Are You Sure Your VAM 84 Is Not A VAM 84A!!

The game revolves around a thing called ignorance..... Ignorance is believing in the words and speculation of others without any consideration as to what is probable or even possible..... Knowledge is not king, ignorance is.... Years and years of simply looking at coins does little to further a person's knowledge if the basis of all of this supposed knowledge lies with the thoughts and ponderings of someone else.

Consider this:

Are all coins struck as DMPL or PL?

How many DMPL and PL coins will a die strike before it no longer strikes DMPL or PL?

How many coins will an average die strike before it is no longer serviceable?

How many times was the average die polished?

Now consider this:

The normal operating speed of the press that struck these dollars was 90 coins per minute.

Now do the math:

Be overly conservative and say that the press is only striking 60 coins per minute instead of 90.....

60 coins per minute = 3,600 coins per hour.
3,600 coins per hour X 8 hours = 28,800 coins per day.
28,800 coins per day X 5 days = 144,000 coins per week.... (conservatively).

Did the average die last more than a week?
How often were these dies polished?
How many times (during the life of a die) was it polished?
Why was a die polished? (Do you really think that it was done to remove things as frivolous as chips, gouges or clash marks)?

A person must be able to answer these questions before even thinking about die state..... This has not been done though..... speculative pipe dreams are passed down as fact, without consideration to what is probable or possible..... These coins were created with a specific purpose.... Do you think that this purpose was to satisfy the microscopic scrutiny of the public over 100 years in the future?

As one of the main goals of today's mint is to satisfy the the public in the desire for new shiny coins, is it not feasible that the mint of the late nineteenth century had the same goal? Do you really think that the public was more interested in whether or not their coins had die gouges or clashes?

My contention is that the mint probably polished these dies on a daily basis for the purpose of producing shiny coins for the public..... I believe that removal of clashes, chips and gouges was merely an unintentional and inconsequential side effect of polishing..... If I am right, then how long will it take before VAM 84-B, C, and D will be determined? When did VAM 84 clash? Was it prior to the first coin even being struck? How many times did the die clash in the same location?

None of the above is directed toward anyone here, but rather at the core premise of die state assumption.

No, not at all Mike..... I am not questioning it, I am denouncing it as sheer fantasy without any basis in logic or forethought.

You are looking at the overall die state thing with the scrutiny of a collector Mike..... I look at coins from the vantage point of Jane Q. Public....... Shiny coins are far more aesthetically appealing than are dull coins.... I expect the mint to churn out shiny coins..... I don't care about clashes, chips or gouges..... I want shiny, and whatever lengths the mint must go to in order to achieve shiny is what I want and expect.

The first Morgans produced by the Carson City mint were criticized by the local public because the CC mint mark was difficult to discern...... This was the only case of public dissatisfaction with the Morgan dollar that I am aware of.... The public wants a new coin that is legible in its numeric and alphabetical characters, with meaningful and artistic design..... but most of all, the new coin needs to be shiny.

Shiny is of utmost importance to the public.... I believe that collectors underrate the value of shiny in their quest for originality...... There is today an overabundance of cleaned coins available..... and not without reason.

When claiming die states, I think that the most important thing that we could attempt to know is when and why the dies were polished.

Yes, very good..... the mandated mission was not the end to the concerns that had to be addressed though..... What were all of the benefits to be gained from die polishing? (In addition to shiny), stress risers such as circumfrential fissures could be temporarily eliminated... superficial fractures obliterated before they grow, and the die will last longer....given and agreed.... but was that all there was to it? While there was a huge political undercurrent in the creation of the new dollar, I do not believe that the cost and energy involved in die production was of paramount concern in the existence of this coin.... this was a mere drop in what seemed to be nothing more than a senseless money pit...... Folks hated it because of its unwieldy size and weight..... the relatively new federal paper money had finally been accepted and was much easier to carry than were these weighty coins...... Morgans sat in vaults, but it was not for the lack of governmental attempts to create a thing of beauty that the public might embrace..... Linderman, Morgan and Barber spent no small amount of time in this endeavor.

While I totally agree with your perception of the governmental constraints on materials and cost, I cling to my assertion that public perception was equally, if not more important in the polishing of the dies.

If we were to go back to the past and tell those coiners of yesteryear what we were doing in the future, they would think we were all nuttier than fruit cakes.

Many a good point and analogy is being made here...However sometimes its easier to over thing of what hind sight should have been than what they were concerned about at that time...surely pimples on the butt had no concept as it does today...
However Zee you bring forth an interesting concept in my mind....
a good idea...AS backwards engineering always does....the idea, for instance, your Idea of counting coins...
OR PerSe...
For a normal die pair.(that does not blow up or have problems)..the numbers of coins produced each day,
which was at 90 per minute, your math used 60.....or say 90 Per minute stikes X 60 minutes is about 5400 coins per hour X 8hrs is about say 43,000 coins per day...lets just say no mishaps...
Take a given date and the known number of dies produced for the years productions numbers and what do you have?
for example in 10 days you could produce 4.3 million coins with 10 presses operating....using 10 die pairs......
the thing is there were many more die pairs made....
So lets examine a year together and see where it goes....
Remember our first premisis is that things went well...
Lets say the dies produced for a given year is 150....does that mean they were all used?150 die pairs would/could produce?60,Mil coins? but that never happened but many years had many dies....
Lets look at this. at a grand out side the box senerio shall we?

I think that some dies were condemned prior to insertion into the press..... I imagine others failing after striking just a few coins..... some dies struck hundreds of thousands of coins..... I also envision the entire Philly mint striking nothing but Morgans in April 1878, and then including quarters, dimes and halves later in that year..... I doubt that non stop production of Morgans was the law.... but rather a variable quota that was shared amongst the mints depending on locally available resources and other commitments.... I imagine that there were frequent periods when no Morgans were struck anywhere..... hurry up and wait... repeat.... repeat.