I sent coins to ANACS for grading and had three of them for attributed, two came back as needed but the third still has questions. The one in question is a 1943 .50 half dollar. This came back as a plain 1943-P half dollar. Noted on the packing slip it states: Coin Comments: MasterDie Doubling. Affects too many dies to list. My question is this coin a double die of some sort? Or is this the correct grading for this coin? Thanks, Dave
wow that is interesting, have you looked at your coin with at least a 10x for doubling? Tried to take any pictures?.......and welcome to coin talk!
I'm afraid no one can help you without good close-up photos of the area i8n question. Welcome to the neighborhood. Chris
Welcome to CT!! With the comments mentioning that the die doubling affects too many dies to list I wouldn't really think it would add any price premium or make any difference over the grading whatsoever, just my 2 cnts!!
From CPG (Cherrypicker's Guide) Vol II (5th Edition) page 257: You must understand the die-making process to understand how this situation came to be. A master hub is made and is used to make a few master dies. Those master dies in turn are used to make a number of working hubs which are used to make the working dies that strike the coins. When dies were made the hub was pressed into the die multiple times. This is called hubbing. Between hubbings the die was annealed (softened) and then the hub was pressed into the die again. If there was any misalignment between the hub and die the die would be doubled. (The modern die-making process is a single-squeeze process.) In the case of 1943 Halves it appears that a master die was doubled and when that master die was used to make a number of working hubs the doubling was transferred to the working hubs. That doubling was then transferred to all the working dies made by those working hubs so every Half Dollar struck by those dies has doubling. Working dies strike only a limited number of coins before they are retired. If hundreds of working dies were used to strike a particular denomination in a given year but only one die was doubled that would make those coins struck by the doubled die rare. But when a master die is doubled and most of the working dies used to strike that denomination originated from that doubled master die (such as the 1943-dated Halves) that would make the doubled-die coins common (but still very interesting). Thanks for bringing this to our attention. I will now be on the lookout for 1943 Master Die DDO Halves. Oh, and welcome to CoinTalk, Dave.
It's just like the 1944P Washington quarter. All of them exhibit a die doubling to some extent. In other words, your coin is not worth a premium.
