My quest for my first Morgan dollar VAM discovery

It has been a while since I last wrote. Work and holidays have kept me away from my hobby for a while. As an update, I was able to secure my first Morgan Dollar VAM in late October of this year. Amazingly enough, my first discovery was with a coin that I purchased solely to fill a void in my NGC registry. I had no other intent or thoughts about this coin when I purchased it.

Going over a set of coins in early September I noticed something interesting on my newly acquired 1893-O AU-58 in NGC plastic. I saw what appeared to be a partial incused "T" on the obverse of the coin. I quickly checked the 1893-O listings (there aren't very many), and noticed that there were no known clashed "Ts" for this date and MM.

At this time, Leroy Van Allen was working to finish up a book he was co-authoring on Scribbling Scratches and had requested a stay on new submissions until October. Very likely one of the more painful waits I had experienced in quite some time, I waited to submit on 10/1. A few shipping issues later, I had my coin back in hand on 10/26.

The result?

4a III2 3 - C3b (Doubled 1, O Tilted Right, Clashed Obverse t) (181) I-2 R-5

Obverse III2 3- Doubled 1 below upper crossbar. Clashed dies with faint partial incuse t of Trust from reverse showing in right hair vee of lower hair edge.

Reverse C3b- Mint mark tilted right.

It's been an interesting road to my first discovery and I learned a lot about VAMs along the way. I'm sadly addicted to them now to the point that I will likely never stop looking for new varieties. If you've never been exposed to this side of the hobby and you like looking for small details, VAM collecting may be something you should look into. Until the next entry...