1883 Shield 5 Cent

In rereading my earlier post, I did err in calling crack a die variety rather than a marker identifying a die. Also, my desire to trace the die stages(?) across pairings (which would not change the common terminology of new Die Varieties (which is the Pairing of a uniquely identifiable Obverse with a uniquely identifiable Reverse with uniquely identifiable edges being considered subvarieties).

The change I propose is carrying the die stage(?) information across varieties rather than starting over with each new Variety. This would be especially useful when dies are changed and then changed back causing an interruption in the die stage(?) progression.

 

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The problem with doing it this way is that it's very difficult to determine this information. We can see when significant markers appear like cracks, clashes, and chips and we can note their progression and sequence if we have enough high grade examples to study, but we can't tell sequence if the die doesn't exhibit significant deterioration. If you have two varieties made from the same die and the die stage is the same, you can't tell the emission sequence or whether or not there were remarriages. Experts in bust coinage have been studying the quarters for decades to determine die stages and remarriages. Luckily with the series there were a lot of heavily used and deteriorated dies, so it's easier than with most series, but there are still a lot of questions.

Plus keep in mind if you find additional examples later that show a different intermediate stage everything needs to be adjusted. It's a lot easier to determine the initial die state of a variety and track that starting over for each variety than it is to try and track that by die stage which traverses multiple varieties (perhaps even some that have not yet been discovered). I can't speak for all early coinage, but this is why for bust quarters it's not done that way. Discoveries happen (though infrequently) where new die stages and even new varieties are identified.