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Message:: [QUOTE="silvermonger, post: 1954726, member: 12490"]Some smart aleck critic said the number of tail feathers had to be 7 instead of 8. This was during a time when the main topic in the news was the Morgan dollar. No one liked it as it wasnt at all like "our daddy's dollar". Lots of trolls watching the mint in those days and the Morgan dollar was hated anyway as it was just a way to support the price of silver for the politician's mining buddys. Guess what? Eagles actually have from 7 to 12 feathers, either 7 or 8 could be correct. No eagle specialists like we have today to give them the straight info.  So the mint director says to cut a new tail. Dies were in short supply! It was expeditious to use one of the old dies and just cut the new design over the old. It took days and weeks to hand cut, basin, polish, approve new ones. "Sorry boys, the CNC machines we ordered wont be available for another 140 years so we get to do it by hand." Simple as that. Same goes for dates over dates and mint marks over mint marks. Mints would swap dies back and forth and use up what they had. Some mints had a fully equipped die shop and others had to sent their dies to one of the other mints to be refurbished. They just did what they had to to get the job done. Congress said the US Mint had to make so many million ounces of silver coins each month so they were always behind.[/QUOTE]