I don't know. Unless I can see one of these blinkin' things flippin' me the bird while the other ones just wavin' howdy, I ain't gonna be able to tell the difference.
My pesimistic posts are not to be a party pooper, I am following this thread waiting to be convinced actually. Don't hate me too much when I think folks want there to be a difference so badly that they chase shadows. So far eye and beak differences are pretty objectively differences in strike quality, not design characteristics.
Here is an animated .gif of the two coins as posted by downlow. Maybe this will help people make their own conclusion. To me, it appears the difference is shadow play (might be caused by strike quality).
It still looks to me like the West Point Eagle’s pupil is more towards the center of the eye while the San Francisco Eagle’s pupil is more towards the side of the eye nearest to the beak. In other words, West Point Eagle seems to be looking right at you while the San Francisco Eagle is looking towards the direction its beak is pointed…just my opinion.
A quick reply to the question of how long it takes for ASE die to wear out. One day! At its peak, the West point mint averages over 200,000 SAEs struck per day. Even though there are probably a fair amount of presses running (with 24 hour production, 200,000 is about 2.4 per second, round the clock) individual die pairs might be installed every day or every few days. Even if you think that a die pair could last 100,000 coins, that is still more than 1 set per day for the WP mint over the course of the year. Die for proof coins probably mint only a few thousand at best, maybe only one thousand. The UHRDE die struck an average of about 300 coins each. End point, early and late die state coins are minted every day.