Can anyone help on this Indian Head 1864 L double die ?????

mercurydimeguy

Hi,

My son and I are building a set of Indian Heads. Looking for a nice AU to MS62 example I ran across this at a show. I thought nothing of it at that time...thought I was just seeing double -- having the lens next to my eye too long

Today I took it out to examine closer and the whole obverse is doubled. This scan is really poor but holding the coin in your hand you can see the doubling in the feathers and by the nose of the face, but the lettering and the date doubling you can almost see with a naked eye. Even my wife, not a coin collecte, says -- "oh yeah, look at that, like seeing double."

Picture of coin

Is there an 1864 L double die varierty? I was going to send this in to PCGS for encapsulation...are they aware of the different varieties and will they mark so/accordingly?

I'm lost -- any help would be greatly appreaciated

Regards,
Mike.

ziggy29

Looks like Snow-5 to me, an MPD.

Is there a die crack at 9:00 on the reverse from the wreath to the rim, and from the rim to the top right of the shield? These are die markers for this variety.

mercurydimeguy

No, in fact the reverse is nearly flawless -- literally.

Very fascinating. I've seen picture of double die coins but never actually seen/held, let alone had one.

ziggy29

The date looks almost exactly like S-5 to me, also listed as FND-005 by Kevin Flynn and Larry Steve. Steve and Flynn refer to this variety as a "triple punched date" and list these two reverse die markers. Though if yours is an early die state there could be a chance the cracks aren't there; absence of these cracks doesn't prevent this attribution but their appearance would make it a more open-and-shut case.

Steve and Flynn also wrote "(t)his is possibly a Class III doubled die obverse (with L over no L)..."

mercurydimeguy

As I continue to observe the coin I am amazed at the doubling. It is extremely pronounced in "UNITED" "OF" and "AMERICA" -- less so in "STATES" as a word but more so in some of the letters of the word. Then the whole head, including the feathers are pronounced.

I was going to send it in to PCGS to put in to a holder anyway...so the question is do I need to specify on my submittal which type it is or do they/would they know?

Advice?

By the way, if you use Internet Explorer and open the picture in a browser window, when you click somewhere on the picture a "zoom" kind of button appears in the bottom right hand side, which enables you to zoom the coin in -- if you do you'll start seeing what I'm referring to.