1960 D/D "Error" and "Guess The Grade" by SEGS

That's your opinion Larry, mine is different.

 

toronto -

Do a search for some of my posts explaining die polish lines. I think you'll get a better understanding.

There's a lot of people, some who are knowledgeable people, who call a lot of things dies polish lines, that are not die polish lines at all. Die polish lines, die scratches, and tool marks, can all appear on coins, and they will all show as raised lines on the coins. They can even all 3 be present on the very same coin at the same time - and they often are. Then there are things like roller marks. They can show up on the devices and in the fields, at the same time. But roller marks, die scratches, tool marks, and raised and incuse lines from harsh cleaning - none of those things are die polish lines. But a whole lot of people call them die polish lines - when they are not.

Do ya remember the test I mentioned earlier in this thread, try it, see for yourself. Then take an abrasive and harshly clean a coin, see that for yourself. You'll see raised lines and incuse lines on that coin too.

Die polish lines can never criss-cross. Die polish lines can never be on the devices. Both of these things are true because of the way dies are polished, the method used to polish dies. That method makes both of those two things impossible to happen.

Like I said, do a search, you'll find out what that method is.

 

Big surprise, they aren't all die polish lines. Read my last post again.

 

I've dished out the goods, dozens of times. That's the point. There are no links, there are no articles. The only thing there is are books. You wanna go buy and read books ? OK, go get "From Mine to Mint" by Roger Burdette. It just came out last year. To my knowledge that is the one and only book that has been written in almost a century that explains the process for polishing dies. The only one, there are no others because no other author ever took the time to find out.

I've known about the process for years and I've explained it here on CT for years. I found out about the same way Roger did, by doing the research to find out. I finally found it in a copy of the Numismatist published in 1915. And believe me you're not gonna go pick one of those off the shelf anywhere.

I've told ya how to see with your eyes that harsh cleaning and scratches will put both raised and incuse lines on a coin. It's a simple little test - won't take you 60 seconds to do it. So go do it and see for yourself. By all means, don't take my word for it.

Die polish lines cannot criss-cross because they are polished by a large spinning zinc disk that is impregnated with diamond dust paste of varying degrees of fineness. The die is held in machine, rigid, and pressed down against the spinning disk - kind of like the way a drill press works if you can picture that. The high points on a die are the fields, so the only part of the die that can touch the zinc disk are the fields. Dies are flat, the disk is flat. The devices, legends, and numerals on a die are recesses in the die. Those recesses cannot touch the zinc disk - that's why there can never be any die polish lines on the coin devices.

The reason die polish lines can never criss-cross is because of mathematics. You have a large zinc disk, about 12 inches in diameter. You have a coin die, the largest of which is less than 1 1/2 inches in diameter. Press the two together and the arc formed where they touch is almost a straight line because the arc of the 12 inch disk is so much bigger than the arc of the 1 1/2 inch or smaller die. So as the disk polishes the die it leaves fine grooves in the die from the diamond dust paste, that's what die polish lines are. Those grooves are basically straight and parallel to each other. And they can be no other way because it is physically impossible for them to be.

Now in the course of a die being used they sometimes get dirty. They get grease on them, that grease often has metal particles that come from the machinery wearing, or other grit in it. When a mint worker goes to clean that dirty die, he does so by wiping the die off with a rag. When he does that, he can scratch the die. That scratch or scratches will leave raised on the coins struck by that die. And those scratches can run all sorts of directions. And they can cross die polish lines. But those scratches from the rags are not die polish lines.

Then you have things like tool marks, again more small scratches in the die, that again cause raised lines on a coin struck by that die. Those scratches are not die polish lines either.

Then you have roller marks. Roller marks are created on the planchets when the planchet is rolled out to desired thickness. You usually don't have them on most planchets, but sometimes they do show up. The roller marks are both incuse and raised. And when that particular planchet is struck, not all of the roller marks are obliterated by the strike so they show up on the coin as raised and incuse marks both.

Now, if you had just taken my word for it, or done a search like I asked. I wouldn't have had to type all of this again for the 50th time. Besides, you still probably won't believe what I have tried to tell you - to teach you - so I sometimes I don't know why I bother.

If I say something do you really think I just make it up and say it just to hear myself talk ? I've spent my entire life studying coins and learning things that other people don't know. Things that just aren't found in most books because those people writing the books don't know them. Because they, and nobody else or very dang few, ever did the research either. 99% of all coin books and articles written about coins come from other older books. And the authors of the new books just repeat what they read in the old books. So if the info wasn't in the books they read and got their info from, then it isn't in the new books either. And a lot of the info in the old books is wrong, so the authors of the new books just repeat the bad info over again.

It's a catch 22 - to know good info from bad, ya first have to know what the heck you are reading about. Most people don't.

Happy now ?

 

One more thing just for you. Here's a picture of an actual die with die polish lines on it.




You see any of them criss-crossing or going onto the devices ?

And yeah, that one coming in from 3 o'clock - that's a die scratch.

 

Well therein lays part of the problem, people look at pictures and read something, having no idea what is being talked about or what they are looking at, and they completely, and I mean completely, misinterpret and or misunderstand what they are looking at and what they are reading.

The coin in the link you you posted does not have die polish lines on it. The lines on the coin you see in those pictures were caused by die wear. Yeah, that's another kind of lines that can be found on coins that I forgot to include in my explanation above. Those kind of lines are created on the die by repeated metal flow. And the more the die is used the more of those lines you will see, and the bigger and deeper the lines on the die will get. If you look at your link you should notice that they describe that coin as being late die state - one with a lot of die wear on it.

As for the quote, read it again a bit more carefully. And read more than just that single paragraph, like the whole chapter. You are misinterpreting and misunderstanding what you are reading. What they are talking about with that wire brush is an experimental, (key word being experimental not standard practice), method to try and restore frost to the devices, and only on the devices, on a worn die. They used the word polish because there really isn't another word to use to describe what they were trying to do. What they were trying to do was to rough up the surface of the devices, and thus restore frost effect. They were not trying to "polish the die", meaning polish the fields, in the conventional sense. Yeah they say the fields were then polished to bring up the mirror surfaces, but you are assuming, incorrectly, that the wire brush was used on the fields as well. I can assure you nothing could be further from the truth.

First of all they even tell you in that short quote that using the brush in that experiment left behind scratches on the devices rather than recreating the frosted effect they were trying to achieve. And you don't get mirror surfaces if you are leaving behind scratches now do you ? Yeah, they did very poor of explaining the process, thus leaving you the reader confused and misinterpreting what they were saying. But like I mentioned above, when you read a book, if you don't already have a very good understanding of the subject being discussed, then you can't tell good info from bad info. Or you will misunderstand and misinterpret what is being said leaving you to draw the wrong conclusions from what you are reading.

But there's another issue with that quote as well. They are talking about Buffalo nickels, right ? Well have you ever seen a Buffalo nickel with frosted devices ? Or have you ever seen a Buffalo nickel with mirror fields ? The answer to both of those questions is no. So again, their choice of wording makes it easy to confuse the reader.

Early Buffalo nickels had rough fields, it was only later that the surface of the fields were smoothed out. None of the Buffalo nickels, not even the Proofs, had frosted devices. The early Proof Buffs were all matte Proofs, the late Proof Buffs were Satin Proofs. Neither of those has frosted devices, and neither has mirror fields. But there were two versions of the '36 and '37 Buff Proofs, the satin and brilliant. The brilliant for those 2 years is the more common. But even with those you're going to be hard pressed to find any with frosted devices, but you can find some with mirrored fields.

So when you read that paragraph you quoted, if you don't already know everything I've explained here, it's real easy to misunderstand and misinterpret what that quote says.

And it's not that things are too much of a bother. But it does get tiring doing this much typing of the same thing over and over every time somebody wants an explanation because they don't understand something. That's why I encourage people to expend their own effort instead of mine and do a simple search that will show them everything I have said here.

I am more than willing to share information I have learned over the years, that's why I am here. And I am happy to discuss anything you want to discuss. But yeah, doing it 50 times does get old. Especially when every time I try to explain something for somebody they want to argue about it and say that can't be because.

The information I share is accurate. I take great pains to try and make sure it is accurate. Not for my benefit, I don't do any of this for me. I do it all for everybody else's benefit. But I am not perfect, far from it, and yeah I've made my share of mistakes. And if somebody can prove me wrong about something then I am the first one to step up and say - ooops I was wrong, thanks for the correction.