Do I Buy This One, Or Not?

way to complicated, aint they a different tail feather I can look at or something? anyhow here is a picture of the reeding


I am gonna go out on a limb here and say its not abmormal reeding

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Originally posted by Bryan1315

I sent you some pictures of the 1921-D though email

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Interesting stuff. The crack through the O in ONE (if I have that right) is new to me. The one running from the S to the O is uncommon in that location, too.

I'm guessing you would have found any of the larger cracks and breaks which characterize the known 1921 VAM's, so what we're probably looking at here are, at best, EDS versions of existing VAM's. I'm still interested in them, however, because the very worst that can happen is to build on the existing knowledgebase of die progressions. So, I'm going to be archiving your shots (I have over 500MB of my own pics of 1921's only), and you'd be doing a service if you could come up with full shots of the obverse and reverse of these coins.

Both of your coins are covered in cracks, and many of the known 1921 VAM's are the direct result of die cracking being allowed to progress. Therefore, it's very likely that these are both EDS versions of something.

Please do not judge me by the quality of these coins, these were the ones I was too embarrassed to sale to anyone else. I have another 1921-P that has a few cracks (nothing like these other two) but also has doubling atleast on the reverse

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Originally posted by Bryan1315

I have emailed you the pics of the second 1921-P and I dont beleibe that is anything to even talk about but I saent them anyhow

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The doubling on this one rocked me. Even if it is mechanical, it's huge. That's the largest offset I've ever seen on a 1921. It must be plainly visible to the naked eye.

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Originally posted by Bryan1315

yep thats the first thing I noticed when I looked at it before I started looking through the QX5. So long story short I have 3 big duds here huh? the story of my life

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The jury is still out. The first two aren't spectacular, but the third could be fun.

The dies for 1921 were run hard and put up wet. Only the 1886, 1887 and 1889 Philadelphia mintages even approached any 1921 mint production, and only the 1889-P actually exceeded it, producing more than Denver or San Francisco's 1921 outputs. The Philadelphia mint produced over 44 million 1921 Morgans, more than twice the production of any single year/mint. They were running the presses hard.

As a result, die cracks abound with 1921's. Like usual, San Francisco showed more attention to quality that the others, so relatively few S-mint errors reached circulation, and many of those are die polishing errors, showing their efforts to correct things. Denver and Philadelphia, though, ran the dies in some cases until they literally came apart, causing retained-cud errors. I think they'd lost the touch for producing such a large and complex coin in the years since 1904.

So, die cracks, even prominent ones, on 1921's are not really extraordinary. Of course, such can be said of almost any Morgan mintage - I've owned some pretty spectacular cracked examples which didn't warrant VAM designation. With the 1921's, though, a pristine coin is almost the exception rather than the rule.

That's what draws me to them. Even the one you submitted for me, clean as it looks, is covered with polishing lines under the loupe.

here is the other 1921-P with the Mechanical Doubling