Why is machine doubling not worth much?

It is a rare occurrence where a working die is retired early from service for the reason of producing coinage exhibiting doubled die characteristics. These doubled working dies for the most part are utilized for their entire useful life and produce a normal amount of coinage when compared to the production of every other working die used during that same period of time.

 

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Maybe I'm just missing something, but I'm still not getting it. Let's take the 1980 for example. There were over 7 billion of them produced. Let's assume that the die that produced DDO-001 lived a long and happy life. It would have produced what? Roughly 200,000 or so cents? That would mean that there are approximately 35,000 regular cents for every 1 doubled die. One doubled die in every 700 rolls. In my book at least, that's not even close to being equal in numbers.

 

Ok, I am a little confused so correct me if I am completely off base. I am trying to learn as much as I can from yall.
So a double die that is worth more is the ones were the die is actually faulty. In other words there is something wrong with the die itself.
Amachine double die is more like an operator error were it was not installed correctly or machine moved or something like that.
Can someone post pictures of the two differant types side by side so I can see the differance and someon was talking about reading on how dies are made. Maybe posting a link to that so I can read it would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for being so understanding guys to my newb questions

 

How about this for an example of Major Machine doubling?



Below is an example of a true doubled die.



Even though the MDD image shows nice "doubling", note the lack of serif splits indicating that the device was "slightly smeared" as the coin was made instead of actually doubled on the die as it was being made.

Die's are made with multiple squeezings from a hub. After the first impression is made, the die gets annealed and then a second impression gets made. If the relief is still not good enough, the die gets annealed (heated to soften it) again and a third impression is made.

If any of the impressions are not lined up exactly, then a "second" or "third" set of devices (letters, profiles, etc.) gets created. This is indicated by the splits in the serifs which can readily be seen on the above image. Identifiable "separation" is what to look for on doubled die coins.

Machine doubling could be likened to using a rubber ink stamp. Make a single, clean impression with the stamp, and the resulting ink image is clean. Add a slight twist as you make the impression and the resulting image gets distorted.

The exact same thing occurs during the minting process.

 

The links I posted earlier in the thread both show excellent examples of both.

 

So is what you are trying to say is a single working die and a single working doubled die from one mint/year production each produces the same number of coins the coins from each have the same amount of rairty?
This is the first time I have ever heard suth a thing compared. Why would you do that? Again it approaches non-sence.

Why would you ever think most major doubled dies run a full life? The key word being major when we know that most (majors) have not simply by the coins that are found historically and for most after many decades have gone by.
Of course you may then argue, well you have not seen all the 1980-P Lincoln's that were produced - well who needs to? I've seen several 100 of thousands and I have found 1 and owned 2 die #1.
Why would you think we see them (in terms of rarity) and compare them to only one working single working die for a given year/mint.
I just got through searching 2000 circulated Lincoln's this morning. I looked at 70 to 145 1980-P cents. I found no doubled dies which is normal but,,, How would I have been able to tell how many where from die #8 for that year or die #80 and why would I care, I'm looking for die #1 DDO-001 out hundreds (of dies) for the year. It's the one die among hundreds of dies that is rare. It's the die, the die, the die amoung all the other dies.

An 1980-P DDO-001 is COMPARED to all 1980-P lincoln's!!!

I have never ever (if that what's you are suggestion) heard one person make such a comparision of rarity of a doubled die within one year/mint to one single normal die for the same year/mint!
Why on earth would anyone come up with such a idea???

One more thing, you may not understand doubled die very well and maybe not the minting process but, "you do know the mint must make hundreds of working dies for each year/mint don't you"? That's a fact.

The only way your logic would be applicable is if the mint made 2 single dies and one was normal and one a doubled die and they both made the same number of coins and,,, where did you get this stuff???

 

Wow - maybe you should go and read my initial post again. As for 1980-P DDO-001, I already provided you an example of this coin in MDS and I don't think it is a big stretch that LDS examples exist? Do you? Dies do not start their useful life in MDS. It takes use and striking more than a small number of coins to get to this state. I never said every working die strikes the same number of coins - I said most working dies, including doubled working dies are utilized for a normal useful life. Certainly there deviation in production from die to die but that holds true for all working dies not just doubled working dies.

 

There is a disconnect somewhere and I'm just not following you. Even if they do produce for the normal cycle, a working die still only produces a tiny fraction of the number of coins produced for that year. You said that normally doubled dies and rpms are no rarer than the normal specimens. This simply is not true even if the doubled die was left to run its full course.

 

That's not all you said -this is also what you said -
"Therefore in most cases a doubled die is no more rare than a coin which exhibits normal charcteristics". That is nuts or I completely fail to understand your logic which is a possibilty.

It does not matter even if the doubled die DDO-001 for 1980-P struck 1,000,000 coins even if they shattered the die in pieces on the mint floor it would still be much rarer that a normally struck coin for that year/date/mint.

You are also way off base in your asumption that most doubled dies went even as much 30,000 coins struck from that die.
Let me site 1917-P, 1958-P, the recent 1982-P reverse, how about 1995-D #3 Lincoln's - the 1961-Proof Franklen, 1971-P DDR-001 Washinton Quarter or many Proof doubled dies as few as a 1000 or wayyyyy less. I could fill this page 5 times over citing doubled dies as so few known. Yes they could have been stuck and just not found yet but guess what, they weren't.
Many majors were probably just a few dozen to a few hundred before the forman retired the die.

Even if disscussion the minor doubled dies it was, in fact still just 1 doubled working die and that makes all coins struck from that die rare as compared to all coins or dies made for coins in a given year that are normally struck.

You may have worded your first post incorrectly, that is the only explanation I can think of, or I may fail to see your logic but doubled dies of any and all years are rarer that their normally struck counterparts - there is no comparison at all except for master die doubling. That's your only out here, you should take it now.

 

Lets throw a log on the fire here.

As reported in the Authoritative Reference on eisenhower Dollars (Appendix A), in a letter from Howard F. Johnson, US Mint Assay Laboratories Chief, to Russell Rulau of Coin World, the following was quoted as the average number of coins produced from Lincoln cent business strike dies:

Obv = 1,000,000
Rev = 1,200,000

Over 15,000,000,000 Lincolns were produced in 1972 so yes, 1,000,000 is a fraction but thats a fairly large fraction.

The real rarity for ANY DDO or DDR coin is controlled by a number of factors:

Is it a readily identifiable DDO/DDR?
Did the US Mint spot the DDO/DDR and then attempt to destroy the coins created with the die?
Did some of the coins escape that destruction? If so how many?

I guess what I'm saying is if raw numbers are simply tossed out for opinion gathering its not really a fair comparison sionce so many other factors come into play.

True rarity can only be arrived at through search and results. Otherwise, we're talking "Pennache's" here!

Additionally, just because a 1980-P DDO-001 exists in MDS does NOT mean that great numbers of the coin exist in EDS or even LDS. It simply means that the coin examined and cataloged was, in the opinion of the attributor, MDS.

 

I'm glad you posted that portion of the letter regarding the number of strikes a normal die makes as I had inquired about this before. I do wonder when that letter was written and how that number has changed over time though.

I agree that a number of factors go into determining just how rare and desirable a particular doubled die is, especially in relation to other doubled dies of the same issue or even different issues. However, someone made a statement that most doubled dies and rpm's were "no more rare than normal strikes." This is numerically incorrect no matter how many different ways you turn your calculator.

 

My apologies, that letter was dated July 24th, 1972.

The last paragraph states:

The mint is currently testing in actual operation a better quality stell that is expected to give considerable better die life.

I expect that the number of coins per die has greatly increased.

 

I've never paid much attention to error coins but I did keep one I found the other day because it really stood out. It was a 1985 cent where the 5 wasn't completely stamped.

 

Working die #1 produces approximately 1,000,000 coin, as does die #2 and Die #3 and so on. In MOST cases every coin is approximately 1 of a million. The odds that the coin you are holding in your hand was produced by working die #1 or working die #2 and so on are virtually the same. A coin produced by working die #15 which may not be doubled is no more rare than a coin produced by working die #789 which may be doubled being that both dies produced appoximately the same number of coins. The odds that the coin you are holding in your hand exhibits doubled die characteristics depends on the number of doubled working dies in relation to the total population of working dies placed in service during the production cycle. The odds that the coin you are holding in your hand was produced by doubled working die #789 depends on the total population of working dies placed in service during that production cycle. Which is still the same approximate odds for a coin produced by working die #15 or #222 or any other working die from the total population. Note that I used the term MOST as there are situations where the doubling error is so blatant that a working die is retired from service early.

 

Not at all...

If you have 5 dies, 4 have no errors, and one does, you have this:

Die 1. Error = 1,000,000
Die 2. No Error = 1,000,000
Die 3. No Error = 1,000,000
Die 4. No Error = 1,000,000
Die 5. No Error = 1,000,000

So out of 5,000,000 coins you have roughly 4,000,000 without error and roughly identical and a just 1,000,000 with the error. That makes the error 1 in a million and the non-error 1 in 4 million. If 1 billion coins are produced and there is only one die with the error then the error is one in a million errors out of a billion total coins produced while the non-error coins would be one in 999,000,000

this is not taking into consideration the error not being caught and them producing far less.

to me the machine doubling is often the more unique error, there are more of them but each on seems to me at least slightly different than the next

 

I don't think anyone would argue against the truism that coins produced by one particular die are just as plentiful as those produced by another die(assuming both dies ran the course of their useful life). I suppose it could be academically argued that each die has its own unique "fingerprint" and therefore each die is a variety unto itself. Those "fingerprints", even if different, are still "normal". A doubled die is not a normal occurrence and it can't be likened to the differences that distinguish normal dies from one another. Taking the original 1980 example and using your numbers of approximately 1 million coins per die, this still leaves around 7,000 coins that aren't doubled for each coin that is DDO-001.

 

foundinrolls or someone please help!!!!!

Your wrong.
I have read and read your responces here over and over again because to me they appear to be written with a geniune opinion. I am not a math or logic educated type person at all I will admit but,
Why would we ever care in the first place between coins struck by die #3 or die #99 if normally hubbed in the first place?
Why are you missing this?
We do not access coins on "die to die" when valuing a given doubled die from that year/mint. We value them "die to all dies" or "die amoung all all other dies" for a year/mint and even further "die, (doubled die) to all coins" that can be searched, have been found, lost and retired - that's why there are rare. It's the coin struck from that doubled die that we are looking for first and never have I heard doubled die coins so compared with other normally struck coins and their dies. What does that logic give us?

Only xxx# of 1980-P DDO-001's have been found or are in existance. It does not matter for these purposes if there was 80,000 (which there is not) or 8,000,000 of same doubled die. If a hoard of them come to be found and put on the market the price, and rariety will be adjusted.
You combine this with the pool of what we are searching - you goota put things in some context don't you?
Your context is some form of an abstract I cannot understand perhaps and maybe even on some level correct but "we don't access the rarity of a coin as you describe", why would we ever?
In the before mentioned 1980-P DDO-001 we attach value because it's one significant doubled die coin amoung all 1980-p coins minted whether it be die #3 or die #99.

When all this is combined with strength of doubling on a coin, desirabilty of the die (coin), popularity of the die (coin), number found of the coins struck from that die, what era it was in, (many moderns don't have to as largely doubled as in years past to become significant), and condition of the coin well,,,,,
With all this your still telling us the coins I just mentioned are no more rare than a normally struck coin from the all/any of the working dies for that year???

I don't get it - I'd like to if you have a point here but right now your logic is has far from me as the moon or stars .

 

The only flaw in this logic with regard to coin collecting is that not all DDO/DDR coins get found and/or identified and as a result not all get saved from normal attrition. As more coins get minted each year and as time goes on, the haystack simply gets larger and there are many needles that are unknown.

Might I suggest that before making statements that may seem perfectly "logical" to you, you spend sometime validating the relativity of that statement.

In other words, it may be true for one but most certainly not another.

 

Somebody please help with this one?

 

Hey Financeman,
Just wondering if you've checked your PM?
Thanks!