1898-P VAM-13

Description

LD Lane, known in the collecting community as ChiefRet, discovered VAM-13 in 2017, documenting a Near Date on the 1898 Philadelphia Morgan Dollar classified as III2 13 - C3a with catalog number 190. The obverse shows the date set further left than its normal position — a die-specific characteristic created when the date digits were hand-punched into the working die at a lateral position that deviated from the standard placement used on most 1898-P dies. Two diagonal polishing lines inside the ear serve as the primary obverse die marker, evidence of intentional die surface preparation where a polishing tool left striations visible within the ear's concave interior on struck coins. The reverse carries the C3a designation, with a small die chip at the top middle of the M in AMERICA observed on some specimens — a progressive die marker that may not appear on early die state examples. Philadelphia struck 5,884,735 Morgan Dollars in 1898, the twenty-first year of the series, during a period when Morgan Dollar production fluctuated based on Treasury Department silver purchase requirements and vault storage capacity. Near date varieties on Morgan Dollars attract collectors who specialize in date position studies, where systematic measurement of date placement across multiple die marriages within a single date-mint reveals the range of hand-punching variation that occurred during die preparation at the Philadelphia Mint's engraving department.

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