Die Rotation

There are numerous examples of rotated dies in the Liberty Seated Dollar series. We’ve tried to identify these rotations where we know that they exist. We’ve seen many die pairs that show rotations of 1-5 degrees. In general, we haven’t mentioned these minor rotations. We’ve tried to identify all known rotations of 10 degrees or more. In a few cases we’ve included these variations in our Top 30 variety list.

We note the rotation as clockwise (CW) or counterclockwise (CCW). The direction is determined by aligning the obverse, then flipping the coin over in such a way that the reverse should be perfectly aligned. Any rotation is then noted and the direction identified per the rotation of a clock. The photos below show an example of a 45 degree clockwise rotation. The coin pictured is from the Osburn-Cushing reference collection, and is one of our Top 30 varieties.













Photo credits:

Obverse 1 and Reverse A:   1846-O NGC XF40, from the Osburn-Cushing reference collection.


Copyright © 2015-2021, by Dick Osburn and Brian Cushing, All rights reserved.