Here is a very nice RPD for 1907, which was presented to the Fly-in Club in 2013. It was first publicized by Ed Nathanson and correctly offered as an unlisted variety. Great eye Ed! His finest-known specimen is up for auction now on eBay. Photos have been indexed in our listings with permission.
This one is easy to spot! I have also wondered why many RPDs are inside the loops on digits. Perhaps it’s because re-punching the date pushes RPDs inside digit loops beneath the fields, and away from polishing?
That is a great question! My guess is that the engraver didn’t want to break or damage that portion of the die. When you look at the die face, the image is incuse and this causes miniature ‘islands’ inside the devices of the date. If one of these breaks off, then your digit’s loop is filled when the die makes a coin. There is one 1899 die in particular that has a virtually filled last 9, but you can tell that the die sustained damage or it was a botched repair job… but it isn’t a RPD. There are examples in many dates where the inside loops are heavily damaged or very shallow as if broken off or polished down.
Repairing the fields of a RPD was probably a worry free process, relatively.