Community Voice Responses (June 20, 2017)

From the May 26 Numismatic News E-Newsletter:

Do you search for doubled die errors?

Here are some answers sent from our e-newsletter readers to Editor Dave Harper.

Yes I search for doubled dies. I have been searching and have found several doubled-die errors.

Corey Newman
Taylorsville, Utah

I always search for double dies! To find a possible new variety or any variety that could potentially have significant value is what coin hunting is all about!

Gil Comito
Scottsdale, Ariz.

Doubled-die errors are great when they are simple and easy to spot. Collectors who pursue them passionately are quite good at identifying them. The problem is that I have trouble seeing them. This is true even when they are pointed out to me with magnification. I wonder if there are as many examples as claimed.

Timothy Scharr
Aviston, Ill.

Yes indeed, I look for doubled-die cents. I’m still hoping for a 1955.

Ginger Rapsus
Chicago, Ill.

I am looking for and not finding double dies. I go through $20 a week in hand-wrapped pennies from different banks. I am saving all very close 1992-P and -D for reverse transpositions just in case, but the initials are the stopper. I have found 1988-P and -D trans reverses. Six of each, and two 1989 trans reverses. This over a two-year period.

As for doubled dies, I haven’t even found a 1995 cent, which are the most common. My problem is when a new quarter doubled die is found, I chase them for a couple of months. Then I find that only one exists, then it’s back to pennies

However in 1960, when I began error collecting, I bought two $50 mint-sealed bags of 1960-D cents from a bank in Las Vegas, Nev. (grew up there) and found 40 various percentages of off-center strikes. This led me to complete a complete clock of 1960-D 50 percent off-center. Sold many years ago. I also found 16 1960-D overdates with high repunched mintmarks from these bags. These I still have, BU uncirculated.

I am 75 now and it’s getting hard on the eyes, even with a good microscope. At least my wife of 53 years knows where I am at night. Here’s to finding a ’55-S doubled die.

John Blanchard
Address withheld

Oh, yeah! Just to name a couple that people are familiar with, I have found a 1880-O “Hot Lips” Vam 4 Morgan dollar searching an estate lot of Morgan dollars. I also found the 1946 DDR Walking Liberty half cherry-picking another estate lot of Walkers. I will definitely keep checking every raw coin I buy for doubled dies, as well as repunched mintmarks. When you find one, the discovery and excitement is a big part of what this hobby is all about for me.

Richard Tritz
Address withheld

Frankly I’d love to – if I had the time and particularly the expertise. But since I don’t, I don’t look. If someone could make it simple and easy to tell the difference between the very common machine doubling and a doubled die then I would be off running.

Name withheld

This article was originally printed in Numismatic News Express. >> Subscribe today

More Collecting Resources

• More than 600 issuing locations are represented in the Standard Catalog of World Coins, 1701-1800 .

• Order the Standard Catalog of World Paper Money, General Issues to learn about circulating paper money from 14th century China to the mid 20th century.