1878 P 7 Tail Feathers VAM 185-B! "Thanks For All The Help!

by the way,,all 78's are not near or far dates...they are part of the hubbing prosess NO 78 has a far or near date......they have the die imperfections that make them unique, why else would there be over 230 vams? think about it..

hello Morgans dad, I simply meant to say, as I have read in the past, that in 1878 the date was within the die, rather than in all the other coins(morgans) were
re-punched later....WHY?the reason only the VAM god knows, but for 1878, you will notice NO NEAR OR FAR DATES are listed, and in later years near/far dates are noted!!...in 1878 it's simply that the date was within the die hub..where all vams are created equal. I mean to say without going into the minting process and the terror of quota's they had to fill.....this first year was full of problems.....as they went into production for the following years and dies were made they thought to use the same master dies(which changed as they so fit
new changes which resulted in the A1 B1 B2 C1 c2 ect.. dies for the same year)
later they changed the process due to the fact they were changing the Obverse and reverse, for example 1878 8TF and then 1878 7TF.......in fact they had a new reverse in the same year....now know as the reverse of 79!! this is why there is NO LISTINGS OF NEAR OR FAR DATES FOR 1878......when the got there act together..somewhere down the line they still used the Morgan as there dollar die
and stopped imprinting the master die with the date....therefore keeping the same likeness as the 1878 Morgan into the following years until 1921. It may be noted from the time of the first minting....the reverse had many changes in 1878 alone,,,off the top of my head.. over 14.....resulting in the VAM's we know of today due to the revers changes we know of today..of those 14 I mean only to imply the vams of VAM 1 to vams 23, that's not even getting into the 7 over 8 tailed feathered or the change from the parallel feathers or slant feathers, the C3 reverse or the c4 reverse all within the figuring out what they were trying to perfect..in 1878....there are many here who understand more than I, but I hope I have been a help to you in understanding the 1878 Morgan dollar....ANYONE can step on me now.......Gene

I would but for the broken are and my own, still school me my friend.

Well, with the "r" broken, have you shifted your research to the listed VAMs which have a broken r? Most of the pickups for that series are on the obverse, which you haven't touched on here.

Eliminate all of the "smoking gun" pickups first when attributing. The broken "r" is a "smoking gun" which ought to narrow it down to a known VAM. If you can eliminate all known VAMs with that "r," then it's time to consider previously-unknown varieties.

chuckster,

Do you have pictures of the lower right wing feathers (your left), specifically the gap between the wing and the eagle's body and the entire obverse? Vams 160-189 feature the broken 'R' in trust. The majority of diagnostics are in the wing area and the obverse legend letters.

Thanks SeatedNut!

I think I got it right this time.

This is a 1878P VAM 185-B, Broken "R" in Trust/Die scratch bottom of the "I" and top right of "R" in Liberty.

Here are 2 pics that show the die scratches.

My only question is why isn't the die chip under the "U" and next to the "S" in TRUST which are KEY indicators for the VAM 100 (Top 100 Morgan no less) not being shown as key die indicators for this VAM 185-B?

Thanks again to all that helped!

Because they aren't "key" indicators. Even VAMworld calls them "Additional pick-up points." That's because they aren't unique to that VAM, and would only serve to confuse attributors if they were advertised as the "key" p'ups.

One of the reasons that every little detail of a known VAM isn't published is because the deluge of information would make it harder, not easier, to attribute them. Many features are shared between VAMs - hub doubling, for instance, would be repeated on all dies coming from that hub and as a result a number of VAMs would have that same doubling.