Back from LVA - three 1883P kills! (one inadvertent)

[weth]

Hi gang,

Just got my package back from LVA, and wanted to report three 1883P kills, with one being redesignated. I’ll post the letter and photos tomorrow.

Die studies can get sort of strange. There is the temptation to forge ahead with one’s own nomenclature, but like many other silver dollar aficionados, I have chosen to work within Mr. Van Allen’s structure. Hence sometimes I get stuck in trying to convince him of certain things. My submission to him this time had two purposes - one to try again to kill something that didn’t exist, and secondly to point out that a discovery coin wasn’t really what it seemed to be…

The singular gap in my SSDC 1883P collection is the VAM 18. I don’t have one because, well, I don’t think it exists. A clashed, quadrupled-star example was submitted to LVA, and he called it VAM 18A. LVA has never, to the best of my knowledge, designated any unclashed version as VAM 18. After I noticed that the 83P VAM 7 had some minor tripling and quadrupling of the stars, I started to wonder whether the VAM 18A discovery was simply a VAM 7A. I had tried previously to make my case of this to LVA, but he didn’t see it that way, and claimed to need to see the VAM 18A discovery coin to be sure. I asked the current owner of the VAM 18A discovery coin to submit it to LVA for clarification; he seemed amenable to doing so, but it didn’t seem like something urgent to him. Anyway, I tried again with this most recent submission, in that I sent a nice VAM 7A example and an ANACS MS63 VAM 18A example that matched the 7A. Much to my surprise, LVA agreed that the original 18A was likely a 7A, so he killed the VAM 18 and VAM 18A. Woohoo! Hooray!

Now the second reason for this submission: I’ve had an odd relationship with two different 1883P die varieties that I will at first call A and B. A is what I believed to be VAM 1A, being a pitted obverse die that became clashed in its late die state; both ANACS and VSS labeled this same die variety pretty consistently as VAM 1A. Coin B I first submitted to LVA in 2014; he said that it had the “same die clash at jaw-neck junction of 1A pictured in 2003 VAM Supplement. Don’t see a clear clashed n at neck. Die wear much have erased clashed n. VAM 1.” I knew that this coin didn’t match the VAM 1A die pair, so I at first called it VAM 1 Weth Die 7. Later on, in 2015, in an attempt to differentiate A and B, I sent full die progressions of both types to LVA. He called the double clashed version of coin A the VAM 1A, and noted that an EDS clashed version of Coin B was listable as the VAM 39A, so what was VAM 1 Weth Die 7 became VAM 39 LDS. Now, the “problem” came when I saw the actual 1883P VAM 1A discovery coin up for sale on eBay. Since it seemed like a good thing for someone doing an 83P die study to own, I snarfed it up. Well, upon close examination, it turned out to be not coin A but coin B - a VAM 39 LDS! So I submitted this discovery coin, along with VAM 39, 39A, and “VAM 1A” examples to LVA. He agreed that the 1A discovery coin was actually a VAM 39. Although I tried to humbly suggest that perhaps it was best just to revise the listing of the VAM 1A, LVA thought it best to kill the designation. Hence, what is documented on the VAM 1A page (other than the discovery photo) is now called the VAM 49. LVA seemed to talk himself out of seeing the clash on the example that I provided, so maybe someone might care to convince him that a VAM 49A exists. For now, though, whether it is EDS or LDS it’s a VAM 49.

TL:DR Version

The 1883P VAM 18 / 18A are killed - they’re redundant with VAM 7 / 7A
The original 1883P VAM 1A discovery coin was actually a VAM 39 LDS
The current 1883P VAM 1A designation is killed, relisted as VAM 49

[tmanhg]

Great work Tom !!!

[vamsterdam]

Leroy told me that the v18a discovery piece would stand as a discovery piece but would change from v18a to v7a discovery piece because it was submitted before v7a.

[PacificWR]

Nice work Tom.

[LateDateMorganGuy]

Congrats. I wish more folks would do die studies and put multiple coins together to tell Leroy a story rather than send singleton coins.

[alefzero]

SSDC Registry is updated to reflect that.

[weth]

Attached is the letter and plate photos!

[PacificWR]

Tom,

Do you need help with the pages?

[impairedsquirrel]

WTG Tom!!
Ping, ping, ping...

[LateDateMorganGuy]

I am not trying to hijack Tom's thread, but does anyone stop and ask why kills are necessary in the first place? What causes duplicate listings, and what causes multiple different VAM listings of the same die pair in different die stages/states?

Food for thought hopefully.

[impairedsquirrel]

Discovery mongers, Alan... mostly discovery mongers.
Not trying to be overly negative, but a lot of these issues come down to someone seeing something new on a known VAM and getting it listed as something else without due research.
I know your question was rhetorical, but I was compelled to answer.

Two points for the record:
1) Tom is one of the ones "doing it the right way" and
2) Getting a proper kill is MUCH more difficult than getting a listing! You basically have to prove that something you can't see doesn't exist...

[andywoj00]

Got everything updated with the exception of the 1A topic on the letter. Not quite sure what to do with that. @ PacificWR can you assist?
Thanks.
Andy

[LateDateMorganGuy]

Good points Rob. Let's let this conversation die and just congratulate Tom. If this discussion needs further exercise, a new thread can be started. Way to go Tom!

[PacificWR]

Got everything updated with the exception of the 1A topic on the letter. Not quite sure what to do with that. @ PacificWR can you assist?
Thanks.
Andy

I went ahead and delisted VAM-1A. Nice work.

[weth]

Thank you all for your help with the page updates!

SSDC Registry is updated to reflect that.

Thank you, John!
As "the guy doing the 1883P series" you must know that it is soooo satisfying to finally, for the first time, see that SSDC set be "100% complete".

[vamsterdam]

Am I wrong, or do I see a lot of comments aimed at me for submitting the v18a? When I sent it in, it was an unlisted die clash. I did note the quadrupled-sextuplets stars, but Leroy gave it v18a rather than v7a. And I did not have the full pictures of vam 7 in hand to say it was a clashed vam 7. If I had complete photos that showed me it had multiply jibbed stars I would have sent it in as a clashed v7 with letter transfer.

[vamsterdam]

And congratulations tom, for getting all of these cleared up. There are many non existent vams still waiting to be killed, and duplicates waiting to be knocked off.

[RMG1883CC]

GREAT WORK Tom - Andy - Wayne !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[weth]

@vamsterdam - I wasn't directing any animosity toward your discovery, Brian, not at all. As you say, you sent in an example of a clash that was unlisted at the time. I do see a general trend, however, especially in folks new to this scene, toward the mentality of "I don't recognize it, so I'll send it to LVA". As mentioned, this can lead to spurious listings that can be difficult to correct later on.

Hey folks-who-can-edit: can you take a look at the 1883P VAM 1 page? The grouping and pagination of the photos is slightly off; the reverse of Die 1 is showing up as the first photo in the Die 2 section. Thanks for any edits you can make!

[messydesk]

@vamsterdam - I wasn't directing any animosity toward your discovery, Brian, not at all. As you say, you sent in an example of a clash that was unlisted at the time. I do see a general trend, however, especially in folks new to this scene, toward the mentality of "I don't recognize it, so I'll send it to LVA". As mentioned, this can lead to spurious listings that can be difficult to correct later on.

Hey folks-who-can-edit: can you take a look at the 1883P VAM 1 page? The grouping and pagination of the photos is slightly off; the reverse of Die 1 is showing up as the first photo in the Die 2 section. Thanks for any edits you can make!

Whoa! The conversion script got thrown off by seeing "full coin photos" on one line and started grouping things together that shouldn't be. I'll fix it.

Edit: All fixed. Much better.