2008 Typical Die Clash TDC-25C-2008-01AK

Description

First typical die clash cataloged for the 2008 Alaska State Quarter by the MadDieClashes attribution service, TDC-25C-2008-01AK documents a clashing event on the final year of the State Quarter program's original ten-year run. The Alaska quarter reverse, designed by Charles Vickers, depicts a grizzly bear catching a salmon with the North Star above and the inscription "The Great Land" — a bold, high-relief design whose deeply carved bear figure creates prominent transfer marks when the dies clash without a planchet between them. Die clashing occurs when the press cycles empty, causing the obverse and reverse dies to impact each other directly and exchange mirror-image impressions of their respective designs. Coins subsequently struck from these clashed dies carry faint incuse ghost impressions of opposite-side design elements embedded in their surfaces. The TDC prefix marks this as a "typical" clash where the transferred design appears in the expected mirror-image orientation, and the 01AK suffix indicates the first cataloged clash event for the Alaska design specifically. As the forty-ninth state quarter issued (the program concluded with Hawaii as the fiftieth), Alaska's design entered production in the second half of 2008 when die preparation and press setup for the final state designs may have generated clashing events during the operational transitions between the year's five state designs. John Flanagan's Washington obverse — common to all State Quarter issues — provides the consistent set of design elements whose clash transfers appear on the Alaska reverse. Collectors should examine the reverse fields surrounding the bear figure under angled illumination at 10-15x magnification, looking for faint incuse traces of Washington's portrait, LIBERTY, or IN GOD WE TRUST transferred from the obverse die during the clash event.

Attribution History

• Discovered by MadDieClashes
• Expert attribution by MadDieClashes

External References