A look at 1921-D VAMs 1N1, 1N2 and 1N3.
Legend, lore, myth and wish have fueled fantasies about unicorns for centuries. But one place they are real is Morgan dollar collecting – in the form of Hit List 40 1921-D VAMs 1N1, 1N2 and 1N3. Even those, however, are elusive.
Unicorns are named for the impressive horn-shaped cracks atop the D in UNITED that angle up and right into the denticles. The horn was formed after the cracks merged and eventually caused part of the die to break off, allowing metal from the planchet to fill in and create a raised chip in the shape of a horn.
A prodigious 20.345 million D-Mint Morgans were made in 1921, the 4th most in the entire series. It’s important to remember that they were made after, and thus protected from, the great Pittman Act melt of 1918 that destroyed hundreds of millions of earlier dated silver dollars stored in Treasury vaults. Even so, how often do you encounter any of the Unicorn varieties today?
Low certified population.
Certified populations show why it isn’t often. Below is a comparison with another popular 1921-D VAM – the 1A “TRU_T”. The three biggest grading companies have attributed one-third fewer Unicorns than the much more expensive Top 100 “TRU_T”:
- 1A vs 1N pops table.jpg (47.98 KiB) Viewed 3787 times
The 3 different Unicorn varieties recognized today are defined by the completeness of their horns. The sequence begins with VAM 1N1 (rated R-6), which doesn’t have a horn at all; just the two cracks forming an outline of the horn that is yet to come.
- 1N1 Unicorn.jpg (184.9 KiB) Viewed 3787 times
VAM 1N2 (R-6) has a completely raised horn and is the classic Unicorn die state that grading companies attribute. (Be aware that none of three largest TPGs attribute VAM 1N1 as VAM 1N1. I learned first-hand that if a 1N1 is submitted to PCGS for Unicorn attribution it will come back as a generic 1921-D.)
- 1N2 Unicorn.jpg (166.52 KiB) Viewed 3787 times
- 1N3 Unicorn.jpg (179.76 KiB) Viewed 3787 times
But 1N3 is not the end of the die state line for Unicorns. A spectacular, and so far only one-of-a-kind ultra-late die state 1N3 (below) is known in which the DFB has become a cud that blends into the tops of E and D and obscures the horn as a distinct feature.
- 1N3 VLDS.jpg (90.35 KiB) Viewed 3787 times
The entire Unicorn production life seems to have been short.
After taking macro-photographs of certified examples of all three Unicorn stages attributed by Variety Slabbing Service, I strongly believe that the horn cracks grew quickly and the number of coins made from the beginning of Unicorn progression to the end was small. My evidence is other, non-horn cracks I found on all three coins.
I started by hunting for cracks on both sides of the 1N3. Then I looked to see how many are also on the 1N1. To my surprise, I found all of them. Most were weaker and shorter on the 1N1, of course, but all were there. Thus, the coin production “distance” between 1N1 and 1N3 seems to have been quite short.
Populations and prices.
Population data for Unicorns is both suspicious and confusing. A breakdown of all three die stage populations exists only in the Society of Silver Dollar Collectors Registry census, where there are 36 1N1s, six 1N2s, and eleven 1N3s (non-details coins only). Frankly, the 1N1 and 1N2 totals make no sense at all. And I don’t trust the stated number of 1N3s. The best explanation I can think of are attribution errors by owners who aren’t aware that since 2016 there have been three different Unicorn die stage designations.
Grading company data inspires more confidence. ANACS shows 55 1N2s and nine 1N3s, while NGC shows 26 and one, respectively. The total Unicorn population at PCGS is 88, as seen in the population table near the beginning of this article. One takeaway from this data is that 1N3 seems to be much scarcer than the other two stages.
Given the general rarity and high popularity of Unicorns, their auction price records are also hard to make sense of. The three highest prices in the VAMview Index of Prices Realized are $775 for a PCGS-64 sold on eBay last December, $705 for an NGC-65 sold by Heritage in 2015, and $700 for a PCGS-65 sold privately in 2013. The next highest prices are $403 and $394 for PCGS-65s sold at Heritage in 2008 and on eBay in 2014. All five seem remarkably low for a VAM whose finest known is a single MS66.
Finding a Unicorn isn’t easy, but at least the Morgan dollar kind do exist. And you don’t need to visit a mist-shrouded forest during a full moon to find one – but you do have to be on careful lookout for that horn.
fantastic- I had no clue like many
