Retained Cud Study - 1921-D VAM-1-H

Agreed, the visible evidence supports only your conclusion. The chances of such a thing happening, though, seem remarkably slim which is why I'm willing to listed to alternatives. There's just nothing else which would make such a mark, though.

That must have been spectacular to witness.

Absolutely. The missing part which allows a full Cud is the same part which causes the denticle impressions. And there's more than one spectacular Cud among the 1921's, for instance - 1921-P VAM-19 has a huge Retained Cud spanning the MERI of AMERICA - had a coin struck after the piece completely dropped away been allowed out of the Mint, 1921-D VAM-1x would be forgotten.

Golly, it's tough to concentrate on typing a point with Kaboose blaring on the stereo.

Kaboose is a Christian Hip Hop artist. I don't necessarily buy his message, but his beats are insane if you turn 'em up loud enough.

1X is, in my mind, almost certainly unique. The Mint's quality control was generally better than that. With that said, if there was one mistake there could be others, and the resulting coin is something which would likely be handed down as a family heirloom and never reach the market except by chance.

There will be more discoveries.

"Stiff Upper Lip," by AC/DC.

Calling on Angels Zee, much GOOD speculation going on here, After reading up on the Longacre Idea It doesn't add up to me...but that's another story....I do think the dentil idea is very plauseable, and as mentioned, could explain why V1X came to be, with the exception as why all other years with Dentile impressions had no VAM X for those years.....one must think////it must have caused a terrible clatter so that the operator must have had to shut down and PERHAPS look at the coins that were minted and pull them off line and send them back to be remelted...as this was supposed to be the process...Great stuff here..
All on the theory side but that's why we think not only about NOT just the VAM, but rather the process that explains why we have vams in the first place...

Although you may be 100% correct, I don't really see it like that Gene.... I don't think that the press itself was too noisy... I suspect that the steam engines used to power the presses overshadowed any noise that the press made... I might think that even a clash would not have made too much racket as it was just a tap (rather than the violent event that we were led to believe elsewhere). I imagine that the press operator never knew anything was wrong unless there was a visual clue or the press stopped unexpectedly..... I think that the primary function of the press operator was to keep the coin tube from running dry, and keep one foot on the clutch ready to disengage the press in case of some major malfunction.... someone else came around and gathered the coins from the coin boxes under the presses, it was not the job of the press operator to inspect or gather coins.

The coins were then taken to a room (the 'reviewing room', I think it was called).... there they were inspected individually for errors and counted, and placed in bags of 1000, and the bag weighed.... the 1X should have been caught right there.

Weighed before bagged, I suspect, so lights and heavies could be accounted for. Remember, 125 years ago they weighed $1000 bags to tolerances which would be difficult today, and had 4 weight grades for "acceptable" Morgans to create $1000 bags within two tenths of an ounce.

In the 1880's, Philly had a scale which would weigh 6000 ounces to an accuracy of 5 grains. Converted, that's 2.9 million grains with an accuracy of 5.

I think the noise pollution was more about so many presses in one room rather than the power source. They sourced power from one big engine, using belts; the engine would have been on another floor. With that said, I wholeheartedly agree that a clash probably didn't sound so much different from a strike. We know there were a lot of events in Morgan striking - die cracks, breaks, clashes and the like tell the story - so I'm inclined to suspect the press operators were more visually aware than possibly given credit for.

I would dearly like to know the "return to melt" rate of some of these issues.

Very interesting point SD...as the age of machines or the industrial revolution was well under way,FOR MORE THAN 50 years, the noise factor could easily be turned to VISUAL persception, if they were paying attention....

I see I forgot to mention, the abillity to have the weight of the coin...was perfected since the early 1500's in which as you point out the measure was not examined by the coin but rather by the Bag or buy the thousand lot, and it w2s not to be deviated or the lot was turned back and remelted...and re-coined..