After much anticipation, the bullion piece arrived today. In the above photo, I could not help but notice the surface disturbances on the lower left of Washington's Bust. The scope revealed this: Whew! For a minute I thought I'd received one with gouges! As it turned out, these are actually in relief on the bust. The closest I could come to describing it is possible rust spots or some other type of damage that created these pitts in the die. Continuing around the coin looking for more evidence of this phenomonon (remember, each of these dies is not produced using a Master Hub but are machined directly onto the die face), I saw this: The lettering on these coins is incused and often times give the appearance of being a doubled die when they are actually some type of machine doubling. Normally I would credit this to machine doubling if it were not for the obvious splits in the serifs. For this, I would have to conclude a double struck piece UNLESS the machining process used to create the dies does a second or subsequent trace to bring of the details (which doesn't make any sense) in which case it would be an incused doubled die. Thoughts?
5 oz 2010 P Yellowstone I am here to learn don't know enough to make a comment, but here is mine that I received 2 June 2011. I love it. Looks like some Doubling, I'm not sure what type. Its a complicated subject. If it is machine double would that remove the possibility of SP 70 Grade?
The master hub is machined directly by the computer but I am fairly sure the dies are still hubbed. And frankly that DOES look like a doubled die. (Due to the size of the dies I don't think they could create these with a "single squeeze" approach.)
are their any other possible version of this die. I have seen several post on this subject what is the verdict machine or other doubling. Will I be able to send it in and get a MS 70 double die grade?
