Hey guys take a look at this extra letter on the edge of this coin,do you think it is a dropped letter?
Letter appears to be raised, most likely the result of contact with another coin edge. (Although that should create a REVERSED raised image.) That is an interesting thought. For years we have seen these raised letters on the edge of the president dollars and they are typically said to be the result of contact with another coin. But I think the letters have usually been raised and normal, while contact with another coin should make them raised and reversed.
Conder, don't they use a horizontal press now? If so, it certainly could be possible to have a dropped and/or retained element. It looks like it could match the upper portion of the "R" that we can see to the left. Is the edge lettering still a separate operation as it was early on? Chris
The edge lettering is still a separate operation. The problem with a dropped letter is one the dropped letter would be struck into the coin and so would be incuse. And second since they do use the horizontal press the impacted letter would have to fall out of the die and land inside the vertical collar and then not get pushed out when the next planchet was loaded into it. That second scenario seems very unlikely to me. It can't be a "dropped letter" from the edge die because those letters are raised. In order to drop they would have to break off the die completely, the letter would still be incuse in the coin, and there would be a letter missing in the regular inscription.
I will open up another thread later on this photo but since we are on this topic,i just came across a different dollar with a inverted incused letter.Is this a dropped letter?
Conder You are on the right track but not carrying the thought through enough. Contact with another edge can produced a raised and reversed image but if the coin it hit had the lettering 180 degrees off from this one the reversed B would look like a normat but raised B Richard
Yes that would work. I was thinking that the letter was an R, but if only one loop of the B and part of the second loop appeared it would look like the top of a raised normal R.
