1876-S Liberty Gold $20. ODD MM Placement. Authentic? 0

[VanArippa]

Hello, anyone have an opinion of this S mint mark? Its directly over the T in Liberty.  It's not centered. Is this coin authentic?  Thanks much        

[Mohawk]

Hi Van,

Now that IS interesting.  While I know very little about Liberty Head Gold, I do know that mint marks had a way of traveling around on Barber Quarters, which are a bit later but from a similar era.  According to NGC's Coin Explorer, they did mint 1,597,000 $20s in San Francisco that year.  That means they needed a lot of dies with mint marks punched in by hand.  I could see how some dies would have slightly off-kilter mint mark positions.  But, like I said, I am not a Liberty Gold expert.  Hopefully we get some more input on this one but I don't think I'd worry too much if I were you  

Edited June 23, 2019 by Mohawk

[Greenstang]

Seems to be correct. Here is a photo of a certified 1876S  with the MM in the same location.

 

[Mohawk]

20 minutes ago, Greenstang said:

Seems to be correct. Here is a photo of a certified 1876S  with the MM in the same location.

 

Looks like a pretty close match to me.....I'm not surprised about the weird MM position.....punching those little letters into dies by hand was far from an exact science!

[VanArippa]

Thank you both. That's very interesting and helpful information. Thanks for sharing.

[Mohawk]

42 minutes ago, VanArippa said:

Thank you both. That's very interesting and helpful information. Thanks for sharing.

No problem.  Always glad to help

[Conder101]

6 hours ago, Mohawk said:

they did mint 1,597,000 $20s in San Francisco that year.  That means they needed a lot of dies with mint marks punched in by hand

Probably somewhere between 8 and 16.

[Mohawk]

10 hours ago, Conder101 said:

Probably somewhere between 8 and 16.

It's very interesting to know an exact numeric range on that Conder.....not a huge number of dies, but still enough that you could definitely have some different MM positions.  Thanks for sharing that  

Edited June 23, 2019 by Mohawk

[DWLange]

This may shed some additional light on the subject:

https://www.ngccoin.com/news/article/7072/USA-coin-album/