What is "First Die Marriage" mean ? What to look for ? Also is it only in certain dates ? Thanks for any info's.
I would assume it to mean the very first die pair employed to produce a given issue. It is a point of interest to me as a Morgan fan - the 1878-P VAM-9 die pair, the very first used to produce Morgans, carries a pretty substantial premium - but with higher-production Modern issues produced on multiple presses simultaneously it means very little.
It could mean a few things. 1. As SuperDave mentioned, the very first die pair for a series. 2. The first die pair for a date. 3. Some varieties for example a DDO or DDR can be married to one or more none DDO or DDR dies. Say for example a DDO coin is struck with a fresh die on the obverse and a die nearing it's end of life on the reverse, can have a die changed out on the reverse while continuing the use of the obverse die. This creates a multiple die marriage. Some VAM's in the Morgan series are known to share obverse or reverse dies with other VAM's.
Most of the older issues required multiple dies to strike all the coins of a specific date. And since most dies were made by cobbling the various features together, particularly the date, different dies are identifiable. In general the obverse die had more varieties than the reverse die. The reverse of most coins remained the same from year to year so as long as it wasn't too worn or damaged it was used for several years. The obverse die at least had to have its date changed. The pros who study a series in depth can generally determine the order of use of dies.
See this: http://www.doubleddie.com/58201.html Basically, when work is done by hand, it's often possible to identify the specific dies used by comparing characteristics. The more hand work, the more easily identifiable. This is especially true when things like mint marks were hand punched and so not always in exactly the same place. Further, wear characteristics, repolishing, die cracks, etc. make it possible to trace a die through it's life span. The combination of an obverse and reverse die is a marriage. With enough examples it may be possible to identify the actual 1st marriage used chronologically for a given year, for example in the referenced Morgan, it's the one that used the prior year's reverse die (before that die failed). But there's always a bit of guessing unless mint records can be found which have specific information.
