1921 Morgan Interesting Die Cracks!

Right you are (as usual), Dave. I wasn't sure who might or might not know what basining is, so I used 'redesign' as a catchall.
Yes, the Morgan and Orr press that was used to stamp out the earlier Morgans was also used to strike the Trade dollars that preceded them. The press itself was well tested by the time it struck its first Morgan, and remained the state of the art minting machine well into the first 30-40 years of the 20th century. Steam gave way to electricity, and the press underwent other technological refinements during the industrial revolution of the early 1900s as well.

Oh my, Nic....my gross generalization has resulted in miscommunication...'Basining' and 'redesign' are definitely not synonymous.

As far as coin dies go, here is my definition of basining: To me, the word refers to the convex curvature of the die face to facilitate metal flow during strike. For each design engraved (Peace, Morgan, obverse, reverse) on a die, several tests would need to be performed with newly sunk test dies and test polishing plates (or polishing discs) of varying degrees of radial curvature. The curvature is achieved through initial 'polishing' of the die with a slightly concave polishing plate, resulting in a convex die face.

This research was performed at the Philly mint. Polishing plates that were determined to be of the proper concave radius to transfer the correct convex degree of curvature to the dies were sent along with the dies to the branch mints so that when the time came to repolish the dies due to wear, the process could be duplicated and the die would remain at the proper radial curvature.

The result of this basining (or grinding or 'polishing' or whatever a person may call it) is not only a die of the correct curvature to strike up a properly profiled coin in one press strike, but it actually polishes the die to a very bright, hard, relatively non porous surface finish that is complimentary to achieving PL coin surfaces.
When a die is heavily worn, it can be revived using the polishing plate, and begin to produce PL coins once again.

This is just one of many reasons why die stage progression is a very tricky business when armed only with various coin examples of a certain die pairing, but lacking the knowledge of press capabilities and mint SOP. Contrary to the belief of many an 'expert', PL coin surfaces do not necessarily indicate early die state.


The term clashing simply means the there was no planchet or flan between the obverse and reverse dies during strike. A clash is when these two dies contact each other, and often the harder of the two dies will leave a portion of its design impression on the softer die, which is subsequently transferred to each coin that it strikes, until such time as the 'repolishing' (mentioned above) takes place, and then everything is peachie-keen again.