Counterfeit Gold Coins In NGC Slabs

Wayne Miller writes about the Morgan annealing process, "each mint basined, machined and hardened its own dies. If the die was not hardened sufficiently through annealing, the die surface would tend to sink at the moment of striking due to the tremendous force involved".

If in fact, Philadelphia put in all dates and mint marks by hand before shipping there was terrible quality control with mispositioned dates, mispositioned mint marks, double dates, double mint marks, overdates, different sizes on mint marks.

Wayne Miller, wrote "The Morgan And Peace dollar Text Book" and the quote is from the book. Miller acknowledges that a lot of the information in the book about the minting process came from Van Allen.

@Slider23, I wanted to follow up on our discussion. I was wrong on some points, and correct on the main point. I had a longer email exchange with Roger Burdette (author of various books) and to summarize:

1. The basining, machining and hardening work done at the branch mints was to get them to fit in their presses, and to adapt them to the planchet upsetting used at that mint (mostly SF).
2. Dies were never shipped to branch mints with the dates or mint marks missing (i.e. the branch mints never punched these on their own).

Many lengthy details were in our discussion, such as "During the first decades of the two western mints, most San Francisco and some Carson Mint dies were shipped soft. This was done so that SF could adjust the radius (basin) to suit their presses, including cutting the die shank to correct length. Carson's presses were newer and soft dies were needed only for certain denominations. (For example when Carson got a new Morgan & Orr "Ajax" Press it used the same length dies as the one at Philadelphia, so these were shipped hardened, tempered and ready to use"

and "The basin, or radius of curvature of the dies, had to match the upsetting on planchets in height, width and angle between the proto-rim and the flat central area. If everything matched, the dies made the best quality coins with minimum force and thus lasted longer. Barber made dies with specific radii that worked well at Philadelphia with the upsetting determined by experiment. The identical dies when used at SF or another mint that had different upsetting values, might perform poorly."

As you might expect, removing material from the dies to adjust the basin/radius of the die face impacted the coin quality due to the "difference in relief between field and highest points. The main visual result on coins is a loss of detail where the relief meets the field, and less pronounced differences in height." I don't know if it was noticeable.

So the branch mints did alter the dies for the above reasons, but they never punched dates or mint marks on their own.

Excuse me?




Fake slabs have been around since the Generation 1 rattler. That was the reason they went to the two-piece banded slabs...

Great thread..........educational for new collectors or those not attuned to a specific series.

I just broke apart an NGC details holder to better check the coin inside. They seem well made. Thick plastic with the hologram in the back applied to the plastic shell, not the white insert inside.

I think the photos on the verification page are good enough to recognize the coin inside as unique. At least when the coin is big and has any kind of hits or marks of use