St. Gaudens 1907 Upside Down Side Lettering

eh bummer, was hoping I had something special! Thanks for the welcome either way though.

To be honest I'm in way over my head here, I'm not even totally sure if all Gaudens have the side lettering or not. If it was a 1907 proof would it hold much value?

The lettering won't tell you if it is a proof really. What do you know about the coin before hand? Any provenance would help a lot.

Taking scrap for the coin is insane by itself though.

I just took it so a PCGS, he offered me $1150and agreed while still a great coin it isn't anything special so I think I'll just go ahead and hang onto it.

As far as history goes I really can't say, and those in my family who could have since passed away. It wouldn't surprise me if it's been in my family since it originally came out, but not much more info or even ideas than that unfortunately.

I don't know which orientation is correct, but I would expect it to be consistent within a given year. In other words all the business strikes for a given year would be the same orientation. (This wouldn't necessarily have to hold true for proofs as the number of dies needed would be much smaller.)

The Saint-Gaudens double eagles were all struck using a spring loaded three piece collar. The only way to invert the edge lettering would be to either invert the hammer and anvil dies or create edge die pieces with the lettering inverted. Both of these possibilities have problems.

Having edge die pieces sitting around with two different orientations would run the risk of mismatched pieces being put in the press and result in coins with part of the edge right side up and part upside down. Why risk it?

The other option, inverting the hammer and anvil dies has a different problem. The necks of the hammer and anvil dies are different. In order to invert designs you would also have to have some obv dies with hammer necks and some with anvil necks and the same for rev dies. Now when you are setting up the press you have to have an obv and a rev but you have to make sure you have the RIGHT obv and rev dies because you can't strike coins with two hammer or two anvil neck dies. They would need a lot of dies each year for business strikes and why have multiple die types to track. Rather than trying to keep track of the die types, if you wanted to change orientations it would make much more sense to do so between years, not mid year. That way you don't have to keep track, but if you do you can't continue to use the previous years rev dies.