Owner Comments:
Lyman Allen #2.09a (KM #163) - Mintage: 4,803,000
This issue is fairly common, but the S/S variety is quite rare, especially in a high grade
and with such well defined doubling of the mint mark. I've seen many with what appears to be a filled upper loop in the
S, but this is the only one I've seen with "
horns" on the top of the
S.
This particular coin is poorly struck, and exhibits the
wood grain planchet effect which is very typical of San Francisco mint bronze coins of this era. The streaking is most obvious on the reverse and runs diagonally through the top left quadrant. The alloy of the planchet was not well mixed which is what produces the streaks when the planchets are produced. The lighter portions may be a harder metal and thus do not flow as readily into the deeper parts of the die, or the planchet may just be thinner in these areas. On the obverse, the letter
C in
CENTAVOS and the letters
FIL in
FILIPINAS are poorly struck. On the reverse, the letters
TED STA in UNI
TED STATES and the tip of the eagle's right wing are very poorly struck. Otherwise, the strike is fairly typical for this issue.
I purchased this coin raw on eBay in 2005 as a normal date/mint mark coin and was very pleased to find that it was actually the S/S variety once I received it. I waited 12 years before having it graded, but I'm very pleased with the outcome. To my knowledge, this is the finest example graded by NGC and PCGS has graded only one finer at MS66BN.
NGC has used this coin for the closeup variety photos on the
1911 S/S USA-PHIL 1C ALLEN-2.09a Variety Plus web page.
Allen Varieties
ALLEN-2.09 - Normal Date.
ALLEN-2.09a - S/S - At least two distinct over mint mark varieties exist. This is the more obvious of the two and appears to have a
horned S similar to the 1908 S/S. In the second, the under mint mark appears to the right of the dominant block S and the "1" in the date appears doubled to the left at the top. The S/S variety is recognized by both NGC and PCGS.
Date acquired: 7/23/2005 (raw coin)
Date graded: 10/12/2017 (self-submitted to NGC)
Rev. 12/2/2023