1900-O VAM?

I'll hit you with the usual Morgan truism first: All Morgans are VAMs. Each of them is a variety of one sort or another, one or another die pair, and they're therefore a VAM whether we've identified the particular variety yet or not.

Now, with that out of the way....your interest in 1900-O should center around the mint mark. Some old Carson City dies were transferred to New Orleans for this year, and the O mint mark was punched over the CC mint mark, creating the popular "O/CC" series of VAMs. Some of these are common, some not so much, and all have a high level of interest to the collector.

A certain few 1900-O's were found to be contemporary counterfeits during the time since Leroy Van Allen and A. George Mallis did the fundamental VAM research; these are among a very, very few counterfeit coins which have assigned VAM numbers, a situation which has been preserved to keep continuity of the research process. You'll find them characterized by a very particular positioning of the date.

Date position is an important pickup in the VAMming process. Dates are described as "Normal," Near," and "Far," and it's determined thusly:

Look at and extend the point of the neck of a Morgan down into the denticles. You'll note it points at a space between two denticles. That's the "zero" point from which you measure date location to the left serif of the 1. A "Normal" date location will fall somewhere around 2-1/2 to 3 denticles to the right, with "Near" and "Far" dates varying accordingly. The counterfeit 1900-O's have a date location (roughly) 1-1/2 denticles right, which is way too close for most normal Morgans.

There are sixty-some identified VAMs for 1900-O. It's an ongoing process; some might be consolidated, maybe others added. What I've discussed above are the ones which tend to perk up collectors' ears. Like most Morgan VAMs, the majority are mundane.