Interesting new half dime

[RGT]

I picked this one up from Heritage recently. I may have paid a bit much but I have no regrets. As a date this is not particularly scarce. This is a V-4 and a very late die state as seen by the large die crack on the reverse, which is what attracted me to the coin in addition to it's original surfaces.

 

Blythe refers to a V-4a which has a repunched "5" in the date. Since this is a very late die state it should logically have the repunched 5, but I'm not sure that I can see it. Blythes plate coin of the V-4a was sold by Heritage last February and this coin seems to match it, though I can't see any doubling in the Heritage images on it either.

[SkyMan]

That's a nice looking half dime, (thumbs u , with a fun die crack.

[Conder101]

Since this is a very late die state it should logically have the repunched 5, but I'm not sure that I can see it.

Actually you would expect to see repunching on the early die states. After a lot of use, some die wear, possibly some repolishing etc in the later states the repunching may no longer be present.

[toyonakataro]

Interesting coin for sure. I just checked mine, but couldn't find a crack like yours have.

Thanks for sharing.

[RGT]

Since this is a very late die state it should logically have the repunched 5, but I'm not sure that I can see it.

Actually you would expect to see repunching on the early die states. After a lot of use, some die wear, possibly some repolishing etc in the later states the repunching may no longer be present.

 

That's true. But the way the text was worded it sounded like the 5 was repunched later during the die life, creating what he called the V-4a and the V-4 did not have the repunched 5. This doesn't seem like a normal procedure and I may have misunderstood because it really isn't clear what Blythe meant.

 

Still waiting for a good book on seated half dimes...

[Conder101]

As a rule you don't try and repunch a hardened steel die unless you like destroying punches and chipped/spalled dies. And it doesn't make much sense to anneal a worn used die repunch it and then try to reharden it and hope the internal stresses don't cause it to fail almost immediately. If you are going to go to that much trouble why not just punch the date into a new die and have done with it.

 

Most likely the V4 and 4a are probably not from the same dies, or the 4a actually came before the 4. I haven't reviewed what Blythe says about it.