I am pretty new with Morgan dollars but am fascinated by die varieties of all sorts, so naturally I gravitated toward the VAM's. I've done pretty well, but I got one recently that has me stumped. I've spent hours with the book and the VAM world web-site to no avail. Its a 21-D, sixteen berry reverse that has heavy scribbling on the upper tail feathers, including a couple of scribbles that are quite distinct (I've tried to capture it one of the images below). It has what appears to be a horizontal die gouge right about in the center of the tail feathers. It also has a chip out of the leg of the "R" in "PLURIBUS" and a die chip in the dentils above the "B". The middle of the wreath is quite pitted. The second "1" has pretty good doubling, and there are strong die polishing lines between the cotton bolls (again, hard to photograph). I can find no die cracks on the obverse, and one possible north-south crack in the eagles breast that might be a die crack/chip or might be PMD (in hand it looks like die damage since the left edge rises straight up rather than sloping). The mintmark is normally positioned and not tilted. I have attached some pictures below. Any help would be very much appreciated.
Yeah, I actually went through every link on VAM World at least twice. But thanks anyway for the suggestion. I was hoping someone in this group might recognize one or more of the markers I included (especially the die gouge in the tail and chipped "R"). <snip Here's the link for the 21-D VAM World page: http://www.vamworld.com/1921-D VAMs unsnip>
