Barber coin varieties

There are no mint records of coinage by hub type. The best we can do is estimate based on surveying auction archives. John Reynolds did this for the known thin versus thick ribbon reverse types for his BCCS article. I was doing the same before I became aware of his article. I added my own census of the Rev1/2/3. Below is a screenshot of my spreadsheet. I never finished counting up 1904-S and 1905-S so I used Reynolds' numbers. Note how odd it is that for 1902-S, the majority are from the new Rev3 thick ribbon hub, but then for 1903-S they switched back to the old Rev2 thin ribbon hub and Rev3 is scarce, I would say the scarcest of all the anomalies.

The Jan-Mar and Apr-Dec numbers are totals/% based on the monthly coinage report. For 1901 I was demonstrating how my census numbers line up with what I believe was a late March implementation of the Rev3 thick ribbon hub.


I can't believe I don't get paid for this stuff.

 

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@KBBPLL . Thanks for the information. Don't mean to be such a pest but I'm weak at mathamatics. not even sure I spelled it right. james

 

Follow-up on the 1909 nickels. I contacted John Dannreuther, showed him this thread, and told him about what looks like the design hub doubled coin. He never saw one while looking for pictures to use for 1909 and didn't expect to see something like that but thinks it's pretty neat and wishes he had before going to print. He also likes the "Beer Belly B" term.

 

I have to give credit to @KBBPLL for coming up with the name "Beer Belly B". I originally referred to it as the "Pregnant B". Which I don't think was a name he was very keen on. As we conversed back and forth he would always respond referring to it using a different name. After several exchanges he responded referring to it as the "Beer Belly B" which I adopted from that point forward.

 

I guess it's fortunate for the sake of the cool name that it seems to be the less common of the 1909 proofs. It'd be much harder to get someone excited about cherrypicking a "Normal B".

 

Less common of the 1909 business strikes also.

 

In CAD I created an overlay map of the obverse and reverse of FS-10-1906-D-303 using the higher grade - higher resolution images posted by @KBBPLL. I hen overlaid the maps onto the images of your. I can say with a fairly high level of confidence that the date and mint mark position on both coins are the same.

 

@justafarmer . I don't know what CAD is but that is pretty cool. Once I get the coin I am going to add it to a small group of coins I am sending to Messydesk. thanks again for that computer dispaly. james

 

I couldn't remember who came up with that, I know we bantered back and forth calling it different things. I guess I figured Beer Belly B might be more relatable with the numismatic demographic. no offense.

@messydesk I can understand the idea that the broken beer belly B is the result of design hub doubling. If it is, it's probably the strangest scenario of all the Barber anomalies. The implication is that there was a usual 1883-1908 BBB hub (with undamaged B?), and a hub that Barber re-engraved with the "regular B." Then a working proof die was hubbed to both of these, resulting in the broken B. I can accept that explanation. What I find very odd though, is that the BBB hub was not used to produce any working dies with an undamaged B (no undamaged BBB coins have been found for 1909), and all of the other 1909 working dies came from the "regular B" hub. And then that regular B hub was never used again. Very strange.

It is clear, at least to me, that with other denominations they had two master hubs hanging around, one with the old design and one new, mostly for the reverses. They transitioned to the new hub, sometimes over many years, and then never used the old design again. We see this in 1901 and 1902 nickel reverses with 2 types, 1899 and 1900-S dimes with Rev1 and Rev2, 1901 dimes using both Rev2 and Rev3 at all three mints, then dimes with both Rev2 and Rev3 for just S mint until 1905, 1900 quarters using 3 different obverse hubs and 2 reverse hubs then exclusively Obv3 and Rev3 from 1901 on, and half dollars using 2 obverse and 2 reverse hubs in 1901, then P mint exclusively Obv2/Rev2 from 1902 on, but S and O continuing to use Rev1 into 1905. Tack on Obv2/Rev2 half dollars for 1900-O coined in late December, and a 1901-O dime still using Obv1. In all of these scenarios, it maybe took a while but Barber always transitioned to the new design. And it seems they had a propensity for using the old one for only the branch mints, which seems odd. Keep in mind that they were not stockpiling dies from one year to the next, although it's possible that the "reserved for future use" reverse dies returned to Philly at the end of a year could have been shipped back out again.

So what was the point of redoing Liberty in 1909 and then never using it again? We can only speculate I guess.