1896-P VAM-11A

Description

Discovered by Tom Delorey in March 1974, the 1896-P VAM-11A "Gouged 8" Morgan dollar identifies a vertical die gouge positioned in the left top inside of the lower loop of the numeral 8 in the date. Cataloged as 11A III2 11 · C3a (Gouged 8), with the triple question marks indicating the classification may be provisional or uncertain, this variety pairs Obverse III2 11 with a standard Reverse C3a. George T. Morgan's silver dollar was struck at Philadelphia with an approximate mintage of 9.98 million coins in 1896, a date that has attracted moderate variety documentation relative to the more heavily studied 1880s issues. Tom Delorey, a prominent numismatic author and researcher whose contributions span multiple areas of U.S. coinage, identified this gouged 8 during the foundational era of VAM documentation in the mid-1970s when the systematic catalog was still taking shape under Van Allen and Mallis. Die gouges within date numeral loops result from various causes: foreign particles trapped between the date punch and the die during preparation, accidental tool contact during die finishing, or stress fractures in the numeral punch itself that transferred as raised marks on the die surface. The location in the left top inside of the lower loop of 8 places the gouge in a curved area where it can be distinguished from random contact marks by its consistent appearance across multiple specimens struck from the same die. The 11A suffix indicates this is a sub-variety of the base VAM-11 die marriage, sharing the fundamental die pairing but distinguished by the gouged 8 diagnostic that developed on this specific obverse die. DPIS entries and emission sequence data remain unlisted, leaving the die's production chronology as an open research area.

External References