VAM is an acronym for Leroy
Van
Allen and A. George
Mallis, the two prominent numismatists who are responsible for identifying and categorizing all the die variants of Morgan and
Peace dollars. A
VAM is a die state or variation. Each individual year and mint has its' own set of
VAM's, each of which starts with VAM-1, an original, normal coin. So, every single Morgan and
Peace dollar has a
VAM number assigned to it.
That is, of course, excepting the undiscovered ones. Mr. Mallis has passed away, but Leroy Van Allen is still going strong, inspecting coins and assigning new
VAM numbers to varieties as yet unidentified.
Your VAM-8B could therefore describe almost any year or mint of Morgan or
Peace dollar. An 1881-S VAM-8B could be entirely different than a 1901-O VAM-8B, depending on what characteristics were found, in what order, for that year. The "B" part is likely a sub-variant - for instance, a "regular" VAM-8 might not have any die damage, but a
VAM 8A could have die cracks and VAM-8B could have clashes, all from the same specific die pair.
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First Catman, then Gary Burke and now Bigg Fredd - there's one heck of a coin club in Heaven.
Topic Locked
Posted 04/26/2007 12:37 pm
