1892-CC VAM-2

Description

Discovered by A. George Mallis in June 1965 — Mallis being one half of the Van Allen-Mallis partnership that created the entire VAM classification system — this 1892-CC Morgan Dollar features the CC mint mark tilted to the left, with the second C touching the wreath on the reverse. The tilted mint mark indicates that the punch used to apply the CC was struck into the die at an angle, a hand-positioning variation inherent to the era when each mint mark was individually punched into working dies. This reverse die was shared with VAM-14 and VAM-14A, meaning that multiple obverse dies were paired with this same tilted-CC reverse during the 1892 production run at Carson City. The 1892-CC Morgan Dollar holds special historical weight as a product of the Carson City Mint's final full year of silver dollar production — the facility struck its last Morgan Dollars in 1893 before closing permanently. That Mallis himself discovered this variety connects it directly to the intellectual origins of VAM collecting, making it both a numismatic variety and a piece of attribution history identified by one of the system's co-founders.

External References