1886 Morgan Dollar Capped Die Brockage

Description

This 1886 Morgan Dollar was struck by a capped die and carries a full brockage of the obverse in place of the eagle reverse. A die cap forms when a struck coin fails to eject and adheres to the die face; continued striking drives the trapped coin over the die until its metal wraps the shank in the shape of a bottle cap. The next planchet fed into the press receives its impression through that cap rather than from the die itself, and because the cap presents the struck coin's own relief to the planchet, the transferred design comes out incuse and mirror-reversed. On this piece the Liberty head appears on both faces: struck normally by the obverse die on one side, and as the spread, sunken mirror image left by the cap on the other. Capped die brockages on nineteenth-century silver dollars are scarce, as the large planchet and heavy press tonnage made a retained cap difficult to sustain. Philadelphia struck 19,963,000 Morgan dollars in 1886.