1858 Twenty Cent With Blundered I In Victoria

I always thought that, for the 1858's (regardless the denomination) were alignment marks making one of the master dies. I'm pretty sure that Brian Cornwall had a couple in his collections, definitely the 10 cents.

Here is an old CaC thread where the blunder/alignment marks were discussed, but everyone has their own opinion. I'm in the alignment mark sector, not the die crack sector like before.

http://coinsandcanada.com/forum/vie...451f2#p24069

The problem with the obverse matrix (master die) theory lies in the fact that per the die records (still existing) Wyon only made one obverse matrix each for the 5, 10, and 20 cent coins. I have pictures of all of them (they still exist). No blundered letters on any of them.

We could hypothesize that the mint staff made other intermediate tools (subpunches and submatrices) that did not make into the die records. If they did so, they likely inherited the obverse legends from Wyon's matrices and therefore would not need reference marks. If intermediate tools ever existed, they have since been destroyed.

I'll be honest, I do not have an explanation for these marks other than blundered corrections in the working dies. Even that explanation has holes in it. Why did it happen only to the letters I?

Dunno. A conundrum.

Very interesting history!

I have one each of the Victoria and Gratia blunders on the 20c; was there a 'blundered I' on the Dei as well for this denomination?

It's in DEI.