5th Variety of 1931 Penny discovered

[echidna]

Hi Fred
Yes the "mark" is also visible in other dates prior to 1929, but not after.
The point is that if the Unicorns are altered date 29s, then one would expect to see the mark.
Its a significant issue which Yurist failed to comment on.

Yurist
So now you are finally confirming that Unicorns show the 1 the 3 and the final 1 in different positions ?
And this is due to "experimentation during the 1931 penny production". 
Yeah right.
Well I guess this means we now have a Unicorn version 1, Unicorn version 2 ?
Well I think I may have discovered a version 3 ! (number 5 - see below).

You made a similar comment earlier about the depression in the date area:
"Experimental coins were minted with a range adjustments made to the working die during production and the depression around the '1' may be attributed to this."
This would mean that the mint added metal to the working die around the 1.
Yeah right.

The depression seen in the date area is due to the fact that they are fake altered dates and whoever did the fakery had to first remove the numerals.

The 1 the 3 and the final 1 are in different positions because they are fake altered dates.
The 3s are different shapes because they are fake altered dates.
Depressions and scratches can be seen in the date area because they are fake altered dates.
Discolouration can be seen in the date area because they are fake altered dates.

Do not discount the skill of these fakers.
Some are highly skilled and are able to put out very high quality fakes good enough to fool dealers.

Yurist, lets see unedited high res pics of the date areas.
All eight of them please.

Also you are wrong:
"Of the 8 'Unicorn Pennies' that I identified, one ('UP8') contains some unique date features"
How about number 5 - the 3 is obviously different.
" 

[serenitystan]

The top one looks fishy. Surface change around the 3. The last one is longer than the bottom coin. The bottom of the one on the top coin is further away from the rim than the bottom coin...Could be that my eyes are getting old,but the top coin does not look like a dropped one....

[echidna]

Hi Stan

We will have to wait for Yurist to provide the high res images of the date area.
But yes it looks dodgy.
The first 1 looks like its got a fishtail.


"

[serenitystan]

Hi Stan

We will have to wait for Yurist to provide the high res images of the date area.
But yes it looks dodgy.
The first 1 looks like its got a fishtail.
By the way this is "Unicorn #5" which was sold by a known seller of fake 1931 Drop 1 Indians on Ebay.
Even with the dodgy pic its a fairly obviously an altered date.
He has got a few of them.
You can identify his pics by the pink background.    NA.don't think you'll here from Yurist. It's tail between the legs time and head for the hills... :s :sportbike:

"

[fred lever]

Echidna, i trawled through a few pre 1929 pennies today and cannot so far detect that die chip in the 9 in any other date.
I spotted a nice 1929 VF example on ebay with a very clear flaw and grabbed that for a reference coin.
Can you give me an idea if it occurs in specific dates and not in others?
It would be very exciting if traceable back to 1921 or 1923.
I am trying to line up the  die flaw to a specific hub or die by serial number.
As a cross reference it would be nice if you could all look at coins and call in the dates that have this flaw.

Cheers, Fred.

[echidna]

Echidna, i trawled through a few pre 1929 pennies today and cannot so far detect that die chip in the 9 in any other date.
I spotted a nice 1929 VF example on ebay with a very clear flaw and grabbed that for a reference coin.
Can you give me an idea if it occurs in specific dates and not in others?
It would be very exciting if traceable back to 1921 or 1923.
I am trying to line up the  die flaw to a specific hub or die by serial number.
As a cross reference it would be nice if you could all look at coins and call in the dates that have this flaw.

Cheers, Fred.

Hi Fred

Off the top of my head its definitely there on 1925s
I will check other dates and get back about this.

[echidna]

Echidna, i trawled through a few pre 1929 pennies today and cannot so far detect that die chip in the 9 in any other date.
I spotted a nice 1929 VF example on ebay with a very clear flaw and grabbed that for a reference coin.
Can you give me an idea if it occurs in specific dates and not in others?
It would be very exciting if traceable back to 1921 or 1923.
I am trying to line up the  die flaw to a specific hub or die by serial number.
As a cross reference it would be nice if you could all look at coins and call in the dates that have this flaw.

Cheers, Fred.

Hi Fred

Off the top of my head its definitely there on 1925s
I will check other dates and get back about this.

I can see the same die flaw on these dates:
1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929

[Yurist]

Hi Fred
Yes the "mark" is also visible in other dates prior to 1929, but not after.
The point is that if the Unicorns are altered date 29s, then one would expect to see the mark.
Its a significant issue which Yurist failed to comment on.  

Firstly, this die marker is an entirely new observation and needs to be confirmed.  Secondly, I already posted my comment saying that if it's real there is nothing necessarily sinister about it.  As Fred said, die markers have been passed on from one coin to another for years.  It simply means that the 1929 hub (like numerous others) were used in the 1930/31 experimental phase.  

Yurist
So now you are finally confirming that Unicorns show the 1 the 3 and the final 1 in different positions ?

Not sure what you mean.  My article makes a clear reference to the dropped '1' of the Unicorn Penny being in a different position.  The article also tests the leftmost '1' against numerous pennies of that period and shows that it too appears in a different position.  The position of the '3' seems unchanged but the shape of that numeral appears to be unique in most Unicorn Pennies, except in UP8.  The '3' in UP8  is consistent with the shape of the '3' in the 1930 penny.   I hope you won't be arguing that someone harvested the '3' from a 1930 penny to create an altered UP8?   

And this is due to "experimentation during the 1931 penny production". 
Yeah right.
Well I guess this means we now have a Unicorn version 1, Unicorn version 2 ?
Well I think I may have discovered a version 3 ! (number 5 - see below).

I will need to investigate this further, but minor variations in working dies (due to hub adjustments) that resulted in minor changes to the shape of date numerals would be expected in coins that were struck during the well-documented experimental phase at the Mint.   

You made a similar comment earlier about the depression in the date area:
"Experimental coins were minted with a range adjustments made to the working die during production and the depression around the '1' may be attributed to this."
This would mean that the mint added metal to the working die around the 1.
Yeah right.

I suggest you do a little more reading about the challenges facing the Mint in 1929-1931.   The practice of cutting a date numeral from one hub and placing it into another was common as the Mint improvised to create its own working dies.   The methods employed and quality of the results were somewhat random, and it's certainly not unthinkable that metal was added/removed and/or striking pressure was adjusted, which resulted in depressions around misplaced numerals like the dropped '1'.   


The depression seen in the date area is due to the fact that they are fake altered dates and whoever did the fakery had to first remove the numerals.

Numbingly repeating the word "fake" doesn't make it true, and "yeah right" is not an argument.  You cannot simply discount history, and in particular the challenging circumstances experienced at the Mint during the Great Depression.     

The 1 the 3 and the final 1 are in different positions because they are fake altered dates.
The 3s are different shapes because they are fake altered dates.
Depressions and scratches can be seen in the date area because they are fake altered dates. 
Discolouration can be seen in the date area because they are fake altered dates.

Worth noting that most of the Unicorn Pennies don't have any evidence of significant scratches, depressions or discolourations around the date or anywhere else.  The few pennies that do have some surface issues have them throughout the entire coin and not just around the date.    

Do not discount the skill of these fakers.
Some are highly skilled and are able to put out very high quality fakes good enough to fool dealers.

There have indeed been some very good coin reproductions in the past, but there are too many fundamental inconsistencies for the Unicorn Penny to be a reproduction of the 1931 dropped '1' Ind. Obv. penny.  

For example, if the fakers were so skilled that they managed to remove three of the 'wrong' date numbers from a 1929 penny and seamlessly replace the leftmost '1' (there are no depressions or scratches), then why install the wrong '3' and get the dropped '1' placement wrong each time?  Clearly, a bad faker would not have the skill to pull off a masterful job on any of the date numbers, while a good faker would not have gotten any of the numbers wrong.  By analogy, it's like showing a perfect reproduction of the Mona Lisa by a highly skilled artist who decided to paint her with blond hair.  

Also, let's not forget about the curved-base letters (CBL).  If the faker's objective was to emulate the 1931 dropped '1' Ind. Obv. penny (which features a reverse legend with flat base letters), then why choose a donor coin with CBL?  Sorry, but no matter which way you look at it, your 'fake' coin theory simply doesn't hold water.   

Yurist, lets see unedited high res pics of the date areas.
All eight of them please.  

I can assure you that the images I have posted on my website are completely unedited.  I merely placed the original images on a black background.   I have requested additional hi-res images of the remaining 4 coins and will add them to the website as soon as received.   

Also you are wrong:
"Of the 8 'Unicorn Pennies' that I identified, one ('UP8') contains some unique date features"
How about number 5 - the 3 is obviously different.
" 

I can see the possible anomaly you are referring to, but I don't yet have a hi-res image of that coin to confirm whether this is a striking issue or subsequent damage to the coin.  From my file images I can, however, see that this particular coin ('UP5') has some considerable surface damage on other parts of the reverse.  There appears to be a planchette flaw next to the 'W' in COMMONWEALTH and a similar flaw in the 'O' in ONE.  Once again, the Mint was experimenting with different metals and dies at the time, so seeing such anomalies is not totally unexpected.  

[fred lever]

Hi Echidna,  
From your observation that the same flaw exists on so many dates confirms that a  copy hub persisted for a long while since 1923..
That a copy hub can last for such a long time is not unusual as it only had the job or providing one derivative pressed on  hub at a time.
Most likely the copy hub had the date of 19blankblank thus letting the next stage of punching have any numeral you want next.
The point about the hub is the 9 on it carries the minute flaw.
As i look at more coins and concentrate on the 9 I see examples where by virtue of wear on the dies the 9 just looks a bit "fatter", having lost the finer details of the flaw.
"Metal added".
Yes, please note that the hub sequences never saw metal added to anything, the mint had no such facility to do that.
Where metal had to be "added" a pressing sequence of incuse back to relief  was carried out. Once in relief metal could be removed, thus when pressing back to incuse what was a hollow was now "filled".
That same reverse copy hub with curved base letters and the 9 flaw appears to keep bobbing up in the whole decade and i have no problem  with it coming out of storage in 1929, 1930 and 1931 in the attempts to make viable striking dies.
Whether successful coining dies resulted in those attempts each years is illustrated by the number of struck coins found of the year.
We have 1929 lots of coins, 1930 none and 1931 a few.
Other years, well,  I have looked at quite a few 1925 images and about 1/2 of them have a wonky 9.

That 1931 coins may have numerals pointing in all directions does not surprise me at all as hubs were hand punched and came from different series so all four digits may be in slightly different positions on groups of coin strikings.
In history this is common. Only David Briggs has gone to a great lot of trouble to itemize the various wanderings of numerals on our coinage.
A couple of hours reading his books and looking at the enclosed photos reveals just how variable digit placing can be.
In some years he just gave up trying to classify the varieties of date positions, falling back to "as many as you can find"!!

I am still waiting for somebody else on this coin forum to find their own CBL 1931 Ind Obv coin to add to the handful that Yuri has found.
I suppose that as well as the CBL we now should now look for a "lumpy 9".
It took quite a few years for the English obverse dot over bottom scroll reverse 1920 to be found in any number, i guess I will have to wait a few more years before the CBL 1931D1+ W9 +Ind obv's start to show!

Fred.

[echidna]

Yurist what we need are high res images of the date areas for all eight coins as per your promise:
"I will try to obtain zoomed hi-res images of the dates

None of the pics so far provided are good enough to see the required details.

[serenitystan]

Yurist what we need are high res images of the date areas for all eight coins as per your promise:
"I will try to obtain zoomed hi-res images of the dates

None of the pics so far provided are good enough to see the required details.    :i_agree:  Zoomed hi-rez images are a start..Also all eight coins are needed in hand. Tools are needed,digital scale,micrometer to check thickness of rim,planchet + circumference and a microscope to check surface,date area..Did this process at least happen to one of the eight coins???!!!... :-/

[Yurist]

As I said, I will attempt to obtain the zoomed images.  However, in some cases I am dealing with collectors who aren't very technically savvy.  

Personally, I have handled 5 of the coins.  Of course, I used a hi-magnification eye lens and verified the weights and diameters.  All was normal, 9.45g and 30.8mm respectively.  

If I get a chance to arrange additional inspections, I will take a microscope camera lens with me and take the zoomed images myself.

[autocoupler]

I can see the same die flaw on these dates:
1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929

I found them on the same dates, nothing prior to 1923 nor the 31's or beyond. Bugger, don't have a 1930.  :drooling:   

Just to elaborate a little, the flaw was seen on both FBL and CBL coins for 1923

Filled 4 and normal 4 on both Indian and English obverse coins for 1924

The broken N reverse for 1925, as well as the cuds on E and Y reverse for 1925

Runny nose King obverse coin for 1926

Both Indian and English obverse coins for 1927

Both Indian and English obverse coins for 1929

[echidna]

" 

Comparison of the four images we have so far.
Check the alignment of the first 1 the 3 and the final 1.
Its clear that they are ALL different.
Its important because its exactly what you would expect with altered dates.
But this wasn't this mentioned in the journal article.

Its clear that Yurist hasnt done this sort of image comparison.

[fred lever]

Re post 125.
(I will not nest this post, that is too confusing, i cannot tell who is saying what).

Ecchy, i spent a couple of happy hours yesterday looking at pennies and the 9 in the dates.
I  looked at about 100 coins dated between 1922 and 1932.
The coins were in the VF to EF grade so wear was not too much of a factor in distorting the image positions.

1/  I found a SIMILAR die chip in CBL coins of the dates you nominated.
I am not sure  if the chip is exactly the same defect in ALL of the coins viewed.
I strongly do believe that we are looking at a hub chip, passed onto coining dies.
That needs about 1000 more coin viewing to get a handle on.
(Yes, here comes a CAB article on the "9 chip" defect after i do some more research.)
I have not found the chip defect in any FBL reverse.

2/ As the similar if not exact chip shows on dates from 1923 to 1929 how does that effect your proof of evil doing namely: the 5th variety of 1931 are modified 1929 coins? Could they not be any date from 1923 to 1929?

3/ I am not sure about any of this proofing of evil doing simply because digits wriggle about in position when viewed on the coin images.
It is demonstrated that digits move about on many dates of coins!
It is not just these 1931's that have wonky digits.
If digits moving about were a sure sign of evil doing that means many coins from 1913 (where you find lots of differences) must be date altered coins!
That notion is just non- sense.

4/ The digit position changes on as seen on many dates is not caused by changes on COINS but changes on HUBS, particularly when a generic hub has had a date change or repair involving the digits.

5/ Yes there are plenty of date altered coins from evil doers and i am the first to jump right onto the mongrels, particularly when it involves one of my beloved 1930 coins!

6/ Calling ALL these so called 5th variety of 1931 drop 1 and all that fakes just because  the digits are in slightly different positions just does not hold water. The digit positions are determined by the HUB and DIE train including any distortions caused  by hand punching on intermediate hubbing and heat treating.

7/ There is still a huge amount of research to do to try and identify HUBS and DIES and relate them to the coins that we see in our collections.
I am on it, but I need help!

Cheers, Fred.