1884-S VAM-5

Description

Discovered by Leroy Van Allen in January 1981 — one of the two founding fathers of the VAM classification system alongside George Mallis — the 1884-S VAM-5 "Very Far Date" Morgan dollar identifies an obverse die where the date numerals are set much further right than normal. Cataloged as 5 III2 3 · C3a (Very Far Date) with die pair number 187, this variety documents one of the date position extremes that resulted from the hand-punching process used to add date numerals to each working die individually at the San Francisco Mint. George T. Morgan's silver dollar design placed the date below Liberty's neck truncation, and the exact positioning varied from die to die because a mint employee manually drove four individual numeral punches into the die face using a hammer — a process with inherent variability in lateral placement, spacing, and depth. San Francisco struck approximately 3.2 million Morgan dollars in 1884, a relatively modest mintage that makes this a more challenging date to find in quantity compared to the prolific Philadelphia and New Orleans issues of the same year. The "very far" date designation indicates the rightward displacement exceeds the normal range of variation, pushing the date noticeably closer to the rim on the right side. DPIS (Die Pair Identification System) entries and emission sequence data for both obverse and reverse dies remain unlisted, leaving room for future research to position this die marriage within the overall production sequence. Collectors should compare the date position on candidate coins against reference images of normally positioned 1884-S dates, looking for clear rightward displacement visible without magnification, then confirm the C3a reverse pairing.

External References