The collar that holds a planchet in place in the coining press to be struck as a coin has been called the third die in the operation.
Like the obverse and reverse dies, it can be used to impart a design, only to the edge. In United States coinage, that design has most often been the reeding on precious metal coins and successor copper-nickel clad coins. It can and has also been lettering or various types of ornamentation.
Reeding in a collar is like the lands (ridges) and grooves in a rifled gun barrel, only more pronounced. It has served mainly as a deterrent to clipping or shaving of precious silver or gold.
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LETTERING IMPRESSED into reeding is shown close up on a 1992-D Olympic silver dollar.
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Tactile identification
The ridges also serve tactilely in coin identification. When people complained that the Anthony dollar coin, introduced in 1979, was too easily confused with the quarter dollar, the complaint had to do not only with size but also with the feel that the edge gave to fingers searching pocket change; like that of the quarter dollar, it was reeded.
When Congress decided to try again with a small dollar coin, it mandated that besides being "gold" in color it "have tactile and visual features that make the denomination ... readily discernible." The Mint determined to make the rim wider than on other U.S. coins and to leave the edge plain.
The U.S. Mint has been even more experimental. In 1882 when a new design for the copper-nickel 5-cent coin was being considered, some patterns were struck with five equally spaced, raised bars on the edge. The patterns have been called the "blind man's nickel."
It isn't difficult to envision these raised bars as posing potential jamming problems for the coin presses, and so this experiment of beneficial intention was abandoned.
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INCUSE LETTERS spelled out the denomination on Bust half dollars. Letters might be applied in either direction relative to obverse and reverse, and slippage sometimes caused lettering to run together.
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Reeding varies
Reeding is more easily imparted and with its raised aspects perpendicular to the obverse and reverse surfaces, poses no problem in pushing the struck coin out from the collar. The collar simply has to be grooved, and the pressure of the strike will cause metal to fill the pattern.
There appears to be no consensus on ideal spacing of the grooves. Little attention was paid to reeding counts on U.S. coins until W.Q. Wolfson reported in Coin World in December 1964 that he had discovered some 1921 Morgan silver dollars from the Philadelphia Mint had "infrequently reeded" edges. Today, this edge with 157 reeds (34 per linear inch) vs. the usual 189 is often abbreviated I.R. It has been found in conjunction with several obverse/reverse combinations, "so this edge variety is not particularly scarce," Leroy C. Van Allen and A. George Mallis say in their Comprehensive Catalog and Encyclopedia of Morgan and Peace Dollars.
John McCloskey reported in the Gobrecht Journal in November 1978 that he had found that 1876-CC Seated Liberty quarter dollars came with a reed count as low as 113 and 122 up to 153. The "frequently reeded" variety was already noted and had wrongly been referred to at times as "rare," McCloskey said. Found in several obverse/reverse combinations, it could more aptly be called "interesting," he said.
Coin World articles in April 1965 and June 1969 further explored reeding counts, finding no standard even within a certain denomination and type period. Winged Liberty Head and Roosevelt dimes varied from 104 reeds to 118, an average of 111, it was found.
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SAINT-GAUDENS gold $20 double eagles carried letters and stars in relief, spelling out E PLURIBUS UNUM
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Lettering, decoration
The collar did not always impart reeding as it does today.
In the early days of the U.S. Mint, the edges of coins that were thick enough - the earliest half cents and cents and half dollars and silver dollars - were lettered with a value (e.g., ONE HUNDRED FOR A DOLLAR) or given ornamentation, such as vine and bars on cents.
All these devices, and reeding as well, were applied to planchets before they went to the coining press. The application was by a Castaing machine.
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INFREQUENT REEDING (157 reeds instead of the usual 189) is seen on the middle coin in this group of 1921 Morgan silver dollars from the Philadelphia Mint.
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This machine consisted of two parallel bars mounted on a table. One bar moved while the other remained fixed. Each contained half the lettering or other devices that would be impressed into the edge of a planchet as it was rolled between the two bars.
The rolling was a hand crank operation, although the machine was originally designed to be powered by horses, Don Taxay wrote in The U.S. Mint and Coinage (1966). He quoted a 1795 report from the Mint that no more than 10,000 planchets a day could receive edge marking.
Lettering or reeding had to be deeply enough impressed into the edge that it would not be crushed when the coin was struck, even though the close collar, strictly preventing planchet spread upon striking, was not introduced until 1836, after some experiments in the 1820s.
Before the close collar was introduced, the Mint employed an open collar, whose inner diameter was larger than the coins struck within it. The open collar helped in the positioning of the coin during striking, but did not restrain metal flow as neatly as does the close collar (which has an inner diameter the same as the intended coin).
Planchets could also get stuck or slip in the Castaing machine. Lettered-edge half dollars are often encountered with garbled wording on the edge, where letters have partly or entirely overlapped. These are, in fact, common enough that, while collectors find them interesting and worth mentioning in a description, they may bring little or no premium.
Later lettered edges
After 1836, no more edge lettering appeared until the Saint-Gaudens gold $20 double eagle series, beginning in 1907. A three-segmented collar was used to stamp the edge in relief with E PLURIBUS UNUM, with the words separated by stars.
The last double eagles were struck for circulation in 1933 (although none were actually placed into circulation). It would be 1992 before the U.S. Mint issued another coin with an edge other than plain or reeded. The Uncirculated edition of the Olympic silver dollar that year was first given reeding by the collar and incuse lettering was imparted afterward, using two bar-like dies much as in old days. Mint officials variously reported a rejection rate ranging from less than 1 percent to as high as 35 percent.
Mint officials reported in 2004 they were undertaking experiments on different ways to produce lettered edges.
The Mint may be called upon to use what it learns from the current experimentation. Legislation before Congress is moving to a vote in the full House of Representatives that, if approved, would order production of a series of circulating Presidential dollars. The legislation would order most of the current inscriptions, including the Mint mark, moved from the obverse and reverse to the edge.
