does it take 2 to be a variety?

if you take a year that has no reported doubled dies and then one is found, is it considered a variety by itself? or would a 2nd one need to be found? thank you.

 

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It would only take one to be listed. A good example is the 1919 mercury dime doubled die. It was recognized as a doubled die when it was found, and was listed as such. There are also a number of unique large cent die marriages known too.

 

that wasn't the "hot lips" one right? not familiar with merc DD's.

 

I believe some one here cherry picked one, can't remember who?
@jtlee321 ?
What did you find @bryantallard

 

it wasn't a find I am just trying to fine tune my knowledge so that I may be more useful to future collectors. like in the movie LUCY when they talking about passing knowledge from one cell to the next. the more I know the more I can share.

 

Since this is in the Error Coins forum, I feel I should point out that varieties are not errors. An error is something unintended that happens to a specific planchet or coin during minting, and is unique to that coin. A variety is produced due to a feature on a die or from a die pairing; varieties can be reproduced in exactly the same way on multiple coins.

Having said that, it does not mean you need more than one example for it to be a variety. You could have a new pairing of an obverse and reverse die, and one of the dies could break after only one coin was struck. This would then be a variety with only one example.

 

Back in the "olden days", people regularly made "discoveries" of new varieties and then we watched as more were found and their values dropped.

Thanks to "freebie numismatics" we now have people finding varieties by the thousands that don't exist, all laid bare for you right here on CoinTalk.

 

Yes that was me that found a 1919 DDO Mercury Dime. At the time it was only the 4th known.

I've also discovered the only DDR 1913-D T1 Buffalo Nickel. Until my discovery there were no DDO or DDR known for the Denver branch mint. I sent it to James Wiles and John Wexler who both confirmed it and listed it as a new variety with only a single specimen at the time. I know of another collector who found an example of DDR in their own collection after my discovery.

 

I particularly like the ones where the Mint takes a brand new batch of coins & spreads them out on a road to be imprinted with street crud. After awhile, they scoop them up & release them into circulation to be found & posted on CT as possible errors!

 

so it sounds like you are saying a doubled die is not an error, is that correct?

 

I thought it was you, did you sell it? any photos?

 

Yes, I found it at a local show. As far as I know, the variety is listed in the new Mega Red and the images should be the images I provided to Whitman Publishing. They are of the example I had found.

 

Correct. A Doubled Die is not an error, it is referred to as a variety. The distinction between an error and a variety is as follows.

An error is something that occurs to an individual coin during the striking process or to an individual planchet during the production of that planchet. Now multiple coins can have similar errors but they won't all be identical. Examples of errors are clipped planchets, double struck coins, off center strikes, laminations, etc...

A variety is something that occurs on a die and is then transferred to the coin during the striking process. Each coin struck will have exactly the same variety until the die is pulled. Examples of varieties are doubled dies, repunched mint marks, over mint marks, miss punched dates, die gouges etc...

 

that is a little easier for me to understand and I see it better. so more or less an error is "unique" in its way. not trying to split hairs but if an error is something that happens to the coin would that include things that don't happen to the coin directly in the case of a blank planchet? or would that not be considered an "error"??

 

A blank planchet would be considered an error in that it failed to be struck into a coin. It then made it through the QA process to catch those sorts of mistakes. However, they do not command nearly the premiums of a striking error.

 

ok thank you for that. I didn't want to assume. it seems the learning process never ends.

 

Think of the Mint as a manufacturing plant that manufactures two different finished goods/products. The mint produces coins as 1 finished good and the mint produces dies as the other finished good. Varieties are created during the manufacturing process of the die - errors are created during the manufacturing process of the coin.

 

To add to that, varieties are not just from abnormalities in a die, but in the die pairs used (called marriages). Modern dies are supposed to be indistinguishable from each other, so you cannot tell which die a coin was struck from. This was not true for early dies that were engraved by hand, as each had slight variations.

As such, you could tell that a coin was struck with say, obverse die A and reverse die C - that A/C marriage would be a variety. Then you could have another obverse B and reverse D variety. At that point, obverse A and B are known and reverse C and D are known. If they swap them with each other to make A/D and B/C those are also new varieties by virtue of being a new die pairing, even though they are not new dies.

There is also a collar (the third die), which was also periodically changed and could be identified by differing numbers of reeds. So you could then have A/C with collar 1 and A/C with collar 2 and they could be different varieties as well.

 

@Jaelus @jtlee321 so... I was passing on the info that you guys had mentioned, and either I got it wrong, or someone has a different opinion. the OP was LC prison cent (die clash) and they called it an error and I said an error is with the coin itself and a variety has to do with the die transferring said anomaly to each coin it strikes. (more or less) right? so they responded "Jody Gomez Bry All In the purest terms, a die clash is considered at best an error and not a variety, and for minor clashes it could even be chalked up to normal operation in much the same way die polish marks are not considered errors. The term variety is commonly used in the error community to denote a design aberration that happened during the creation of the die, whereas errors are considered to be anything that occurs due to a mishap during the striking of coins and falls outside normal wear and tear. While there are areas of disagreement with some anomalies that happen with coins, I do not know of a single error or variety expert who would consider a die clash a variety. From the pioneer Arnold Margolis, to the foremost modern experts such as Fred Weinberg, Mike Diamond, and Ken Potter, they do not refer to clash marks as varieties."

when I looked up die variety this is what NGC has listed and I showed them "here is what NGC says... "A variety is a coin that has characteristics specific to the die pair that struck it. Most collectible varieties can thus be traced to a set of dies."

their response to that... "I haven't read the article, but I can tell you that NGC needs to reevaluate their description from the get-go. A variety has nothing to do with the "die pair", only the single die which shows the variety. As a matter of fact, it's not uncommon at all for the opposing die(especially if it is the anvil die) to be switched out separately from the other die, sometimes multiple times during the life of the variety die. Die pairs are not permanently mated, and other than die markers for staging, the other die has no relevance to a variety. I'm telling you what every error/variety expert that I know of both currently and historically considers a variety. Notice that Error-ref does not list clashes under die varieties, but rather die errors. You can find people who come up with different definitions all day long on the internet, but I'm telling you what the experts in the field of errors and varieties consider."

I a SO confused...

 

I would agree with the experts. A clashed die in terms of referencing a coin is neither an error or a variety. It is simply a state of the dies life. It can be used as a marker to help identify an Early Die State, Middle Die State or Late Die State depending on when the clash took place. It's not an error in that the issue is transferred from the die to the struck coin and repeats exactly the same on the following coins, until the clashed die is either pulled and replaced or worked to remove the clash marks. It's also not a variety in that the marks were not created at the time the die was being made.

I would consider a clash to be the same as die deterioration, indirect design transfer, die cracks or die breaks. They are simply a part of the life of the die. Not all dies have clash marks but a lot do. Clashes can vary from heavy to light and can be collectible in their own right. Your reference to Error-Ref is technically correct in that it is a "die error". An action that was unintentional and not part of the normal striking process (no planchet in the striking chamber during the striking process) that occurred to the dies. It's just that there are no real labels to give to the coins made as the result of that incident, other than the term "Clashed Dies".