VAMWorld 2.0

There was a supervisor of adjusters in charge of everyone. The "examiners" reweighed each adjuster's bins of over and under weight pieces to verify consistency and accuracy - these were pieces that were out of tolerance. There were few of these, so anyone who had a lot of them, got extra attention t...

This might be of interest to some members. It appears that when one die was condemned, it's pair was also removed from service.

DE adjusting was slower than dollars due to the tighter tolerance, and the requirement to separate standard weight, high legal, and low legal so that bags could be assembled within tolerance for the bag. (This applied only to gold coins.) Gold coin bag tolerance was +/-9 grains per $5,000 in new coi...

You can learn more about the work of adjusters in the book From Mine to Mint.

San Francisco Mint February 1904. Table of planchets weighed and adjusted (filed or rejected). The first person, Allen, was only average but examined a new silver dollar planchet once every 8.8 seconds -- 528 per hour. The best adjusters completed almost twice as many in the same time. 19040229 SF A...

From mint records, it appears that 340 Proof Standard silver dollars were minted between Jan and April of 1904. Another 310 Proof Standard silver dollars were minted in September and December of 1904. There were two die pairs used for the proof dollars. I have been looking for evidence of which die...

And a closer....

Response letter? Ahhh....like these?

This might be of interest to members.

Also, I cross checked the 1888-S mintage against the Annual Assay commission report. There were 329 silver dollars received from SF for 1888. If we start with the monthly coinage and divide by "2,000" (law required selecting 1 coin for every 2,000 struck, or fraction of 2,000) the total is 329 piece...

1888-S dollar mintage by month. Apr 160,000 May 150,000 Jun 239,000 Jul 28,000 Aug 10,000 Sep 70,000 Total 657,000 Mints were controlled by Fiscal Year not Calendar Year. Therefore, policy or budget changes took effect July 1 and occasionally had a significant effect of mint operations. This letter ...

I'll check. Is there a discrepancy notice by collectors?

Does this help?

Most of 1904 correspondence ready.

No idea what lurks in the Carson Mint boxes, but I've seen die lists in scanning through things very quickly. (I presume the Chinese folks will star making Dahlonega Morgan dollars soon....) Don't know why NNP doesn't simply post by box number, mint and date range; that's the way they are filed at N...

A large group of branch mint correspondence has recently been added to the NNP archive. This includes: Entry-11 --- Box 2 Carson Box 3 Carson Box 4 Carson Box 5 Carson-Charlotte Box 6 1838-1839 Charlotte Box 7 1840-1842 Charlotte Box 8 1843-1846 Charlotte Box 9 1847-1853 Charlotte Box 10 1854-1859 C...

SilverToken wrote: ↑

Fri May 19, 2023 11:25 am

1880-P Supposed to be Vam 9.. Was a Vam 10. It is at least a MS-62 and the price was right so a Keeper anyway-

But....It was only off by one number! To the TPGs that's within normal.

Have you ever been convinced by a seller that a coin is one VAM, then later learn it is a more common variety?

URL for NNP use:

https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/archivedetail/527901

More will be posted once they are processed.

PacificWR wrote: ↑

Sun May 14, 2023 7:26 pm

Do you have the same info (plus Usage) for the SF and P Mints?

Came across SF die info, so that's accounted for also.

The US Mint had no persistently official term -- the most common was "canceled." This could mean defaced with a chisel after softening, or smashed to design invisibility by the blacksmith -- or both. "Destroyed" could mean these or filing or grinding, or even crushing and shredding (once the machine...