Why are o-mint Morgan dollars weakly struck?

Why are o-mint Morgan dollars generally weaker than the other mint issues?

:secret:

 

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My understanding is the New Orleans mint used less pressure when striking the coins. I read that somewhere...but it may not be true.

One thing though...there are several years where O minted coins normally have a full strike. The O mint gets a bad reputation because it does have some bad years (1892-O is probably the worst). However, some years (1879-O, 1880-O, 1881-O just to name a few) are typically strongly struck.

 

My 1884 O and 1883 O have very weak strikes, both a 63's
I don't know why, exactly coins at the New Orleans mint were struck softly, but it is a good question, that is for sure... All I know is that they were struck softly, not much help, but I'm wondering the same thing!

 

To clarify, I should have said "weakly struck above the ear".

 

Don't know what you mean by that, my morgan dollars, are weakly struck near the breast feathers of the eagle on the reverse... They are somewhat soft..

 

p.s. The answer is not the obvious one, and FWIW I just learned it today -- so I thought I would pass it along.... But not just yet....

 

I have no idea so I will just venture a complete guess. The high levels of humidity in New Orleans made the dies highly susceptible to grease build up in the deepest recesses of the dies. Since the striking process causes radial stresses, the grease trapped in the recess above the ear which is the center of the die got trapped and could not be expelled which explains why the other areas of the coin did not suffer the same grease filled fate.

 

Most morgans struck in New Orleans were bagged and thrown into storage vaults. They were more interested in saving dies rather than winning beauty contests. It wasn't less pressure but the dies and presses were spaced further apart.

 

"
p.s. The answer is not the obvious one, and FWIW I just learned it today -- so I thought I would pass it along.... But not just yet.... "

Oops. Sorry if I jumped the gun on you.

 

It seems to me that above the ear would be the high spot on the coin being the first area to be weakly struck. The were minted with lower preasure to conserver dies and make them last longer.

The mint was more concerned with minting a high quantity of coins than making coins with good strikes.

 

The bad strikes of the "O" Mint Morgans is because the dies were spaced farther apart than than other mints. In this case the metal from the planchets did not flow into the deepest recesses of the dies. A Lot of the "O" mint morgans ended up with flat areas in the center of the coins both on the obverse and reverse ( hair and breast feathering). You can find nice breast feathering and hair lines but they would have been one of the first punched off the presses. My collection, I look for first punches, and do not let the holder say what belongs in my collection.

Of certified dates the 1891-o seems to be the worst of the bunch. I have seen closer candidates for worse though

 

Now that I didn't know. It's interesting that one mint would not have access to equal supplies as the rest.

 

From what I've read, I believe it was a number of things: First the O mint struck the second most coins per die around 150,000, Philly was first- and you can usually find many weak strikes from the P mint too. Second was probably striking pressure, because the eagle's breast, and the hair right above the ear are the highest points on the die, weaker pressure means the die won't reach those high points. Thrid was the effect of the annealing process, if the planchets weren't annealed long enough, they wouldn't be as soft, which would make it harder to strike.

 

Actually I just checked Wayne Miller's The Morgan and Peace Dollar Textbook and Miller and Van Allen believe the weakness in O mint Morgans from 1887-1897 was from "improper basining of the dies".

 

We have a winner. The basining disk used in New Orleans was less "dished" than the other mints. The result is the weakly struck area discussed above.

Here's an interesting thread from ATS where I learned this tidbit.

http://forums.collectors.com/messageview.cfm?catid=26&threadid=721661

Have fun...Mike

 

basining???

 

Read the thread linked above and it should become more clear.

Basining, in short, is convex polishing of the die with a rotating wheel.

Because the New Orleans basining wheel was less concave, the resulting dies were less convex, and the resulting coins less concave and thus less well struck.

 

Ahh, thanks Leadfoot

 

That is really something!
Thanks for sharing it with us!