 Elder could not have obtained them directly from the Mint at the time of issue as he was still a child in 1880, and did not begin collecting coins until 1887.With the rise of collecting interest in the three-dollar piece in the 1880s, unscrupulous employees at the Philadelphia Mint enriched themselves by illicit striking of earlier-date pieces, including the 1873, 1875, and 1876.Bowers, in his sylloge of the Bass Collection, particularly blames these irregularities on Oliver Bosbyshell, chief coiner at Philadelphia from 1876 to 1885.