Are You Sure Your VAM 84 Is Not A VAM 84A!!

You are looking at the overall die state thing with the scrutiny of a collector Mike..... I look at coins from the vantage point of Jane Q. Public....... Shiny coins are far more aesthetically appealing than are dull coins.... I expect the mint to churn out shiny coins..... I don't care about clashes, chips or gouges..... I want shiny, and whatever lengths the mint must go to in order to achieve shiny is what I want and expect.

The first Morgans produced by the Carson City mint were criticized by the local public because the CC mint mark was difficult to discern...... This was the only case of public dissatisfaction with the Morgan dollar that I am aware of.... The public wants a new coin that is legible in its numeric and alphabetical characters, with meaningful and artistic design..... but most of all, the new coin needs to be shiny.

Shiny is of utmost importance to the public.... I believe that collectors underrate the value of shiny in their quest for originality...... There is today an overabundance of cleaned coins available..... and not without reason.

When claiming die states, I think that the most important thing that we could attempt to know is when and why the dies were polished.

Yes, very good..... the mandated mission was not the end to the concerns that had to be addressed though..... What were all of the benefits to be gained from die polishing? (In addition to shiny), stress risers such as circumfrential fissures could be temporarily eliminated... superficial fractures obliterated before they grow, and the die will last longer....given and agreed.... but was that all there was to it? While there was a huge political undercurrent in the creation of the new dollar, I do not believe that the cost and energy involved in die production was of paramount concern in the existence of this coin.... this was a mere drop in what seemed to be nothing more than a senseless money pit...... Folks hated it because of its unwieldy size and weight..... the relatively new federal paper money had finally been accepted and was much easier to carry than were these weighty coins...... Morgans sat in vaults, but it was not for the lack of governmental attempts to create a thing of beauty that the public might embrace..... Linderman, Morgan and Barber spent no small amount of time in this endeavor.

While I totally agree with your perception of the governmental constraints on materials and cost, I cling to my assertion that public perception was equally, if not more important in the polishing of the dies.

If we were to go back to the past and tell those coiners of yesteryear what we were doing in the future, they would think we were all nuttier than fruit cakes.

Many a good point and analogy is being made here...However sometimes its easier to over thing of what hind sight should have been than what they were concerned about at that time...surely pimples on the butt had no concept as it does today...
However Zee you bring forth an interesting concept in my mind....
a good idea...AS backwards engineering always does....the idea, for instance, your Idea of counting coins...
OR PerSe...
For a normal die pair.(that does not blow up or have problems)..the numbers of coins produced each day,
which was at 90 per minute, your math used 60.....or say 90 Per minute stikes X 60 minutes is about 5400 coins per hour X 8hrs is about say 43,000 coins per day...lets just say no mishaps...
Take a given date and the known number of dies produced for the years productions numbers and what do you have?
for example in 10 days you could produce 4.3 million coins with 10 presses operating....using 10 die pairs......
the thing is there were many more die pairs made....
So lets examine a year together and see where it goes....
Remember our first premisis is that things went well...
Lets say the dies produced for a given year is 150....does that mean they were all used?150 die pairs would/could produce?60,Mil coins? but that never happened but many years had many dies....
Lets look at this. at a grand out side the box senerio shall we?

I think that some dies were condemned prior to insertion into the press..... I imagine others failing after striking just a few coins..... some dies struck hundreds of thousands of coins..... I also envision the entire Philly mint striking nothing but Morgans in April 1878, and then including quarters, dimes and halves later in that year..... I doubt that non stop production of Morgans was the law.... but rather a variable quota that was shared amongst the mints depending on locally available resources and other commitments.... I imagine that there were frequent periods when no Morgans were struck anywhere..... hurry up and wait... repeat.... repeat.

I think that we prove this as fact (beyond notion) on a daily basis....


Life is not getting any simpler.... and for what purpose... to what end?

Gene, that may be working out for you, but the more I understand something, the more confused I get..... perpetually seeking something that may or may not exist, and I am so easily distracted to the next red herring, of which there seems to be an infinite supply.....

I am willing to wager people that have a VAM 84 has remnants of the clashing, whether it be the cotton bolls over the arrow heads, the transferred letter E, however faint , or the profile of Anna's face, or the back of her head next to the wreaths, etc.

I believe the coin with the clashing remnants is the rarity, which I would like to have.......I will also tell you, I am NOT a betting man.