Here's a coin that I spotted on eBay last week, which took some investigative work to correctly attribute. It's an NGC slabbed coin; the seller's pics weren't very good, but I spotted something underneath the last digit in the denticles: Which had me wondering--was this the Snow-2 MPD, a nice variety--which has a "94" poking out of the denticles, as shown below: The "4" looked to be in the right place, but where was the "9"? Seeing a lone mark isn't enough for me to bid on a coin. I needed a better confirmation to make it worth my while...so I went looking for other markers. And I found an unpublished marker on all examples of this variety--there is a small, curved die gouge underneath the chin that does not appear on any other obverse dies for 1894. Below is the gouge pictured on an MS S-2 (left), and on the coin I bought (right)--do you see it? And sure enough, when it arrived both MPDs were visible. The pics below are shot through an NGC slab graded EF40 (I give it a VF30). It's an MPD I've been looking for--I'm happy to pick this up (without other bidders) for just $35 shipped. Primary markers under the date area: The whole obverse--it's hard to shoot in slabs. NGC gave this an EF40; my grade is VF30. A nice, even brown without problems.
Thanks--even nicer, slabbed/unslabbed but unattributed varieties are out there--and sometimes w/o competing bids.
It's the designation # for this particular IHC variety. Rick Snow wrote some books on IHC varieties, which get labeled Snow-1, Snow-2, etc. for each year or type.
