Searching tip for die variety cherrypickers.

coppercoins

Something that escapes a number of people unless they are told is that the first step in searching through a mass hoard of coins for doubled dies, repunched mintmarks, and the like is to first sort the coins by date. The reason for this is obvious to those who REALLY know their series, but to others it's a bit obscure.

Every few years, usually ten at the most, the Mint makes minor changes to the design and hubs a new master hub with which they use to create all the dies for that year. These minor differences in the design over a stretch of time can confuse your eye if you don't have them all in mind and remember what every one of them looks like. It's much easier to just look at the coins one year at a time so you will catch any oddities because "this" coin doesn't look exactly like the last five you just looked at. This helps immensely in spotting minor notching and separation that defines doubled dies, and helps with catching thickness in places where it might go missed if you looked at another odd year's coin in front of the one in subject.

An example that many are familiar with is the big mess created when the mint continued using the "F" style reverse on memorial cents after the "G" style reverse was first used in 1993. This is what many refer to as the "wide and close AM" cents. 1992 cents are supposed to have the wide AM where 1993 cents are not supposed to have the wide AM. If you don't first sort your coins by year, you will find yourself constantly flipping the coins from side to side to match the date with the correct reverse style. If you sort your coins first and, while searching the 1992 cents, run into a close AM style cent, it will not only stick out profoundly but make you a happy camper as well...these bring easy four digit money because less than a handful of these are known. If you don't first sort them, this anomaly could easily go missed.

Another example is on the obverse of large date 1982 cents. While this year had its problems with soft, mushy details that often look like extra thickness one would usually associate with class 6 (distended) hub doubling, 99.5% of what you will see are "normal" coins. There are, however, a couple of true doubled die obverses known for the date, and they are rather easy to spot if you are looking through a batch of 1982 cents. I can tell you with over 25 years experience dealing with Lincoln cents that I still have a hard time determining what 1982 cents are actual doubled dies without having a rather substantial pool of others to compare them to...at least a roll worth.

I know it's hard to have patience and stick to your guns about sorting the coins by date first, all you want to do is get into them and find a nice cherry - but I guarantee your rewards will come back two-fold if you prepare yourself properly and sort the coins first.

edited to add: My examples are for cents because that's what I know...but I am sure the same types of changes have happened to a number of other series of coins, and it would help to first sort them by date. I know the quarters had some oddities and mismatches in design, as did the Eisenhower dollars - but this is all I am familiar with outside my realm, so cents are what I use for examples all the time (for those who may not know me).

nwcs

A very excellent post and I admit that it's an approach I had not thought of. Now that I am, it probably will have me going back over some of my hoard of cents.

lathmach

When searching for new die varieties, look at the high mintage coins.
That's where you'll find them.

Ray

coppercoins

<< <i>When searching for new die varieties, look at the high mintage coins.
That's where you'll find them.

Ray >>



Very good point...and for those who may not understand the point, I'll elaborate...higher mintage = more dies used. More dies used means more of a chance that they screwed up on at least one of them. Higher mintage also means that they had to push more coins out the door more quickly, so the chances that they would have been anal enough to pull dies that had minor problems would be much lower than in lower mintage years.

Also, don't compare the mintages to other mints - apples and oranges. If San Francisco minted 50 million for a given year while the Philly mint made 100 million, that doesn't mean the San Francisco number of 50 million is lower mintage. Compare it to the years around it. You might find that the three year run with the 50 million in the middle might look like 18, 50, 21...meaning that 50 million was a very high mintage for the given period. Set your focus on the 50 million year for more oddities, overused dies (BIE errors), doubled dies, and repunched mintmarks.

Thanks, Ray, for helping bring this out.

coinguy89

Great post coppercoins, im gonna have to work on purchasing the cherrypickers guide though.

coppercoins

<< <i>Great post coppercoins, im gonna have to work on purchasing the cherrypickers guide though. >>



I wasn't really talking about or recommending the Cherrypicker's Guide. It is of some use to those who just want to pick out the major stuff, but for people who want to find anything of premium value or those who want their names in the lights for making a new discovery, the CPG is of little or no use.

Learn the designs you are dealing with, learn all the details as they should appear, and the oddities will show themselves to you. You don't need any guide for that. Some of the oddities you find, after honing your skills, could prove to be nice discoveries. Learning the designs is the hardest part, made easier by first sorting the coins into dates so you can tell the oddities from the normal coins much more easily. That was my point.