PCGS Vs. VAM World: Is Attribution Important?

PCGS recognizes only the most popular, significant VAMs like doubled dies, clashes with letter transfer. It's fun to search and find VAMs that are not normal dies. I look on ebay and sometimes find them that the seller did not care or know to list them. VAM varieties on well circulated coins usually don't add much value like common die cracks or polish lines. If a coin is MS then a VAM variety may add some value. There is a company VARSLAB that will label a graded slab with a VAM variety number.

Searching for VAMs is like other collectors searching cents and other denominations to try and find a valuable error, not often but once in a while you find one. The are many Morgan and Peace collectors wanting highest grade they can afford and/or search for VAM varieties. There are numerous coin auction sites online, dealers, ebay that list Morgan and Peace with VAM numbers.

To start with every Morgan and Peace dollar are VAMs, each die pairing will have a VAM designation. VAM stands for Van Allen & Mallis for Leroy Van Allen and George Mallis the two gentlemen that first started classifying them and wrote the book "The Comprehensive Guide to Morgan and Peace dollar varieties. As livingwater stated correctly, PCGS only is attributing the more popular VAMs basically much of the TOP 100 and HOT 50 lists as created by my Friends Jeff Oxman and Dr. Michael Fey. They created the TOP 100 list first as a way to showcase the really interesting and neat (as well as valuable) VAM varieties out of the many hundreds that existed at the time (1996) They taught a course on the TOP 100 at the ANA Summer Seminar which I was lucky enough to be a part of. VAMs were not popular at that time, at least not beyond a handful of collectors and almost no dealers cared about them. From 1995 (and earlier) on to around 2004 it was a hey day for those of us that knew what to look for, cherrypicking the rare and desirable VAMs was like taking candy from a baby, until the popularity took off and soon everyone was looking for them, due in part to several very rare VAM varieties selling for then outrageous prices at major auctions (Heritage FUN show sales come to mind).




They are sold via auction and by dealers at shows or online, traded between collectors. Some of the larger and well known dealers are Michael Fey, Larry Briggs, John Roberts, vamlink.com, NSDR members (National Silver Dollar Roundtable), Heritage, etc.

Do as much research as you can especially on certain dates, like 1878-P 8TF, 1880, 1887 some have some incredible rarities you don't want to sell as common dates, you could be leaving $1000's on the table. It's harder these days to make the big scores but they still exist out there, as so many Morgan and Peace dollars exist today, and I'd bet many have still never been looked at in detail for better VAMs.

If you find the better and rarer VAM variety in demand, trust me it's not a problem to sell it.

How bad is your CDO (Compulsive Disease, Obsessive - it's just like OCD but properly alphabetized)?

As others have said, EVERY coin is a VAM, because it's a marriage between two specific dies at some point along their continuum of married life. But only a very very few have any additional value. The valuable ones are either spectacular or have a good publicity department (a cool name).

That doesn't mean the study of VAMs isn't interesting, but it's more for a numismatist than a collector (and there can be a continuum there too).

The rarities WestCoin mentioned aren't specifically VAMs. They are die varieties.

When they sculpted the master die for the Morgans, they put the wrong # of tail feathers on it. Subsequently, they reworked the master with 8 tail feathers (still wrong, IIRC they actually have 15, but ...). That change in the master is called a variety.

Collectors span the continuum too - some just want one coin for what is called a type set. Some collect by date (ignoring the mintmark which shows where the coin was made). Others collect just the mintmarks (nothing = Philladelpha, CC=Carson City, O=New Orleans, D=Denver (1921 only), S=San Francisco). Still others collect sets of every date/mintmark combination.

You might collect coins in "mint state", I.e. just as they came from the mint. That gets expensive. There is the concept of the "Everyman" set where the coins show wear from circulation. And finally, low balls - the coins that are so worn the date/mintmark can barely be determined.

My intention here is liquidation, not acquisition. If a particular variety or die marriage can bring more money than the typical VAM-1 version, that's specifically what I want to identify. The years of the Morgans that I am attempting to analyze are as follows:

1879, 1879-S, 1882-O (poor), 1883, 1883-S, 1884-S, 1884-O, 1887, 1887-O, 1888-O, 1889, 1889-O, 1890, 1890-O, 1891-S, 1892, 1896-O, 1901-O, 1902-O (x5)

Grades are all over the place.

My end goal is to have these cataloged for my niece and nephew to inherit. I know for certain sure that if my mom passes and these Morgans are not pre-liquidated or cataloged carefully, that my sister's family will do no research, take the coins to a jeweler, get no second opinions, and sell them for melt value because it's "found money".

The challenge I have is that there is basically one coin from each year and mint. I don't want to spend a lot of time analyzing VAM attributions on coins that might not have any additional value to collectors. For example, if VAMs are only interesting above a certain grade, then I can cut out a lot of work. If only certain years and MMs in this stash have any premium for VAMs, then I can reduce the work. I want to focus on the right coins here, and be methodical. I feel like maximizing the good done by selling these coins is the right way to honor my grandfather's intentions in accumulating them and passing them down.

Bump, that is an awesome list, and exactly the kind of information that I am looking for. Thank you so much! =)