By Tom DeLorey

 

February 25, 2015 — An exciting new doubled die error has been found on a 1919 “Winged Liberty” or Mercury Head dime. In terms of the degree of rotation between the two impressions it is almost as great as that seen on the famous 1955 Doubled Die Obverse (DDO) cent, but because of a quirk of fate the doubling is confined to only one small area of the die.

The doubling on the die, though very strong, is a rare form of hub doubling that resulted from a partially-hubbed die with an incomplete design receiving a second, full impression not aligned with the incomplete first impression, as opposed to the 1955 DDO which has two full designs offset from each other. On this new die the doubling is confined to the upper right portion of the motto IN GOD WE TRUST, taking in all of the letters in “GOD” and “UST” plus the upper right corners of the “N” of IN and the “R” of TRUST. The dot between IN and GOD is also doubled.

An exciting new doubled die error has been found on a 1919 “Winged Liberty” or Mercury Head dime. In terms of the degree of rotation between the two impressions it is almost as great as that seen on the famous 1955 Doubled Die Obverse (DDO) cent, but because of a quirk of fate the doubling is confined to only one small area of the die.

The doubling on the die, though very strong, is a rare form of hub doubling that resulted from a partially-hubbed die with an incomplete design receiving a second, full impression not aligned with the incomplete first impression, as opposed to the 1955 DDO which has two full designs offset from each other. On this new die the doubling is confined to the upper right portion of the motto IN GOD WE TRUST, taking in all of the letters in “GOD” and “UST” plus the upper right corners of the “N” of IN and the “R” of TRUST. The dot between IN and GOD is also doubled.

No doubling can be seen on the large letters of “L I B E R T Y” near the rim, or on the date or the designer’s initials which are also near the rim, or on Miss Liberty’s head. Though this was not certain based upon the well-circulated “Discovery Specimen,” which I would estimate would grade at a strong Fine, the lack of additional doubling was subsequently verified on a higher grade coin.

The variety was co-discovered by New York state collectors Scott Kerr and Jeffrey Sam. Kerr apparently discovered the piece many years ago, probably in the late 1980’s as best as he can recollect, but he never published it. Like many collectors he bought coins from acquaintances to acquire normal coins that he needed for his collection, and thinks that this piece may have come in a set of Mercury dimes that he bought back around then, but he just doesn’t know for sure.

The Discovery Specimen ended up in a 2×2 cardboard holder on which was written “1919 IN GOD WE TRUST doubling???” Kerr admits that he is not sure if he is the one that wrote that on the holder, or if he bought it from another collector already in that holder. Either way he put it in his “Neat Box” along with the rest of his variety and error collection, which contained some very interesting known varieties, where it remained for perhaps a quarter of a century.

Kerr and Sam are old friends from their local coin club, and they had discussed Sam buying the “Neat Box” for some time. They finally shook hands on the deal on Jan. 31 of this year, and on Feb. 3rd Sam began posting some of the pieces in a thread in the PCGS Collectors Universe Forums. One was the very rare 1857 Flying Eagle cent with clash marks on its reverse from the reverse die for a Liberty Seated quarter, while others were merely minor die varieties or mechanical errors, and a few were simply damaged coins.

On the third day of adding coins to the thread he ran several pictures of the DDO dime. Amazingly it was almost lost to posterity again, being dismissed by one forum member as displaying simple mechanical doubling, and by another as being a counterfeit coin. Nobody acknowledged it as a doubled die error. I had looked at the thread on the day that it had first been posted, but did not look at it again later because I did not know that additional varieties were being added. I suspect that other people overlooked the updates also.

Then on Feb. 8th Sam posted a new thread on the NGC Collectors Society Message Boards, showing just the 1919 dime, and mentioning that he had posted it “across the street” on the CU forum. He asked if anybody on the CS message boards had “seen something like this before.” I told him that I had.

The piece reminded me of the 1916 DDO Buffalo nickel, the Holy Grail of doubled die collectors. The die for that coin shows one complete design hubbed over a partial design. The way that working dies were made back in that era meant using a raised steel “hub” that had all the design on a finished coin on it, and pressing it into a die blank under heavy hydraulic pressure. To help the negative impression form properly in the die, the face of the die blank had a shallow raised cone on its surface.

As the hardened hub contacted the annealed (heat-softened) die blank, the design started forming at the point of that shallow cone. It slowly expanded outwards until the die blank became so work hardened by the pressure that the steel in it could distort no more. At that point the partially-hubbed die had to be taken to a furnace and re-annealed, which involved heating it to a certain temperature and letting it cool slowly overnight. It was then returned to the hubbing room and impressed again as many times as necessary until the incused design was fully sunken into the die, after which the die was hardened and readied for use in coinage.

It is not known how far out from the center of the die the design normally formed on its first hubbing operation, but many years ago die variety guru Bill Fivaz showed me his Uncirculated specimen of the 1916 DDO nickel and we remarked upon how it had extremely strong doubling on the top right two-thirds of the date, which is relatively far from the rim, but was not doubled at all on the lower left part of the date or on the designer’s initial below the 6, which are closer to the rim.

On that coin you could tell that the initial hubbing had faded out along an arc concentric to the rim that ran through the horizontal date, and that when the die was given its second hubbing the Mint worker failed to properly align the images. That was why the word LIBERTY was not doubled on the 1916 die, as it fell outside the area formed by the first impression, while the long feather behind the Indian’s neck is doubled where it is closest to the center of the coin, because it fell within the affected area.

The working die for the 1919 Doubled Die Obverse dime was hubbed the same way, with those parts of the horizontal IN GOD WE TRUST further in from the rim being formed during the first hubbing operation, and those parts closer to the rim not being formed at all. Because the partially formed and re-annealed die did not need to have as much metal relocated during the second hubbing operation the hubbing press should have been able to complete the motto and the rest of the design on the second impression, though for all we know three impressions or even more may have been the norm. The famous 1918/7-S Standing Liberty quarter had its 8 hubbed over an already formed 7, and that 7 was very close to the rim.

At my suggestion Jeff Sam sent the coin to Bill Fivaz for verification, and Fivaz confirmed that it is indeed the result of a doubled working die and not machine doubling or some other type of striking error. He and “Cherrypickers’ Guide” co-author J. T. Stanton have assigned it the reference number FS-101 for that date, and they will include it in the Sixth Edition, Volume 2 of the CPG when that is eventually published. Volume 1 of the Sixth Edition is currently in production. It is expected that the variety will eventually be recognized by CONECA as well.

As of this writing only one additional specimen of this doubled die has been discovered, by coin dealer John Hodson of Munster, IN. He saw a notification of the new variety that I posted on the coin dealer network Coinnet, and went through his inventory and found a high grade piece. That piece has also been examined by Fivaz and declared to be a true Doubled Die error, confirming the attribution of the Discovery Specimen.