld* of Heritage Auctions*Unless otherwise noted, my posts here represent my personal opinions.
To all that I unintentionally offended, my apologies. The VAM website has been, is and will always be a hugely important wealth of info. I negated to revisit it before posting today assuming it didn't change since I visited it some years back. I always thought it was a great source of knowledge but was frustrated by its enormity and information that was extremely stale.
I understand it was the best that could have been done at the time. Today I was extremely impressed.
I also stayed away from Morgans because I was overwhelmed with the number of VAMS shown and it kept growing. I didn't think that it was something that I could seriously consider collecting due to the size of what was shown. Today I have settled down into a more relaxed approach to collecting and since I have always appreciated the coin's beauty and was something that I was given as gifts by my parents including inheriting a small collection it has a great sentimental factor for me. I look forward to collecting them and am now considering how to approach the series. I am sure I will fluctuate until I find that sweet spot.
Thanks for the comments, and I completely understand the mistakes that I made here today.
A brief history of VAMWorld. In 2006, Rob Joyce set up a wiki as an alternative to making a second edition of his 1921-D book. It was an open wiki that many people started populating with all the VAMs and whatever pictures they had, excluding pictures from the VAM book. Leroy Van Allen was OK with this, including using pictures he had taken after the last book was published, because it would be good for the hobby. As can happen with wikis, especially those with explosive growth, quality of content varied widely. Several of us started moderating and quickly established standard formats for wiki pages. In 2018, the host, Wikispaces, went under, but worked with me to export the wiki so I could convert it to something. The discussion board from Wikispaces was never migrated to anything, and a new discussion board was set up using phpBB, which was far superior to what Wikispaces provided. I wrote some software to convert the exported wiki to data that could be imported into a MediaWiki-based wiki (the same framework as Wikipedia) on a system that I set up on AWS. It was soon apparent that I'd have to lock editing down to people explicitly given permission by the admin (me), because spam pages started appearing. Fewer people editing made for more consistent content. In 2022, I took over maintenance of the VAM catalog itself from Leroy Van Allen and got rid of the R-numbers. New discoveries all go through me (some via John Roberts at ANACS or David Close for Peace dollars), so an offline database I created holds all changes made to the catalog since then. Additional software I put together automatically creates the VAMWorld page markup, guaranteeing consistency with the database and a consistent appearance. The same database is used to generate annual supplements to the catalog. The Cloudflare verification keeps bots from scraping it, which had been causing intermittent performance issues and outages.
There are still a lot of changes being made, but the emphasis is less on getting a new discovery than on making the catalog more correct, which sometimes means deleting or renumbering existing VAMs. One dedicated collector is trying to get every VAM. He's also adding a lot of pictures to the individual pages as well as some quick attribution "mug books" for stuff like the mint mark, wreath bow, other often used markers.
Keeper of the VAM Catalog • Professional Coin Imaging • Prime Number Set • World Coins in Early America • British Trade Dollars • Variety Attribution
I see what you're talking about. 1878 8TF is a good start to get the VAM juices flowing. I think the OP was expecting something more substantial, however, and that's what I'm really talking about. Thank you for your nitpicking observations.
My recommendation to the OP who was immediately subjected to unnecessary rudeness by IT was more substantial. But let's not talk about that.
“Never let yesterday use up too much of today.”
Will Rogers
Since we are constantly subjected to your uninformed and incorrect recommendations and opinions, I'll post this here as a public service announcement to any innocent collectors who may inadvertently stumble across your posts.
@mr1931s is totally full of it and following any numismatic advice he proffers is a fool's errand and will definitely lead one astray
chopmarkedtradedollars.com