For all of you who collect Lafayette Dollars by variety, VSS has you covered. There are five different varieties, with DuVall-4E being extremely rare. Each variety has a unique reverse and the hand-engraved branch at the base of the statue is an easy diagnostic for all of them. Nevertheless, there are other cool things to see on these coins, as all the lettering was hand-punched into the dies. Take a closer look at this series on VAMWorld: http://vamworld.com/wiki/Lafayette_Dollars

Happy New Year, variety lovers! I'm looking forward to seeing a lot of cool coins in 2025. Here's a snapshot of what was attributed in 2024.

Looks like I haven't posted anything here since last year's calendar. Well, it's time for this year's calendar! Lots of eye candy again this year. Calendars are $25 shipped in the US and are printed on A4-sized card stock with glossy photos and a calendar grid you can write on. Shipping should be late November. You know you need a picture of the first 1794 dollar on your wall, right? Let me know if you want to order one.

I'm continuing my tradition of offering nice wall calendars with some photos I've taken over the years. I've been making these since 2009. Heavy card stock, A4-size pages with a spiral binding. I should be ready to ship within the next week or two. $25 each shipped in the US. Let me know if you're interested in reserving one for your wall!

Although most of what I attribute is VAMs, I will label anything that is cataloged as a variety for which I can find attribution materials, from Fugio cents to gold. Here's a nice DDO on a 1940-S FS-101 dime, also cataloged by CONECA as DDO-002 and DDR-001.

The 1883-O VAM 1C is a rare variety that shows an interesting artifact of improper die hardening. There's a depressed halo around the left wreath. Originally thought to be a result of over-buffing the die, it's actually the effect of decarbonization of the die steel close to the surface. When dies were hardened in the 19th century, they couldn't use a vacuum, so they packed the dies in charcoal to try and keep oxygen away from the die steel. Presence of oxygen and a hot die would cause carbon in the die steel to leech out and bond with the atmospheric oxygen, lowering the carbon content of the die close to the surface, making it too soft to strike very many coins.

Compared with early coppers and bust halves, cataloging VAMs is still very much an ongoing process. Since the beginning of 2022, there have been about 500 changes to the VAM catalog. Some new varieties, some deleted, some revised, some reclassified, all in an effort to make the VAM catalog more complete and robust.

September's coin photo in my calendar. 1999 New Jersey quarter, broadstruck brockage. Washington's "spaghetti hair" is nowhere to be found on this beauty.