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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;robp, post: 4608639, member: 96746&quot;]The dies were made with a stock built up in advance. What you have there is a die originally with 159 as the date. Normally the last digit or last two digits were added when the die was actually used. In this instance the century changed, so it was necessary to change both second and third digits before adding the fourth. Although they would have avoided this extra work if possible, the amount of silver coming to the mint leading up to and at the turn of the century was much reduced, leaving anchor and cypher as the two scarcest marks.</p><p><br /></p><p>There might be a trace of an anchor underneath the cypher on the reverse as the area around top of it has a slight disturbance, in which case the die was used during anchor (1598-1600) and then the anchor overstruck with a cypher following the pyx trial, in order to maximise the life of the die. The obverse certainly looks to be cypher over anchor.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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