I have only been studying Barber coins for a few months now but I think there are a couple questions i can't quite find the answer for. @KBBPLL . Posted all that information on some subtle design changes to the barber design that occurred at the turn of the 20th Century. I found the 1999 articles relating to it but they don't discuss this either. You can pretty much draw a line between the Barbers from before 1900 and after 1900. Much like the late set Walker Halves, the 1900 to 1916 Dimes at least could be turned into a short set. It can't just be about mintages. Other articles support the idea the barber dimes stayed in circulation decades after being minted . This of couse means the earlier the coin was minted the quicker it wore down ; thus the earlier the year the smaller the surviving population of collectible coins. However, the difference between the surviving pops for those two decades must have had something to do with the design change. Perhaps i missed it. None of my grading guides make mention, but should you use a different standard for grading pre 1900 and post 1900 Barbers? My newest Grading book, Grading Coins From Photographs by Bowers make mention of the fact that Barber dimes after 1905 are far more common but that is about it. James
I had fun collecting Barber dimes years ago. They were easy to find and didn't cost very much. That may have changed. Still have a couple of albums somewhere. My only reference was the old Breen encyclopedia. Probably not much use anymore.
Do you mean the 2004 articles by Steve Hustad? I didn't see anything relevant in 1999. https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/book/515311 starting on page 8. As I may have noted in the other thread, the information in his article is outdated. His list of hub combinations is incomplete and we now know that there was a third intermediary reverse type introduced in 1900 (along with an 1899 (P) anomaly) and a 1901-O obverse die that used the previous type. Hustad does note "slightly lower relief" for the original reverse hub and "relief is a bit higher and fine inner leaf detail is more deeply engraved" for his 1901-1916 reverse hub, which would presumably also apply to the 1900-1901 reverse since only the "thick ribbon" was added in 1901. It's curious that he noted the engraving depth but not that the leaf veins completely changed. Bowers' Barber Silver Coins says regarding the 1901 changes to the obverse hub "This alteration seems to have lowered the relief slightly, almost imperceptibly, with the result that dimes with this obverse did not have the work LIBERTY wear away as quickly...". He doesn't come out and say it, but the implication is that we should take this into consideration when grading. It seems odd that Hustad says the relief was lower on the original reverse hub, and Bowers says the relief was lower on the new obverse hub (but says nothing about the reverse). I suppose both could be true, but why? Barber was clearly up to something in 1900-1901, as the hubs changed for all of his denominations - nickels, dimes, quarters and halves. Die life and coin wear seem likely reasons, but there's no documentation that I'm aware of. Perhaps after 8-9 years the master hubs/dies were showing signs of deterioration, or he just wanted to mess around for the new century. Since the traditional grading standard for F-12 and F-15 is a full Liberty, perhaps this is the area where we might see differences between the old hub and the new one, i.e. a 1892-1900 dime gets a Fine grade when Liberty letters are incomplete whereas a 1901-1916 drops to VG. I've not tried to observe something like this though, and I doubt most graders are even aware of the hub difference. I haven't paid any attention to surviving pops so I can't comment on that. Mintages generally ramped up because of the booming economy (except for 1901-1904 SF coins), and all Barbers were workhorses in daily commerce (as opposed to the dollar coins, which mostly sat in bank vaults). Bowers has paragraphs for each year and mint regarding availability of mint state and circulated grades, as well as a wealth of other information, so I recommend that you obtain a copy of it.
I've never been a huge fan of the Barber design. I have most of the series completed except for the keys for each denomination but it's only cuz I wanted to get as many US sets completed as I can afford.
@Rushmore . I had a negative view of Barber coins for many, many years. Part of this was many many years ago I got ripped off on the purchase of a trio of Barber coins and this tainted my view. I cannot speak for the entire series. Thus far I have only dabbled in dimes, but I think Barber coins may be one of those coins that is strongly affected by grade. I only have 3 higher grade AU coins to go on with the exception of some very low grade dimes i have owed for more than 55 years; but for me it is like seeing two different coins. I will also say this. I owned and collected Indian cents for most of my life but had the same reaction to seeing a proof Indian cent. It was as if I had never seen one before. \ Aurgument item #1 below
@KBBPLL . Just so I have it straight. You think post 1899 coins have a deeper "Liberty"? I am still just wading thru old journals looking for material on dimes. I have the Bowers book on Seated coins so i assume you are recommending the Bowers Redbook on Barbers. I use my Seated book daily so have little doubt I would get the same use out of the other. something i may look into next year. As far as surviving mintages go (and coins certified) I think coin value has a huge effect on Barber coins. Anyone looking at percentages of coins certified would think 70% of Barber dimes are in AU or better. On the other hand, the entire workhorse idea has great merit so I wonder how many higher grade Barber dimes (coins) have gone uncertified.James
@KBBPLL . I was wondering if you could also give me some feedback on the 1907-O coin. I have come across a few different references to how poorly struck the 1907-O is suppose to be. In his book Lawrence says, "Well struck specimens are tough to find and command a premium." One person in the Barber journals called the 1907-O: "the poster child of poorly struck New Orleans dimes" Another person lists the 07-O among the 4 worst struck coins in the series." I still have to get the coin in hand. I also have to wait because another one is being designated. all the same, I am too new at this to know What it is I am suppose to look for. you can see the picture better of course at Heritage but I will try and upload it here too. Any feedback appreciated. I have looked at dozens of previously sold archive pictures of 07-O coins but can't see anything unusual. Then again, peole send in their best coins to be slabbed so that can skew things. James
I've been laser focused on the 1899-1905 dimes but really haven't looked at many dates/mints outside of that. Browsing PCGS gallery and Heritage archives for 1907-O it's pretty easy to find poorly struck coins. For example https://coins.ha.com/itm/barber-dim...323-19091.s?ic4=GalleryView-Thumbnail-071515#. Look at the reverse and see how flat the bow, corn and wheat kernels are. In general I get the impression that the machinery in New Orleans was held together with bailing wire. Mint letters in 1900 show them complaining about die life, Barber sent his chief coiner A.W. Downing there to see what the problem was, Downing reported that they weren't properly annealing the planchets and implied that their machinery was in a bad state of disrepair (said in the polite language of the time). I wouldn't be able to say if 1907-O was any better or worse than other years. I do think that in general the earlier authors like Lawrence suffered from small sample sizes, which is understandable. All they had to go on was their own collection, access to dealer inventory perhaps, and sparse poor images in auction catalogs. You can see it in for example 1903-S, where Lawrence says all come from the old reverse hub, and then that gets repeated all the way to the current Bowers Red Book. On PCGS coin facts for 1907-O, Ron Guth says "In general, this date is well struck", so he's saying the opposite. Today we have the advantage of being able to look at thousands of good images of coins to verify this stuff. Getting it corrected out there in publication land is the hard part. I would say yours is pretty well-struck, especially the reverse. It has typical weakness in the hair above the forehead. The leaf veins, ribbon, corn and wheat detail is all there. Too bad about the cleaning but what can you do. It might not look that bad in hand. You're correct about not being able to judge anything from the pop reports. The 1907-O isn't worth the cost of submitting until you get into high AU grades. PCGS shows 18 in AU58, more than any of the lower grades. You can bet that there are way more lower grade survivors than AU58. I suspect for many of these dimes (probably the case with any coin) that once it circulated, it circulated a lot. You either pulled a good one out to collect, or you spent it.
It would be post 1900 dimes - the obverse changed in 1901. But I haven't observed anything about the deepness of Liberty myself, just repeating what Bowers said about the relief being lowered and Liberty not wearing as much. I guess (if true) that the rim would protect the rest of the coin more from wear if the portrait relief was lower. Here's my image comparing the two obverses (both proof). It seems that either the portrait was imperceptibly shrunk, or the legends were moved closer to the rim. It's really hard to tell. I don't know how to judge if the relief was actually lowered or not either. PM me your address and I can mail you my Bowers' 3rd edition of the red book, Guide Book of Barber Silver Coins, slightly used. I prefer the 2nd edition. All that changed is that they removed the certified population tables and replaced them with market value comparisons between 2nd and 3rd editions. The latter is useless to me. I bought it because they advertised "newly documented varieties", and the publisher was well aware of the corrected info on hub types from his involvement in my CPG submissions. But there was nothing "new" in there at all except the market value tables. They didn't correct anything about the hub types. Big disappointment in that regard.
It's in the mail. Don't worry about postage, it was cheap. Glad to find a useful home for it. I'll PM you the tracking number.
Upon my cursory review of the 1900 and 1901 examples in your post the denticles appear to be the same. With the introduction of a new series master hub created from scratch - I'd expect some deviation in this design feature.
I will admit that I usually don't question "details" coins but this one seems very ticky tack. I have 2 other High AU Dimes to compare to and with the naked eye there is no signs of "cleaning". All 3 coins have almost identical luster. With the naked eye and 2X magnification there is no signs of cleaning. With 10X magnification you cannot find any signs of cleaning on the obverse, but the reverse now has obvious faint hairlines. There isn't enough value to warrant getting a regrade but I would think this is one of those "details' coins that could go either way on any given day. James
I've scratched my head over how the obverse changes were done and gave up. The portrait was ever so slightly reduced in size such that the ribbon no longer touches N, the forelock is farther from O, and you can detect (I think?) that Liberty's cap is very slightly farther from TAT. Quite a while ago I noted repunching under a microscope in some letters of AMERICA and thought I'd discovered a DDO, but found that these features were on all of them. And then noted that these features stayed the same going to the new obverse. So Barber didn't do anything to the legend in 1901. So how did he supposedly lower the relief and observably shrink the portrait, without touching the legend? These are the legend features I noted, particularly the E seems to have been triple punched in the upper right corner, making that corner appear rounded, whereas the other two E's have sharp corners. You can see that and the "gunk" inside M and A on well struck examples all the way out to 1916.
@KBBPLL . I have been studying the designs on these coins. I always thought the reverse design was suppose to be the same as the previous Seated design on the reverse. Here is the thing. One of the first things I like to learn is where is the deepest part of the design. It allows me to compare that area to the rest of the coin. Sometimes this is the "tell" the coin was once terminal and has been dipped. Sometimes it is filled with dirt and might indicate a digger coin. Sometimes it is a little pearl of luster and it might be what original luster looks like. You get the idea. If you look at the wreath on the bottom right side you will see what looks like 3 very deep circular indents. These are not on my Seated coins. I am still trying to puzzle out what they are suppose to constitute in the design. However, if there is a deeper part on the reverse design please let me know. james
@samclemens3991 The reverse design was adapted from Longacre's Seated Liberty dime reverse but it is not the same. As I mentioned in the other thread, the 1891 pattern coin for the Barber dime just used a Seated Liberty reverse die. Presumably Barber wanted a "proof of concept" for the obverse design and hadn't gotten around to the reverse yet. I don't think it was ever intended to be exactly the same. The "holes" (circular indents) you speak of are just the round gaps between the lobes of the oak leaves. I don't think it was intentional other than that's what oak leaves look like. For Rev2 and Rev3 (1900+) it does seem that Barber added a stronger curve to the lobe gap on an underlying leaf, and the way it aligns with the curve of the overlying leaf makes it appear like a perfect circular "hole" depending on the strike. Others have noted this. Below is a 1901 on the left and an 1898 on the right. I'm talking about the circular feature in the bottom center of the images. Whether Barber deliberately made that spot look like a hole, who knows. It is a little odd. You may note all the other subtle differences with leaf shapes and the veins
@KBBPLL - I have never been able to confirm with absolute assurance where/when in the die making process denticles are added to the coin design. At this time I lean towards the theory that during the reduction process the reduction lathe leaves a solid raised ring around the outer boundary of the series' master hub and then the denticles were added by hand engraving them into the ring. Now I am thinking off the cuff. During the die squeezing process certainly the depth of the squeeze was somehow mechanically controlled by some adjustable method. Coin design devices tend to tamper down to the face. Therefore the shallower the pressing/squeezing not only would produce a lower relief coin but also a design that was slightly smaller.
