1900 Barber Quarter Broken O Obverse Paired On Both Type II And III Reverse

Very interesting. I wonder how common the "broken O" is. It surprises me that you were able to find it paired with another reverse type so quickly after your first topic on the subject. Technically it just means that they swapped out the reverse die while the obverse die was still good, but it's still curious. BCCS (Barber Coin Collectors' Society) would be a good resource. Membership is only $15/year and you get 4 quarterly journals with info you won't find anywhere else. You might consider working up an article on this, if it hasn't already been documented.

I went on Heritage this morning (following up on your other post), and on the first page of 1900 25c results there are: I/II, I/III, II/II, and II/III. As far as I can find, only I/II and II/III are documented. My knowledge though is limited to online and the Bowers' Barber Silver Coins book.

I discovered a third Barber dime reverse type (1900-1905) almost 2 years ago now, largely as a result of a thread on this forum. There is so much left to be accurately documented in the Barber series. Good job!

We were doing the same thing at the same time. (I'm bored). I went through 240 Heritage archive listings. A bit over 50% (135/240) are proofs, which I skipped. Of the remaining 105 coins, 2 were Broken O. One Type II reverse and one Type III reverse.

I agree that it is possible that there is more than one Broken O obverse die for 1900-P. While going through the images, I noted other types of anomalies which I started calling "breaking O", "mangled O", and one "nearly broken O". Breaking O has a split at the top of the O. Mangled O has "chunky" metal where that piece of the O disappears on the Broken O. "Nearly Broken O" is pictured below. I'd need some time to go through it all again and make images. It's a very thin part of the die, so I can see where there would be issues there, and on more than one die.

"Nearly Broken O" (II/III) still has a remnant of the missing piece.

I'm not 100% convinced of the two (or more?) obverse dies for the Broken O, but the evidence deserves further investigation. Zooms of the two I found on Heritage are below. The left images are II/II (MS65) and the right images are II/III (XF40).

The O's look different (the left has an extra "hook"), but is it die state or different dies?


The alignment of 1 with denticles, designer initial B, and last 0 (centered more over the denticle and then more over the gap) does seem to point to different dies, but angle of photos and coin wear could be factors. It's very minor.


Here I attempted to draw lines.


I searched through about 100 on Heritage for 1900-O the other day. I was expecting to find at least some evidence of the same broken O, but all I came up with was one "mangled O" (II/III). Even then it could be damage not on the die.


1900-O search reveals that the majority are I/II or II/III. However, I found 3 I/III and 5 II/II out of roughly 100. NGC states that "All 1901-O quarters are from the 2/3 hub pair". Bowers says "II/II and II/III" via Steve Hustad (BCCS variety coordinator). Lawrence says "some mules exists with a late hub obverse and early hub reverse (II/II). We would expect a I/II or II/III combination". So between those three sources, they're still missing the 1901-O I/III.

Let us know what Flynn says.