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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;messydesk, post: 3524425, member: 1765&quot;]I was away for a couple days, hence the late response to being tagged.</p><p><br /></p><p>The OP coin is a polished 1921-D.&nbsp; I don&#039;t know when, where, or by whom it was polished, as I wasn&#039;t there when it happened.&nbsp; Nothing more to say about it.</p><p><br /></p><p>That was the easy part.</p><p><br /></p><p>The &quot;Zerbe&quot; designation has a tumultuous history, which includes plenty of uncorroborated assumptions and assertions.&nbsp; The only special strikes that seemed to be made for Zerbe, and at his request, were 1921-S Morgans.&nbsp; These are not known today, but could include the few PL coins in the populations, which aren&#039;t terribly attractive.&nbsp; Take a look at the <a href="https://images.pcgs.com/TrueView/34464867_Max.jpg" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://images.pcgs.com/TrueView/34464867_Max.jpg" rel="nofollow">Dave Miller coin</a>, which is a 64PL, for an example of what the Zerbe coins could have been.&nbsp; San Francisco didn&#039;t finish the dies in such a manner as to produce a nice prooflike finish, and the few PL coins known tend to have nasty die polishing lines as well.</p><p><br /></p><p>The Philadelphia &quot;Zerbe proofs&quot; were assumed to exist because of a small population of really nice, special-looking PL coins that all come from the same die pair (<a href="http://ec2-13-58-222-16.us-east-2.compute.amazonaws.com/wiki/1921-P_VAM-1AG" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://ec2-13-58-222-16.us-east-2.compute.amazonaws.com/wiki/1921-P_VAM-1AG" rel="nofollow">VAM 1AG</a>).&nbsp; They appear to be nothing more than very early business strikes that seemed to have received some special handling after they were made.&nbsp; The connection with Zerbe has been assumed for a long time, and while never confirmed, the name stuck.&nbsp; I&#039;ve examined some of these in person, and they definitely have a special look to them.&nbsp; There are more normal-looking business strikes made with these dies, and due to the unfortunate persistence of the term &quot;Zerbe Proof,&quot; these coins are accurately described as being from &quot;So-called Zerbe dies.&quot;&nbsp; Unfortunately, diagnostics of these dies have been misinterpreted over the past 20 years to include features present on all dies made with the D1 reverse hub, which led to many coins being called &quot;Zerbe Dies&quot; that had nothing to do with the special-looking coins mentioned earlier.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Much as you can&#039;t unscramble an egg, you can&#039;t go back and change earlier printed information about these coins, whether in books, periodicals, or TPG labels.&nbsp; One must simply present more recent, better information about them and let the wrong information be superseded.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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