Seriously! I know so many have survived, but why the cameo-like contrast? Proof dies couldn't have produced that many coins, could they?
Proof-likes were not produced on proof dies. Morgan Dollar Working Dies were basined before striking planchets, and in this process the working die was placed in a zinc receptacle full of fine grit. The longer the die was in this receptacle the more mirror finished it became. This resulted in many Morgan Dollars obtaining a DMPL or PL appearance.
It has to die with the way the die and planchets were made. Think about all the Morgans made how many hundred million? PCGS has graded about 38,000 DMPL and 76,000 PL's. Compared to the mintage it is really not that many, and the DMPL pop is really low. PCGS has graded over 2.5 million Morgans.
Todd, I know that some DMPL's came from repolished dies and they are fairly easy to distinguish from the DMPL's that came from the original dies. Are there any numbers available on the "original vs. repolished"? Chris
What a lot of people don't realize is that a lot of coins of the times, besides Morgans, were minted in the same manner as the Morgans. It was just the way the mint did things at the time. There are examples in just about all of the denominations ranging from the gold 25 cent pieces up to and including the gold $20 pieces that are PL and some even being DMPL. Of course there are far more Morgans than there are other denominations. But that is largely because there are far more Morgans period. You have to keep in mind that Morgans are unique. Other denominations were not minted and then stored away in mint bags, never to be touched, like Morgans were. So today, far fewer examples of PL and DMPL in other denominations still exist. But when they were made, they were just as common (proportionally) as the Morgans were.
No about the only place you can see this is the 1878 7/8 weak vs strong as the weak were polished down. The numbers are pretty even though. There are a couple VAM series where you can see it, like the 1882-CC VAM 2, there are about 6-8 stages for this variety, and several reappear PL/DMPL after clashing was polished or a die rotation fixed and polished.
It is a comparatively small percentage of Morgans that are Proof like or DMPL. That state occurs when a highly polished new die struck a planchet with a good strike, and transferred that product of being somewhat prepared to said planchet. Some of it was from acid etching, and some of it from polishing of existing but pretty new dies. At any rate, it was an unintended and lucky accident of mintage that created these highly desirable Morgans. As has been pointed out, the number slabbed has been comparatively small, based on overall mintages of the entire Morgan run, so it makes them extremely attractive and highly collectible for Morgan enthusiasts.
Exactly. Its simply survivorship bias we are seeing. Huge numbers of morgans exist in BU, something no other series can claim. If we had millions upon millions of barber quarters existing in BU we would be having this conversation about why so many barbers seem to be PL.
The original master hub die of Morgan's is said to have been dmpl. Meaning each die created afterwards was done so with similar properties to the master hub.
Is it really that small a number? With the figures provided here one out of every 21 morgans is either a PL or DMPL. One out of every 66 coins is a DMPL. Frankly to me those are some astonishingly high numbers.
