Zerbe Proof Die

I am eventually gonna crack it out and send it off. I'massuming you would have to pay extra for variety?Its in an ms63 holder. Its real close to PL. I can see why these are referred to as presentation pieces by the top authorities now. Its extra sharp in places such as IGWT with no wire rims and mirrors that arent very deep. But she was a real standout in that dealers case and also compared to ANY 21 morgan ive ever seen

Im not seeing any of.those lines on my coin dave. Heres my sad attempt to capture the die scratch U (yours appears more pronounced). And by your description the other difference is: the die polish on my coin is not at all distracting. My last pic I was (trying) capturing what I would call shelf like MD on all lettering. Its the exact same kind of doubling ive seen on many of the early proofs. Could this be a telltale sign of 2 blows from the die? Even the denticles have this sort of doubling and appear to be in higher relief than your average.

monstermorganman, Welcome to the Family. Nice Avatar, Your name is interesting too......Enjoy the knowledge that resides here....

The die pair that is the one that consistently shows up in PCGS holders as "Zerbe special strike" is VAM 1AG. The coins are basically early business strikes that were treated with extra TLC. Later strikes from the same dies have the same markers on it, but may not look like they're almost proofs. The ANA has one of these in their collection that I spotted last summer before the Summer Seminar. It was in a flip or paper envelope marked DMPL. I assume it'll be in a slab by now. All major grading services will use some "Zerbe" appellation with this coin. ANACS and I will put the correct VAM number on it as well.

Regarding the OP's coin, die polishing lines can fade pretty quickly with die wear, so trying to match them up might not prove fruitful. The best bet is to compare the "scribble scratches" with those shown on VAMWorld for VAM 1AG.

That's a big part of it. The designation is rather dubious, since they weren't struck as proofs. We'd have to examine a lot of coins, and there aren't a lot to be found at any given time. We could find that of all the coins that have that "proofy" appearance, 90% are one die pair. We could also find that since there were multiple presses making dollars, multiple die pairs were prepared to make coins like this. It could also be that after seeing the really nice coins of the EDS VAM 1AG, someone wanted to make more like that, either for someone else or to just have really nice coins go into circulation.

Not really. We're still only dealing with two known die pairs, those designated 1AG and 47, and the markers specific to each are clearly different. And aside some smoking-gun document I can see how this is a question which probably won't ever have a clear answer. The relevant coins have been studied hard enough and not much is left to learn in that regard.

Fun stuff. Seriously. It kinda helps teach a bit of humility in a world where we begin to think we can overcome anything with technology.

And in my very subtle opine.....Zerbe was just a name everyone NOW lumps together like they do polishing lines,which can actually be used to describe a wide array of events performed depending what tools/methods etc were actually used.

Maybe one of the elite original holders of these coins paid off the big 3/vam world so none of us could become experts and search these pieces out.