1880-S VAM-17

Description

Discovered by Richard Deters in October 1972, VAM-17 of the 1880-S Morgan Dollar is one of the longer-known varieties in the VAM catalog, with over five decades of collecting history. Classified III2 12 - C3c (Doubled 8), the obverse shows a die chip on the right side between the loops of the first 8 in the date, alongside doubling on the second 8 at the left bottom outside of the upper loop. The die chip between the first 8's loops provides an independent attribution marker separate from the doubling itself, allowing quick visual sorting before the more detailed doubled-8 examination. The reverse carries a C3c classification — a normal die of the C3 reverse die type with a very large centered mint mark tilted to the left. The tilted S mintmark is a significant attribution element, as mintmark orientation varied substantially on Morgan Dollars due to the hand-punching process used at branch mints, and a large S tilted leftward narrows the field of possible die pairings considerably. The 1880-S Morgan Dollar is one of the most common dates in the series, with a San Francisco mintage of 8,900,000, and enormous quantities survived in Treasury vaults until the great dispersals of the 1960s and 1970s. George T. Morgan's design, struck in 90% silver at 26.73 grams, remains the most popular and widely collected silver dollar type, and VAM attribution adds granularity to what might otherwise seem like a common date, revealing the individual die stories embedded within the broader production record.

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