Sorry, it's not an error. A variety maybe but not an error. Mintmarks were added to the working dies by hand back then. So the placement of the MMs has some variation. The Mint had an area within which the MM had to fall. Since they used that die I assume the MM fell within the bounds of acceptablilty.
You may even find some where the mint mark actually touches or overlaps somewhat a number. Those may be worth a couple of bucks to error collectors. Jim
LH, Speaking in general terms: An error occurs during the striking process. Examples are off center, broadstruck, strke through, brockage, etc. A variety occurs during the design or die preparation process. The mintmark was added to the die for your coin during the die preparation stage.
Maybe a silly question: Does the mint use dies for production and add a mintmark after usage for new striking purposes?
I've never heard of that before. It really wouldn't make any sense because a die with no mintmarks would have been used at the Philadelphia Mint and dies with a mintmark would have been used at a branch mint. Seems like more trouble than it would be worth to use a die then add a mintmark and ship it out to the branch mint. That said, there was a time when, after all needed Proof coins had been minted, the Proof dies were put to use minting Business Strike coins. That makes it harder to distinguish the Proof from the Business strike coin (same die markers, proof-like surfaces, etc.) And another answer to your question is - - - it is a moot point today because mintmarks are now added to the Master Hub instead of being added to the Working Dies.
Did the mint in years past re-use dies? Was it more commonplace in the 1800's? Something happened in the 2008 ASE'svwith with the reverse of 07.
Yes and Yes. That is how we have so many overdates today. For instance, in 1817 the Mint reused an obverse die for 1813 Half Dollars and repunched a 7 over the 3 creating the 1817/3 (1817 7 over 3) variety. The Mint reused reverse dies (at least the ones without a date) quite often. (In other words, a reverse die from one year was reused to strike coins dated the following year.) I'm not sure when this practice ended.
No, once the die is hardened for use the only work that might be further done to it is polishing to remove clashmarks. The hardened steel can't be successfully re-cut or re-punched and the trouble to re-anneal, re-work, and then re-harden the die is more that of just creating a new die. Also a die reworked in that fashion tends to develop to many internal flaws and fails quickly. There are only two cases in US coinage where a die was used, reworked, and then used again. Those are the 1806/5 half dime and quarter. And the only reason they did it then was because of a shortage of die steel. Yes, but usually only the undated dies. If they were still in good condition at the end of the year they would often continue to be used the following year. For the dated dies see comments below. Yes but it still happens. It tends not to be noticed though because there isn't much research done to identify specific reverse dies these days since there are so many of them and they are so similar. About the only time it is noticed is if there is a change in the hub design for a new years coinage as occurred with the 2008 W silver eagle with the reverse hub of 2007. Even there though we don't know if any of the 2007 dies used on the 2008 coins were also used on the 2007 coins. But one or two of them might have been. Hobo mentioned the 1817/3 half dollar and and the other early overdates, but none of those were reused dies. In every case the die was ONLY used in the overdated fashion. Other then the 1806/5 dies I mentioned no overdated die was used for production in the non-overdated state. They were all non-hardened dies leftover at the end of the year that were then re-dated. Hardened dated dies leftover at the end of the year were simply used as is or discarded.
