Looking at the metal in the bottom part of the 2. Not a high grade coin, just looking for info/comments.
It's a die chip. Could be a unique pup for a vam. Not sure though. See all those metal flow lines. This was a super vlds die. I bet it's cracked up more than an inner city corner drug dealer
Very Late Die State. See how the numerals are drawing towards the rim? It's similar to what the stars do on late-state Bust Halfs. The crook of the 2 is a fairly common place for a piece of die to break off. Nice detail images. I bet we could attribute this one. Maybe.
I just learnt "worn die" WD & "DDD" now "VLDS" - pretty soon won't have to type any words at all to communicate!
Gives you an idea where the most stress is going during the strike. All 3 1921 mints show it sometimes; San Francisco coins are notorious. They pushed their dies to the absolute limit. Garlicus, I mentioned easy attribution because your detail images so clearly show the doubling of the date, meaning you're quite capable of getting the detail pics a "difficult" attribution would require. Does it have die cracks or any other obvious pickups aside the die chip? The problem with the chip is, almost *any* die could develop one, and it may just be something not yet known to exist for whatever variety it actually is. There may therefore be no mention of it. Chips like this, for that reason, are usually only a side note in a VAM description.
Thank you for the compliment on my pics. I will take some more when I get a chance. Regarding any perceived doubling, I think that appearance is caused by the fact that this is a circulated coin and the metal has been 'hammered' down. I'll look at that again, though.
That's clear-cut, attributable date doubling for a 1921. It's quite frequent with them, and this is what it looks like. You can see the serif splits. Don't forget, the Mint basically had to re-learn to produce Dollar-sized coins for this issue, having not struck any in 17 years. What chance do we have at full-face images?
Looks like I was prophetic, mentioning San Francisco 1921's and die wear. Do me a favor? Eyeball the area around the arrow fletches and adjacent to the wreath about to the arrowheads. I see what *could* maybe be pitting in your reverse image, and there are some 1921-S reverses known for die pitting. None of the known ones seem to match this pattern, but if it's actually pitting it'll be something to go on. If you're not familiar with pitting, it's the product of dies rusting while in storage. Pits rusted into the dies, leading to tiny raised dots on the surface of the struck coin. Under your eye and a bit of magnification, they stand out because that stuff ain't supposed to be there. Here's the most egregious example of pitting on a Morgan Dollar - and the most egregious example of die polishing - known, the 1921-P VAM-41B. It's mindblowing - everything you see wrong is on the die.
Dave was right about how the metal flows , but you'll never see it to the extremes as early Bust halves the reason being they were struck in open collars . With open collars there's nothing stopping the flow of metal towards the rims . Therefore the flowing metal over time wears into the dies making the stars and other devises grow longer and longer . On these Dollars it's the same principle but the closed collar reduces the flow and limits it so you still can see the effects on the die just not to the same extremes as in open collars .
