I'm thinking about some of the recent new members frustrations regarding finding true doublED dies or other die varieties. It must be very hard indeed to find a coin, photo it, get your hopes up then only to have members tell you, "you have nothing". I can't recall getting that frustrated although it's certainly possible I did. I think one of the hardest for me was Jefferson Nickels - I sent several to Wexler only to find out it was die deterioration, erosion doubling or something else - those Jeffs can fool you until you learn. One thing I think the new people are really missing is - it's more important to learn how they make, (made) dies than it is to understand how coins are struck. After all that where the doublED die come from! 3-things I want to stress to new people is, 1. We who comment generally really know what we are talking about. 2. If you keep learning you will also. 3. You will ultimately find doublED dies if you hang in there.
........speaking of learning, this is a very helpful site. http://www.geocities.com/NCADD/educational1.html
One of the nice things about www.coppercoins.com web site and thier books is there are a lot of explanations about double dies. For example in thier books second edition double dies are explained on pages 27 to 44. There is also a chapter on the Die Making Process and another chapter on Grading. Of course that web site and the books are all on Lincoln Cents.
prerequisite - knowledge that is required before studying an advanced subject In college, Algebra and Trigonometry are prerequisites for Differential Calculus. Differential Calculus is a prerequisite for Integral Calculus. Calculus is a prerequisite for Probability & Statistics. And on and on and on. To study advanced subjects you must first understand the earlier subjects. Think how lost you would be in a Probability & Statistics course if you had never taken Algebra. Similarly, to understand doubleD dies you must first understand how dies and coins are/were made. If you skip the die-making process and the coining process and jump right into trying to identify doubleD dies you will probably meet with lots of frustration. I suspect this is what is happening to some who are frustrated with doubleD die identification.
I can completely understand the frustration. When I started it was like math to me and I sucked at math. It wasn't until I found a true Doubled Die did I see the difference. I've been collecting since 1969 but only started collecting varieties in 1996. This is when I decided to "read the book" first. Learn everything I could in the beginning, not after the fact, so I purchased every Variety and error book I could find over the course of a couple of years. There is a real benefit to new variety collectors today in that there are so many great web sites and forum with a wealth of information to learn from, whereas many of us who started 15, 20, 30 years ago didn't have this kind of internet knowledge to access. I must say, I owe a huge thanks to people like Bill O'Rourke and others who patiently helped me in my early learning days. They taught me a lot and kept me going. Then after time I would find more and more genuine doubled dies, even new discoveries. So for all the new people to the hobbie, allow me to reiterate what was said before. Buy the book, learn the process first. Read the posts. Find a mentor. Keep searching. Don't give up. Part of the great satisfaction of the hobby is in the setting up, the learning, the hunt. Good luck to all, Rock
