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.

 

"LIBERTY" is an incused design element on the nickel. Therefore it would be incused on a hub and in relief/raised on a die. The damage on the "B" exhibited by the coin can only be the result of something like grease filled on a hub or actually physical damage to a die.

 

Yes and I've been trying to wrap my head around what happens when two different incuse elements on the hub get pressed sequentially as raised elements on the working die. If a raised element on the die from one hubbing gets pressed against the field/flat area on the second, different hub, it will get smashed/broken off. I can't figure out why the feature of the second hubbing wouldn't just dominate on the die, but it seems that both areas of the two types of B got flattened, resulting in the broken BBB.

I emailed you this image where I filled in your overlay with the blue being the beer belly B, and the red is the 1909 regular B. When both the blue and red (which are raised on the die) get eliminated, the result is what the broken BBB looks like. Well, however it happened, we know it happened.



Makes me wonder if there are other examples of design hub doubling during the years where there are two different hub types being used.

 

It takes several hubbings to complete a die, so a design element smashed by a slightly different design will only be partially smashed. Your illustration of the overlaps is good here. An unfinished die impressed by the Type I hub (BBB) then later with Type II (Normal B) will partially smash the upper curve of the BBB with the inside of the normal B. The outside of the upper curve of the normal B is faint because this part of the die is already incuse and the Type II hub isn't smashing anything there. The appearance would be about the same if this were a I/II rather than II/I design hub doubling.

 

When producing a die using a hub the hub has been tempered and hardened while the die stock is heated and softened. When producing a hub using a die the die stock has been tempered and hardened while the hub stock is heated and softened.

 

@KBBPLL - I stared and studied your image for almost an hour while referring back to my original overlay which wasn't enhanced with your shading. My overlay was a composite containing a 1908 full Beer Belly "B" combined with a 1909 normal "B". Finally I noticed the area shaded in cyan on your image is the area that was damaged on the 1909 master die which caused the production of the 1909 Broken Beer Belly "B". So there is actually nothing there in the cyan area on the working die to get smashed/broken off.

 

I don't understand. If a die was first hubbed to the Beer Belly B hub (1908 design), the area shaded in blue would be raised on the die (as well as everything else within the cyan outline). If that die was subsequently hubbed to the Regular B (1909 design), that hub has a flat/field area where the blue shaded area is, and it would smash that raised area on the die, while also trying to raise the red-shaded area onto the die (as well as everything else within the red outline). Where the red and cyan outlines overlap would not get removed from the die because that overlap area is incuse on both hubs. The die is left with that thin piece we see on the Broken BBB coins. Which I think is what @messydesk already said, above.

The question for me, as I said above, is why there are no undamaged BBB coins in 1909 if the broken BBB is the result of design hub doubling. Maybe I just haven't found one, maybe the 1909-dated BBB hub also got damaged, maybe Barber just said "make all the dies from this new Liberty hub"?

 

Does the depth of the date on the two different varieties give us any clues? We know that the normal B hub contained the date, because it's only seen for 1909. We don't know if any BBB hub contained 1909. We also know that hubs for 1908 didn't contain the date. If a Broken BBB coin has a weaker date (compare with stars, I guess), that could indicate that the die was started with an undated hub. When a normal B 1909 hub was used to finish the die, it was the only hub to impress the date on the die. The date wouldn't have been impressed into the die as much as it would have had the die been hubbed only with a normal B, dated hub.

 

The Beer Belly "B" undated Series master Hub was was initially brought forward for 1909 to produce the 1909 master die. The mint then punched/engraved the date into this master die to produce a 1909 master die containing the date. This is the same process done for all existing coin designs (Nickel, Dime, Quarter. Half and probably the Indianhead Cent beginning in 1909). For the nickel the damage to the "B" originates on the 1909 master die. Probably before it was used to produce any working hubs. That is why we can't find any Unbroken Beer Belly "B"s in 1909.

 

I think it's simpler to assume that the master design hub from 1883-1908 created a master die for 1909 that was then punched with the date, then two dated hubs were created, then one of those was re-engraved with the "regular B" (along with minuscule changes to other letters). Your scenario is plausible, but that means the master die was created for 1909, a hub was pressed before they punched the date, then they punched the date, then made a 1909 dated hub.

I guess it's possible that they weren't sure whether they were going to continue punching dates into working dies so they made a dateless hub to hedge about that. It was the transition year for nickels to have identical date positions. Perhaps someone could find artifacts in the date indicating whether one was pressed twice and another wasn't? Too much for my eyes.

Too much for my brain! What I said above doesn't make sense either. If Barber re-engraved Liberty on a hub created from the 1908 design, the beer belly B is already incuse on that hub. He can't add metal to the hub to erase that part of the B. I keep going around in circles with this.

@justafarmer then it wasn't design hub doubling, we're back to the damaged master die theory.

 

Whether or not the coin is classified as design hub doubling is a matter open to debate. But I do think the historical Beer Belly "B" is the design originally brought forward in 1909. The damage exhibited by the "B" in 1909 originates from damage to a Die. The proof coin in question exhibits characteristics of both The 1909 Broken Beer Belly "B" and the 1909 Normal "B".

 

Nothing I have to say is relevant to the more involved discussion going on. I did get my coin in hand and it is the 303 variety with the additional digits in the denticles. I will put it with the 69-S Seated Dime F 102 and my 1876-S Seated Dime which is a F 101 RPD and have a few others identified by VSS.
I will say this though, I can see how and why there is such a long gap between the changes made to things such as the cereal reverse on Barbers compared to the previous Seated series. I had to go back and look at your posts to check these facts. Kudos to whoever cracked that, I am not that observant in life. James