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 Replies: 7 / Views: 1,027 |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
2077 Posts |
I wonder if one of the reasons for the rarity of the 1799 is that mint employees were so excited about the century change that they made the 1800 dies early. Seems more plausible than "a boat captain took them all".
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4897 Posts |
Century change would be 1801.  Wasnt ther a problem with the planchets...they were soft or something so a lot just wore down to no date...? |
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Pillar of the Community
 United States
2077 Posts |
I've heard that theory too. The one I find most plausible is that the 1798 dies were used into a good part of 1799. I've though of doing an analysis of availability versus published mintage for 1797 through 1801 to see if this is true, but haven't gotten around to it.
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
17884 Posts |
Not likely considering that six of the 1800 dies are overdates and one of those is a 1800/1798. There is evidence that these 179 dies were made in 1798. Many of the 1798 cents were struck AFTER the 1799's. The Mint had planchets and unfinished dies on hand. The only real reason for not striking more 1799's was probably just that they still had usable and hardened 1798 dies still on hand.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1151 Posts |
Quote:
I've heard that theory too. The one I find most plausible is that the 1798 dies were used into a good part of 1799. I've though of doing an analysis of availability versus published mintage for 1797 through 1801 to see if this is true, but haven't gotten around to it This may be true, because I've heard many rumors that the US mint used 1964 dies all the way up to 1967? Can anybody confirm this? |
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Valued Member
United States
419 Posts |
 I've heard this to, it was on CONECA's site. Maybe I can find it here....... |
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Valued Member
United States
419 Posts |
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
17884 Posts |
Yes they did use the 1964 dies in later years but that was because the date was legally frozen. Likewise they used 1974 dies for the quarter, half, and dollar until mid 1975 rather than make 1975 coins for only half a year and having potential rarities. (By law the bicentennial coins were to start production in July of 1975. So they legally froze the 1974 date for half a year and didn't strike any 1975's.)
This is not the same as in the early years of the mint. Back then good tool steel was scarce and expensive so if you had a die left over at the end of the year that was still good or which han't been used, they went ahead and used it even if the date was wrong. If the die had been dated and not hardened yet they could punch the new date in over the old one, harden it and put it to use. They did not put overdates into dies that had already been hardened. The reason for that was that the time when a die was most likely to fail was during hardening. (hardening caused great internal stresses in the die and they would frequently crack when quenched.) If you had a perfectly good die that had already survived hardening once the chances were even higher that it would not survive twice. They couldn't punch a new date into a hardened tool steel die, so they would have had to anneal it, repunch it, and then reharden it. I think there are only three cases where they actually tried it due to shortage of steel and in each case the reworked die failed fairly quickly.
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Replies: 7 / Views: 1,027 |
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Posted 07/24/2012 12:02 pm
