1878 P Morgan Dollar VAM-85 New Discovery! New B1 Reverse!

I am inclined to follow your reasoning, as it seems unlikely that some tail feathers would disappear and others remain, and randomly as it seems we have many different examples of improperly erased features.
7/8 TF ranging from 7/0 to 7/7, somethings missing in the explaination

Let me have one more crack at it then before I toddle off to bed:

If the dies had been previously basined (as 8TF dies), and the 8TF dies did not basin (worth a you know what), then some of the design depressions in some dies might be shallower than in others).

The shallower the design depressions, the greater the possibility that the hub relief will touch bottom of the die design depression, and displace die metal (7/0).

If some dies were not basined to the point of a shallow design depression in the die face, the hub relief may not touch bottom of that design depression in the die, and metal would not be displaced to the point of completely filling the old design depression (7/8).

Remember the primary cause for the overhaul of the 8TF design (high relief)....the dies were already of deep impression, the 7TF hub used to reimpress these dies was of lesser relief. Metal displacement in these existing depressions would be minimized due to contact of opposing fields. Continued hubbing might distort aligned design elements past the point of mere star doubling. Voids in the tail feather tips would have been an easy compromise to sustain.

edited for lack of sleep

Talk about a shot in the arm on a topic....This is what I have been talking about when I said "our in house resident Morgan specialists"!!

I am amazed at the thought process abilities some here have expressed, I simply walk away for a few hours and the place comes to life like a new years eve party, I am still wondering about the working hubs, from the 8TF - the 7/8TF, 7/5TF, 7/4TF, and the time in between them.

I believe in the rush to produce the 7TF reverse there was a frenzy of differing degrees to get this new design to production, or so we are led to see in the history of this topic, I also believe the working hubs, not used( 8TF ), were rehubbed into the previously stated designs, until the 7TF design was actually ready for full production, that said, Why is it that there are so many differing degrees of designs to come out of these working hubs, "the time factor"?
I would refer to some of the letters from some, like Barber on March 23rd, where he refers to stopping "all irregular methods", and proceed as formerly? What exactly was Mr B referring to?. We are led to believe the 8TF working dies and working hubs were hand engraved to add small tail feathers to the legs areas, because of the "Basining process, removing details from the original hubs", 8TF. I continue to see more letters making reference to the basining problems, which would, to me, indicate that process, is responsible for more of the failures we see today. 3-11 is stated to of began the 8TF design and 3-26 is stated to of been the begining of the 1st 7/8 design produced, I am not sure as to when the differing TF designs were produced exactly, but it would seem fair to deduce that some time along this date and the date of the new or 7TF PAF, second reverse design were made and used on 4-4 and the third reverse, 7TF SAF, was regularly used from 6-28.

This all has the makings of very strong time constraints and IMO, has exactly what I will leave to a letter from Morgan to Linderman on the progress of the new dies dated 6-5, in which Morgan states, " We have always had a difficulty in making hubs from dies, the metal would spread, making the hubs weak, after hardening little pieces would break off, which we would then have to then repair the dies".

I feel the entire process of the metal used, the hubbing, and the Basining together, have caused the problems we see today, to be a direct result of all of the above, being this process, IMO, was the best that could be produced for the time. WOW, its early......PS, I have come to expect opinions from many on these topics and more times than not, I am not let down, on the input from most. Bravo, to all who have contributed, I say, "This forum is a great place."

Looking at the big picture Gene, I would have to say that politics played a very important role in just how fouled up the mint had become in March 1878. In February, the Treasury Secretary made it clear that he wanted coining of the new dollar to commence immediately upon passage of the Bland/Allison Act. Red tape procedures involved in the design approval of the coin, coupled individual preferences of design, contributed significantly to coinage commencement a full two weeks after passage of the Act that 'required' two million of these coins to be strike each month. (March was a full month in that the Act was passed on February 28th).

If note is taken (while reading the letters the major players when addressing their superiors) of the language that they used and their precise subservient double talk, that they were saying what was expected to be said, along with a little peer back stabbing thrown in.

Pollock and Bobbyshell, (but especially Morgan and Barber), were running around like chickens with their heads cut off. They had a heightened sense of responsibility as compared to government employees of today. Linderman was a politician with his office in Washington....he was not a coin guy like Morgan and Barber who worked at the Mint in Philly. Consider this:

An Act of Congress (Law) had been passed and the full weight of compliance fell directly on the two guys who could make it happen (or not). Barber and Morgan had Linderman breathing fire down their necks and they were jumping through hoops like trained dogs to make things happen.

How many coins of each design (8TF, 7/8TF) were struck? Nobody knows, and nobody ever will. The reason being is that I doubt that we today can really come to grips with the utter state of absolute chaos the mint was in in March 1878.

The 8TF dies were not working well at all, they were annealed poorly, they were not of the proper radius to basin well, they struck coins that were of overly high relief.....this was an emergency....these two guys needed changes of underwear several times a day in late March 1878. They took whatever shortcuts they could possibly think of to alleviate their plight. Their options were few to make things work with the resources available.

'Efforts of ingenuity' is what Barber called it, but what it really amounted to was a quick fix, a jerry-rig, a band aid. Did they really cut down the 'master' hubs to reduce relief? Of course not....that would have entailed a tremendous amount of time and work, not to mention the risk involved with damaging the most important resource that they had, something that had considerable time and effort already dedicated to it.....they simply ground down and reengraved an expendable 'working' hub (relatively quick and easy).

As for the 7/8TF thing, I believe that the a B1 7TF working hub was used to reimpress several of the surviving 8TF dies. This would not require the traditional 7-10 blows over a 7-10 day period as would an original die hubbing. The majority of design was already impressed in the dies from their original hubbing with the A1 or A2 working hub, so basically only the tail feather area needed to be reimpressed with the new 7 feathers over the existing 8. Since even this area was already in intaglio, one hub blow should have been more than sufficient to achieve the expected results.

All 7/8TF dies could have easily been annealed and reimpressed on one day, and put into service the following day. I don't see a time frame between 7/0 and 7/4 and 7/whatever Mike.

As for the actual minting of coins in March/April 1878, I envision an 8TF pair striking coins in press #6.... while over on press #2, a 7/8TF coin is being struck, and on press #8 a 7TF pair is in use, while on press #3, a combination 8TF obv/7TF reverse is breaking down. (All of these designs were probably in use simultaneously, what else would you do to keep coin production up while the guys in the engraving room were modifying their tushes off)?

How long did these dies last? Imagine 90 strikes per minute, you do the math....A very prolific die might last three or four days maximum....most dies probably didn't see a second day though.....
and the reverse die that struck Bryan's coin (remember that coin that this thread is about?) I highly doubt (I VERY highly doubt) that it lasted a full minute in the press.

The master hub to master die to working hub to working die procedure is optimal, but when in emergency crisis state, you might be forced to create a master die from a working hub. I think that this actually happened. It was not until these two guys had completed the new and improved low relief 7TF C hub and subsequent working dies, that they could relax and stop all 'efforts of ingenuity' or "irregular methods" (which meant short cuts that they did not want to disclose to Linderman).

The 8TF die's inability to basin was a problem that caused the strike not to come up evenly and required touch up of individual working dies by the engraver who was already busy creating new design hubs. Basining was not a cause for die failure....annealing was the cause of premature die failure.

Yeah Mike, (with the exception of 'annealing') there is no 'one' cause of this problem or that problem....there were many complex issues and situations that combined to create problems 140 years ago and wonderment today.

I will ask there on VW because I know coxe already said he could email him if he needed another VAM-80 to compare it to but I sent my VAM-80 alone with this one so there was no need for him to email him

Wow, I just noticed that I believe this is the first thread I have ever started that has ever had over 100 responses and 7 pages of comments and useful information in it.

I usually try to limit my threads to stuff worth mentioning and since not allot happens in my life I am usually just a thread responder instead of a thread starter

My interpretation of that quote was more in the context of impressing B1 hubs onto existing A dies. The relief problem was more the result of die sink rather than defective design; they were simultaneously working on the annealing end of things. Morgan mentioned specifically that these new dies required greater heat than previous dies had; that might have been something they learned the hard way.

He also specifically mentioned a problem in the cheek area - methinks if they modified a working hub, it would have been in this area only.

Although I most definitely agree that the B1 -> A process was only a couple of strikes as opposed to a full series (aside question: was reheating and recooling required for every blow?), keep in mind the peripheral lettering was completely different obverse and reverse, as was the relationship between the A in AMERICA and the eagle's wing. So whatever they did had to be able to reestablish the peripheral lettering and stars.

That's something I've wondered about with the 7/8TF. With the periphery of the die lapped away, the new "field" in that area would be lower relative to the devices than before. A normal working hub would therefore be unable to fully impress peripheral letters before "bottoming out" in the existing devices. Wonder how they did this?