Privately Made? VAM Varieties

There are (at least) two schools of thought on counterfeits.

1) All counterfeits are bad and should be destroyed.
2) Counterfeits are collectible.

Some people in the second class don't care if they are "privately made", made in China, made yesterday, or around the time the coins were made, made by mint officials, made on old mint equipment, are marked "COPY" or not, are fantasy coins, are illegal or not. Those that like them may think they "are interesting", may think they could never obtain a genuine example, or lots of other reasons for collecting them.

Thanks guys.

@AU90o- Great article answered all my questions and more.

The big difference between the contemporary counterfeits and the Modern Chinese Crap, is that the contemporary counterfeits were made by people who wanted to pass them off as circulating coins at the time they were made, while MCC is just mass-produced to deceive collectors. Contemporary counterfeits of all types are considered collectible, and the story behind them often adds to their coolness when known. If you are at the ANA show, go to Dave Wnuck's table, and he'll have a bunch of contemporary counterfeits far more crude than the Morgans.

The fascinating thing about the Micro O counterfeit family is that even though individual coins are scarce, more die pairs are being discovered all the time. Four were discovered between June 2015 and June 2016, bringing the number of die marriages up to 31. These discoveries can almost all be traced to "The Family" through die marriages and re-marriages. There are a few assumed to be part of The Family just because the characteristics of the coins are so similar.

My theory regarding their manufacture is based entirely upon observations on coins and speculation. I'm guessing that that it started shortly after the New Orleans mint stopped making silver dollars in 1904. There is a single 1896-O that I have seen that is engraved "1905" on the obverse. Between 1905 and 1915, the amount of silver needed to make a silver dollar was between 40 and 50 cents' worth. To make coins from 30 die pairs required people that could make fake dies capable of striking coins, store them, procure Sterling silver (these coins test as Sterling), produce planchets, make the coins, distribute them discretely, and do this with high enough volume to make a sizable profit, since there was significant risk in getting caught and hefty penalties to be paid.

New Orleans was a hotbed of Mafia activity in the early 1900s. Take a look at Wikipedia for some background info. If there was a counterfeiting operation as big as this one had to be to cover the risk/reward spread, the mob was going to be involved. Someone that was downsized from the mint in its waning years may have been made an "employment" offer to get the operation running smoothly. Laundering the finished product into circulation would be facilitated through mob-run gambling operations, that local law enforcement either didn't know about or "didn't know about (wink wink)."

We really don't know how many coins were made, but it's plausible that the number is on the order of 500,000 or more. The surviving population is too big for there to have been only 50,000. An interesting observation, however, is how the dies were used. A chart of the die marriages for these is quite disorderly, showing no good sequences of minting that we see with genuine coins. It is as if the operation would be started on short notice with dies brought together for a brief production run, then stored off-site so that there'd be no evidence of a counterfeiting operation left where the presses were. A good way to store dies would be to have the obverses at one safe house, and the reverses at another. The two people in charge of storage would not know each other, otherwise, they could start their own operation. A trusted courier would deliver the dies to the press.

We don't know when or why the operation stopped, but we can observe a pause through the die marriages, as there are two sizeable groups that are separate from each other. Perhaps after the first group of dies was used up, another group was made. As for why it ended, there may have been an arrest that shut it down at some point. If so, there should be a record of this in the National Archives somewhere. Probably Fort Worth if this all went down in New Orleans. There's a lot of pure speculation above, it would be cool if some records could be found that provides some actual answers. It would be cooler if my speculation were correct, of course. ;)

Whew. That's a lot of words. I don't post here much, maybe this'll make up for it.

I get it now...the working theory here is that the Mafia had a hand in producing them(with the help of a disgruntled ex mint employee) and then used their casinos to distribute them to unsuspecting gamblers.


@paralyse-Thanks for the Mafia history. I thought I knew a lot about their dealings. Always found it interesting that they showed hatred to drugs and drug dealers in their neighborhoods while secretly becoming the biggest supplier in town.




Thanks for taking the time to respond Messydesk.
I don't see too many posts from you. Glad you chimed in on this one. I wanted to hear your Mafia theory. When Cascade mentioned it, it peaked my interest and I hoped you would show up to share it.

I've always been fascinated by the dark-side or underworld & also my parents were from New Orleans so I got to visit a lot & learn about some of the "off the books" history.