I found this while I was going through some half dollars. Any thoughts? Any ideas on what this might be worth? I can post some pics of the coin. It's not BU. My guess is XF to AU.. Good details, but maybe a poor strike.
Hi, It's worth face value. The mintmark is damaged and the doubling is machine doubling. It is not an RPM. Thanks, Bill
Flat shelve-like doubling, This as got to be the hardest thing in the world to understand as it comes up almost daily and you certainly are not the only one to be confused by it so here is some help. Imagine the dies work loose and the kind of flop because of it - now this is very minute and subtle. As the dies strike more coins (while loose) the dies scoot or shift during or after striking instantantaneous shifting or scooting a portion of the image, in this case the mint-mark. This flat shelve-like doubling is seen as a doubled image but in reality is just a scooting, pushing, or pulling of that image. If you look closely at your coin and the direction of the "D" as it is doubled you will probably find some of the date, the head/neck or motto doubled the same exact way, (direction) - this is the tip off to mechanical doubling. True doubled dies generally have thick extra images that are raised as if 2 images are on top off by slightly ajar of each other but rairly flat like your coin.
Gotcha. I think I follow what you are saying, and that makes sense. One of the reasons that I did think it was an RPM is because I don't see that shelving on any other part of the coin, and for the rest of the coin the text isn't nearly as sharp as on the mintmark. I am still a newbie with this, but the rest of the coin looks to me like a weaker strike than the mintmark does. It didn't seem to fit with the other halves that I was looking at from the 80's where the mintmark looked like the rest of the coin as far as strike.
Look again and again - it's probably there. Look again and again - it's probably there but it doesn't have to be - on many JFK's the mint-mark was set very high and sometimes it's all that has the shelve-like doubling.
Gotcha... Thanks for the help guys. I found this in my last roll of a box of halves so I may have been looking a bit hard for something. The rest of the box was a bust. Found some nice examples for the album, but no silver and no varieties. Kind of disappointing after looking through 1000 coins.
Another form of doubling, also worthless, has to do with the way coin is ejected from the die. Since a mintmark can be fairly deep in the die, it is sometimes the last or next to last part of a coin to come loose from the die. It is on a miniscule level but if the mintmark "hangs up" as the coin is released from the die, the mintmark is damaged. I see a lot of that on Kennedys. Thanks, Bill
