REGISTER OF DIES: HEADS AND TAILS

Did you ever wonder why the Wiley-Bugert half dollar book refers to “head” dies and “tail” dies? I always called them “obverse” and “reverse,” and at coin shows you also hear numismatists refer to the “front” and “back” of a coin or medal. The answer to the Wiley-Bugert mystery lies in a 19th century document entitled “Register of Dies for the Philadelphia Mint and Branch Mints.” Located in the National Archives, this volume covers deliveries of dies from the Philadelphia Mint to the branch Mints for the period 1839-1854. The Branch Mints covered in this volume are New Orleans, Dahlonega, and Charlotte.

Bugert first looked at this document in the 1980s when the process to access this volume was not trivial. One had to know that the book actually exist- ed, then find the archive where it was deposited [Ed. - in the 1980s, it was DC, now it is Philadelphia] and then physically visit the National Archives at that location. Complicating matters was that the Internet did not exist, meaning all of this had to be coordinated by mail and phone. Once you got there you then had to navigate through the local archivists (sometime helpful, sometimes not) and call for the document. A staff member would take your call slip, go the stacks, and hopefully return with the document. If you were lucky there was a working photocopier to capture images [Ed. - and the staff member would permit photocopying—often not!], otherwise you had to work the old fashioned way and copy the information with pencil and paper.

The advent of the Internet is slowly changing all of this. Several years ago Bob Julian determined to systematically scan large amounts of material in the National Archives with an eye toward making this information publicly accessible. Julian applied to the Central States Numismatic Society’s author grants program, which generously donates awards of several thousand dollars to aspiring authors. Awards for 2016 were recently announced, but this is an annual affair, and prospective authors are highly encouraged to apply for next year.

With funding in hand, Julian arranged with local Philadelphians to physically perform the scanning. The National Archives are supportive of these efforts and digitizers such as Internet Archive have setup shop inside several of the Archives locations throughout the country. Over several years, Julian captured nearly 40,000 images and is making these available to the Newman Numismatic Portal and to other numismatic organizations.

The first document posted by the Newman Portal is the “Register of Dies” referred to above, and this is now accessible at https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/archivedetail/514794. In it we find that the Mint itself used the terminology “head” and “tail” to describe dies. One finds them also referred to as “head” and “tale” dies, but this is apparently a mis- spelling on the part of the Mint worker who happened to be recording die shipments that particular day. Documents such as these raise a whole host of related questions. Where are the die books for the period after 1854? Were all the dies used the same year they were shipped? How do these dies map to the known varieties for a particular year?

The answers to these questions are not always trivial, and one needs to keep in mind that records such as these are just one piece of the puzzle. Combined with actual observation of the coins, they start to make more sense, but there will always be mysteries. One of those mysteries will NOT be, “how do I access the die records in the National Archives?” That part is now solved, at least for the Liberty Seated coinage from 1839-1854.

To learn more about the Liberty Seated Collectors Club, see:
www.lsccweb.org

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web