1889-O VAM-20

Description

Cataloged as 20 III2 12 C3a with plate photo 181, this 1889-O Morgan Dollar carries the designation "Slanted Date" and was discovered by Jeff Oxman in March 1998. The primary diagnostic reveals a date set in normal lateral position but slanted, with the digit 9 set higher than the digit 1. This angular misalignment occurred during die preparation when the date digits were punched into the working die at a slight tilt rather than on a perfectly horizontal baseline — a positional anomaly distinct from repunched or doubled dates. Jeff Oxman's contributions to Morgan Dollar variety research are extensive, and his discovery of this date-position anomaly added another documented die to the 1889-O catalog. The obverse die class III2 12 designates a modified die, while reverse C3a is described as normal, meaning the variety's defining characteristics reside entirely on the obverse. The 1889-O Morgan Dollar was struck at the New Orleans Mint during one of the facility's higher-production years for the denomination. George T. Morgan's Liberty Head obverse places the date at the base of the design below Liberty's portrait, where angular deviations in digit positioning become measurable through comparison with properly aligned examples from other die pairs.

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