1902-P VAM-15A

Description

Discovered in July 2024 by Michael Dustin, the 1902-P VAM-15A Morgan Dollar documents a tripled reverse legend combined with strongly clashed dies showing partial "In" in front of Liberty's neck and a partial "s" in the rear hair vee on the obverse. The VAM classification III2 1 - C4d (Tripled Reverse Legend, Clashed In, s Obverse) (189) captures both the hubbing anomaly and the clash event in a single attribution. The tripled reverse legend indicates three distinct hub impressions on the reverse die, leaving two displaced secondary impressions of the legend text. The clashed obverse — showing partial reverse inscription letters transferred during die-to-die contact without a planchet — adds a second error mechanism. The partial "In" visible in front of Liberty's neck and the partial "s" in the rear hair vee correspond to portions of the reverse inscription IN GOD WE TRUST and STATES (or PLURIBUS) that transferred during the clash event. A die crack across the cap apex provides an additional obverse die marker. The DPIS notation LH3/B45 documents the hub pairing data. The 1902 Philadelphia Mint produced 7,994,777 Morgan Dollars in one of the series' later production years — the Morgan Dollar would be discontinued after 1904 (resuming briefly in 1921). The combination of hub tripling and die clash on a single die pair makes VAM-15A a dual-mechanism variety that documents two distinct production anomalies, and its 2024 discovery illustrates that new Morgan Dollar VAMs continue to be identified more than a century after the coins were struck.

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