Has anyone ever seen someone collect a complete run of VAMs for a particular year of issue? i.e. 1897-P VAM-1 through VAM-17. I know people collect the Hot/Hit/Top lists. Always makes me curious when I see the ANACS soapboxes with "unpopular" VAMs.
Several years ago on one of the forums there was a contest to see who could put together a set of theVAM 14's from 1878. Someone won,not sure what the prize was. There is also a collector who collects 1883 VAM's. Not sure which mint. Not sure which forum.
Yes. 1878 is a popular year for this, since the date has been very well researched documented. There are some complete 8TF sets, 7TF sets, 7/8 TF sets (the easiest). There are some people doing the entire year, which is probably about 180 die pairs, 215 varieties if you count cataloged die stages excluding proofs. 78-S, 78-CC, 79-S Rev of 78, 02-O are others I know people have completed. A couple people are doing 1921 with its hundreds of die marriages [insert head spinning emoji here]. I know of one person trying to collect the entire Morgan catalog (over 5000 varieties). His efforts have resulted in the catalog becoming considerably more accurate. Many of the soap bar holders were from before 1996, when the Top 100 book came out. Fewer people were collecting VAMs then and there wasn't as much good information as there is today. For Morgan dollars there are probably 2000 more varieties now than there were 30 years ago. There are also many that are no longer listed for various reasons.
When I hear of Morgan varieties requiring over 5000 for little bitty things you need a microscope for.... the simple Capped Bust Half under-500 seems so easy.
hehe I had enough issues getting all 6/7 varities of the 78 morgan (78/rev78 78/rev79 8tf, 7/8tf (weak and strong) and of course the S and CC as well) then add in 5 or six vams for each variety... hell no! I like and identify each of my morgans VAMs. Then again I have several R6 VAMs such as my 92s vams 15a and 15b.. So No can't see doing the whole VAM thing even for a single date but someday I will have a complete morgan set that is hard enough by itself
