The vam 12 is know as the "Alligator eye" and the 12a is the clashed version with letter transfer. The eye has thick doubling at the front mimicking the nictitating membrane alligators have hence the name. It is a common "list" vam but has a cool feature and cool name so it is somewhat desierable. It is what we call a "gateway" vam for those reasons as well as it's relatively low price
Yea, I've owned and/or atleast spotted a bunch of these looking for the vam 1b. BTW, Briggs has an ms63 1887p donkey tail and he is asking $18,000 for it (top pop)
Me too. My fire toner that I bought raw early in my Morgan collecting and when I started in VAMs I'd go through all my morgans for list VAMs and it was one of the first I identfied
Mine was a purchase back in 2004 or 5. The label says "Alligator eye". It wasn't until about 4 years ago that I learned there was a VAM number involved thanks to SuperDave....
Thanks. That one was on my list for about 2 years before I finally cherry picked one at the right price. They're out there. I saw a nice raw one at the Dallas ANA show early this year. Someone had cherry picked it in the morning before I got there. Dam early birds. Oh, and this one is a heavy cameo monster VAM.
Okay, so when you guys cherry pick at a show do you look with your loupe and then tell the dealer I want this one? Does the dealer ever say... hmmm? And not sell it knowing what you're up to. Or do you have to buy a batch and sneak that one in with the bunch? LOL
Usually you know by the naked eye but if I do need my loupe and the dealer asks I say I'm a vammer and looking for specific VAMs to complete a set. I then usually get a response like "How do you remember all that stuff" or "That's cool, I don't have time for that" etc. I've never had a dealer not sell me a coin because I wanted it though. Although at the last long beach when this exact situation happened the dealer said "You like those VAMs don't ya" I said yeah and he said wanna check out one of those vam 44 things I picked up that a customer brought in recently. My jaw dropped a little as I said 1878 or 1921 and he then handed me a raw $10k coin and I told him it was a 44a and took him to John Roberts to get it into plastic. Came back a 61
It does seem overwhelming. I find the most difficult part is to remember the date and then where to look for that date. And all it is is a 2-step process really so you would think it is easy. 1) Identify date/mintmark 2) check VAM location(s) for said date/mintmark Funny how he said "those VAM things", haha. So did he know about VAMs and picked it off the customer or did the customer tell him?
The short version explanation is every Morgan and Peace Dollar have or will be categorized by die pairing and many by die state as well. Here is the mother ship. http://www.vamworld.com/
He struck me as having the basics down but not really his focus. He said the seller didn't know what it was but he knew enough to know it was the big boy and offered him much more than he was expecting. That was the story anyway
Hey, it's only five or six thousand VAMs. No biggie. Says the guy who can't even remember that Carson City Morgans carry a premium.
