After looking through a couple thousand Kennedy halfs, I ended up with 4 rolls of 1974P. Looking through them netted a half dozen what appear to be double die reverse. Just light doubling on one or two words. Can't post pics, sorry. Some are more evident than others. None are high grade coins. Anyone care to guess what they are worth?
I'm not familiar with this one and Wiles doesn't list it in "The Kennedy Half Dollar Book". Are you certain it's a true DDR? If it is then the value is largely dependent on the spread. Supply will be fairly small since it's not known to Wiles so it mostly just hinges on how easy it is to spot. Figure $10 to several hundred. It does seem most likely that it's some form of mechanical doubling though. Most of these will have a very flat top on the secondary image. They'll often appear to be scraped on this image. Serifs will not be doubled and they'll usually vary from one example to the next.
I must admit I am baffled by all this. I started out looking at the 1974D obverse by using th Coinguys photo. Then I was looking at the 1974 P obverse. Then I went to conecaonline and printed out the 19 page info on 1971 to 1992 Kenedy Double Dies. They only list one finding for 1974 P halfs and it is a reverse. I was searching the wrong side of the coin! So I started looking at the reverses. Once I found one ggod example the rest were easy - 10X loop. Here is what they list: 1974 SDO-001 Ok so I do not know what SDO means. And I don't have a good definition of spread. But whatever I found is on the reverse and looks like extra meat surrounding the letters. Or a better description would be if someone traced partially around the letters. Most keep to one side of the letters. If the doubling is on the left, they all are to the left. If the doubling is on the right, all letters are doubled to the right side. Yes many look like they were scraped. Some are on the HALF DOLLAR wording, others on the STATES wording, some just on the OF and some on AMERICA.
whoops my last post gave description for 1971D sorry. Wrong info. Here is the 1974 reverse according to coneca: 1974 SDR=001 Light spread on arrow shafts, designers initials, and stars. CW from K-3 to K-S with extra thickness on half dollar. This means nothing to me. I only see it on the wording.
I tried to buy Wiles' book. Nothing doing here in CT. My coin dealer can't even order it. It isn't on e-bay, Barnes and Noble Bookstore lists one used one in the country for $79.00
Go to the Numismatic Resources section of Coin Talk and find the thread titled Books - HERE - if it can be found cheaper, you'll find it there. I checked 1 link and found it for $75. You gotta realize though, out of print books aint cheap.
Apparently you're right about the existence of a DDR '74 issue. Do any of your coins conform to their description? http://www.conecaonline.org/content/kennedydoubleddies19711992.html [q]SD-1-R-II-C+VI (P, D, S) Description: Light spread on arrow shafts, designer's initials, and stars CW from K-3 to K-8 with extra thickness on HALF DOLLAR [/q]
As stated in a previous post the abbreviations are all Greek to me. I do not know what CW is and I do not even understand what a spread is. So I certainly don't know what K-3 to K-8 means. Heck I don't even know what the SDR means. All I know is what I see on the coin, no doubled designer's initials, just some of the words have what looks like an extra edge.
CW means the second hubbing is clock wise from the first. Or the die was hubbed and then was hubbed again CW was the initial one. The secondary image at every point on the coin is CCW to the primary image. Spread is the greatest distance between the images. Usually this is small enough that you need a glass to see it but when it's great there is a lot of demand for the coin. Usually only specialists want those ith very narrow spreads. Normal doubled dies look like they "just have an extra edge" in most cases. It's the nature of this edge which tells you if it was caused by bad hubbing or just vibration during the strike.
Victor - it sounds like what you need to do is read a little bit about different forms of doubling. I would suggest that you start - HERE You see, there is a very common form of doubling known as mechanical doubling or strike doubling that has nothing to do with a coin being a doubled die example. And that may well be what you have - a coin with mechanical doubling.
Thank you for the links and the advice. Thanks to Cladking too. Thanks to the response from all of you including the book by Wiles. I went to the library and there is no such book in the whole Connecticut library system. After 3 days of looking at all my 1974 and 1974D half dollars I am finally done with the year 1974. The results are ten 1974P Kennedys which have some type of double reverse creation. Now I guess it would be best to take them to a dealer or coin show and let people look at them. On to the years 1971, 1972 and 1973...
