1902-S Morgan... What's Going On W/ Rev. Die? VAM?

Die crumbling, one form of Die Deterioration. That was a really complex area to strike and detail wilted under the pounding. Good place to gauge die wear once it's that advanced. Cbances are it's noted as a die state of the VAM.

Looks similar to the last photo on the VAM 7 page http://www.vamworld.com/1902-S+VAM-7

Hey superdave, what do u think of the date placement compared to VAM 7?

1902-S is one of those (many) issues for which too little information exists in one place. In this sense, VAMming is still in its' infancy. There is plenty of intellectual horsepower being devoted to the rarities and important varieties, yet too little manpower to do the huge amount of "grunt work" inherent in codifying the common dates.

We know 40 dies (20 pairs) were shipped to San Francisco in FY 1902. The Fiscal Year begins July 1, though, so it's only an estimate which we find to be a pretty good indicator. So, call it 20 die pairs. At best production lifetime, it would have taken 8 die pairs to strike the total production. San Francisco usually did not meet that die life, though we only know from totals and not necessarily individual years.

Although they probably tried to go through the dies sequentially, production is never that kind. Dies cracked, clashed and were pulled for repair. New dies get paired with old mates. We don't know how many of those 20 die pairs were used, nor which ones had more than one mate.

How many 1902-S's would one have to study to get a reasonable feel for all these possible pairings? And some of them won't have differences visible without magnification. It's kind of daunting, and why we have to settle for "maybe" with your coin.

The existence of a filled 2 in the date of VAM-7 implies an earlier die state where that fill didn't exist yet, so your coin is possible in that context. However, that would mean your obverse is an early die state, while your reverse with that crumbling is undeniably a pretty old die. One of those mismatched die pairs, maybe, or maybe not VAM-7 at all. The number of 1902-S VAMs will double or triple before it's all said and done.

Thank you for the kind words. I don't see it as a real candidate for formal attribution; like most it would merely be an intellectual exercise as few varieties are worth any kind of premium. With 1902-S so incompletely filled as yet, one might expect the VAM number to change into the future.