Some Die Pairs Of The 1948 Canadian Silver Dollar

The mint report says 9 obverse and 6 reverse dies for both 1947ML and 1948. 39,915 good coins struck for both.

Thanks. I guess I glossed over the 1947ML entry in 2012 Charlton that says "included in 1948." I also should have paid attention to the listed 1948 obverse variety, Obv-002, the so-called "hearing aid" variety. I was not looking for this when I searched images. It turns out that all three I pegged in the article as "not Obverse A" have the hearing aid clash! It would have been so easy to ID these "not Obverse A" if I had looked at the ear. I will revise the article to reflect that this is a known obverse. I guess I need to go through it again and see if Obv-002 is also paired with a different reverse die.

So we have two of nine obverse dies identified, but don't know how many of the remaining 7 were 1948. The 1947ML coins have a different legend, so if we can ID some of the 1947ML obverse dies, that would narrow down how many 1948 there are left to ID.

Another curiosity is that both of these obverses show clashes, and are found paired with the same reverse die, and yet none of the reverses show evidence of a corresponding clash. There are no documented reverse clashes for 1948. My new clash at the nose is very tiny, but it seems like something as strong as the hearing aid clash would have left evidence on the reverse die.

I agree that clashes aren't definitive. Not only will the same die have produced coins with and without a clash, but two different dies can end up with very similar clashes. And as you said, the mint may have polished the die in an effort to remove the clash.

I've also been poking around the 1946 $1. There is a reverse clash that can point to the same die being used, but you have to be careful. There are at least two dies with a very similar clash, but George's eye is clashed in different places. Even the SWL variety I'm finding is actually two different dies - one has SWL on both ends of the canoe and the other only on the right.

I started looking into the "hearing aid" obverse clash for the 1948 but it quickly gets confusing. Some coins seem to show it in one image and not another image of the same coin. Which is another problem with using clashes - now you see it, now you don't. I'm also not sure if the 1948 SWL variety is legitimate. My coin appears like a SWL at a certain angle, but at another angle the water lines are still there, just very faint relative to the rest of the water lines. I'm not sure whether this die pair investigation is really worth it. Something like the US Morgan dollar has had extensive work done with this as the VAM designations, but I don't think it's ever been done for Canadian dollars, even though the number of dies used is so much smaller.