I wasnt going to bother posting it until I could do my research. If theres no listed DDO for 1996, Im not concerned with what I have. It definately has that tell take "96" worn to hell die with all the marks heading toward the edge. the die was so worn that the letters spread out toward the rim pretty dramatically. I see what could be possibly a doubled eye but with dimes, I dont look close at them much and it may be a design feature for all I know. Thats why I was curious if there was one listed somewhere thats legit to compare and check out.
Heres a couple pictures. Ive seen some worn dies but this sucker was way past its useful life. Ive not been doing this that long but Ive never seen letters spread this much from a garbage die. I DONT see legitimate signs of doubling but alot of interesting other stuff. check out the R in Pluribus...its all looking like a bunch of bubble letters lol!
I think you've got it right; deterioration. The flow lines are heavy and the devices are misshapen and thicker/thinner. It gets pretty difficult to determine DDOs/DDRs when the die states are VLDS. Everything is mushy.
Sure is Kevin. Its tricky! Strange thing to me is that I find this fun to examine when its this bad. I would have loved to have seen this coin right out of the mint minus the random PMD. When you look at this coin you can easily imagine how the face of the DIE actually looked.....like the skin of a 90 year old woman from Daytona. "Flow lines...how appropriate...Flow....the old sun worshiper in Florida"
Its fun photographing this deformed monster. I changed the angle and filtered the lighting slightly to see some additional detail. You can almost be fooled into seeing clear splitting on the serfis...the leaves on the left of the tourch are crazy. Check out the "S" in states too...Ive never seen an S like that where it almost looks layered. I know, call me a turd, Im 2x2ing this lol!! God help me if I die and a real coin collector sees what IVe kept haha!!!
Tell me if Im wrong on this too....if this was really a doubled die, there would be "thousands" of these out there. I dont know how many planchets a die typically strikes before its retired but given the extremely deteriorated state its in, the dies used to make this coin must have produced thousands of dimes. Logic tells me that there would be so many out there that there would be listings on VV and double die. Does that make sense and correct thinking?
That's correct. Collecting varieties in different die states is 'a thing'. I have the 2004P DDO in stages B, C, and D. Not A, oddly enough. But the progression is interesting. It had me thinking about other Jefferson nickels for a long time. In fact, a few of them ended up being listed after a few years. So sometimes you can't give up easily on somethings. Put them in a flip for future review. Things can...and do...change.
