Is there a book out there, or is it a judgement call? Here's a seated half I just bought and it's got die breaks covering the obverse including a big one running through the rock Ms. Liberty sits on. Plus it has a few cracks on the reverse. Anybody know?
well I know a lot of the indian coins have been struck on terminal dies. they look like an earthquake happened on them
I am not familiar with a formal definition, but it seems to me it would be the same locations of, and extents of die cracks and breaks as were present when the die was decommisioned.
Dies get worse and worse until they stop being used. The terminal state is simply the final state of the dies prior to them being taken out of production. Here's an example of what is most definitely the terminal die state on my 1799 $5:
In some cases terminal states will be listed in the standard reference book IF the series is widely collected by die variety and/or the variety is known for an extensive range of die states. Otherwise die state information is typically known only to serious specialists and will often only be found scattered through auction catalogs. And what the terminal die state is tends to change over time when new pieces are discovered from even later states of the die. (no one was there to actually record what the die looked like when they pulled it out of the press and discarded it.)
This is a coin I would consider to be a "terminal die state". One of my favorites, although I traded it away...
I'm pretty sure in the pre steam days and awhile after they'd use a die till it was about to literally explode or actually did shatter .
I'd call that one terminal they'd use them until they literally cracked in half especially in the early years you see it a lot on the draped bust silver why you see examples like the likerty liherty the 1804 spiked chin half cent and many more
What you see at the rock is from the die, what you see on the obverse to the right of Lady Liberty, between 2 o'clock and 4 o'clock, that's post strike damage.
Actually that coin is NOT the terminal die state. They continued striking those tokens, the cracks get heavier and wider and additional cracks develop. The reverse die starts to crack up as well. There are even examples that show die clashes the show clashmarks of the obv cracks on the reverse. That is probably a middle die state of that token.
Thanks for the info, conder. Fascinating that there were clash marks of the cracks themselves on some examples!
