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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;beef1020, post: 3087332, member: 24544&quot;]No, your premise is wrong.&nbsp; As is the idea of other here that the number of cracks someone influences value.</p><p><br /></p><p>Starting with the caveat that generalizing across collector specializations is difficult, we can look at other areas to determine what drives value.&nbsp; Coin values are based on supply and demand, for arguments sake let&#039;s hold demand constant and consider why coins with lots of cracks may sell for a premium.&nbsp; Coins like large cents, bust halves, and Morgan dollars are all collected by die variety (specific obverse and reverse die pairing), and sometimes even by die stage. </p><p><br /></p><p>When a die starts to fails it leaves die cracks and possible cuds (we will get back to this latter), which are all diagnostic of the specific die.&nbsp; If this happens late in the life of the die, then those markers generally do not add much value because the variety is common.&nbsp; However, occasionally a die fails early in it&#039;s life.&nbsp; When that happens the die cracks are diagnostic of a rare variety, and it is the rareness of the variety that drives the price.&nbsp; The idea that die cracks add value comes from a spurious correlation, some coins with die cracks sell for a very large premium, but the value is not due to die cracks per se, it&#039;s due to those specific die cracks being diagnostic of a rare variety.</p><p><br /></p><p>Back to cuds as an aside.&nbsp; The typical die is taken out of use when it either wears out or starts to crack.&nbsp; In rare cases the die is left in use util pieces of the die actually break off and fall away, producing cuds.&nbsp; Cuds are almost always valuable as they represent a very unusual ending to a die.&nbsp; But again, at the point where a die breaks itself the die is generally removed very quickly, making coins with cuds rare.&nbsp; With that said, in large cents specifically some rare cuds can sell for large multiples of the variety price because they are known by &lt;5 examples, while coins like the 52N6 have 100+ known with cuds and sell for only a small premium.&nbsp; As with die cracks, the value in cuds comes from the fact that the production issues that caused the cud also generally create a very limited supply.&nbsp; This is simply not the case with die cracks, where hundreds of thousands of coins can be struck with the same die cracks.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now back to the Lincoln cents which started this discussion.&nbsp; First off, I know of very few collectors who collect these by variety.&nbsp; The mintage is simply too high and the diagnostic features are simply too small.&nbsp; The entire run of large cents used ~1,000 die pairings, from 1793 to 1856.&nbsp; That&#039;s not even 1 year of cent mintage.&nbsp; Only specific varieties of Lincoln cents are recognized by the community as important, these are generally the double dies, and for some odd reason the transitional AM coins.&nbsp; But outside of that, there is very little collector interest in random variety coins, and again the die cracks are not in and off themselves all that interesting to collectors, but are valuable if they are diagnostic for a variety that is in demand.</p><p><br /></p><p>To summarize, die cracks are diagnostic of a coin variety, or specific pairing of dies.&nbsp; If the cracks attribute a rare variety with high demand than the coin is valuable.&nbsp; In this case, the cracks attribute a variety (likely common but could be rare) with no collector interest, which is why it has no premium.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Lastly, with that all out of the way, I find this area of numismatics very, very interesting.&nbsp; For someone who truly loves to study coins, modern Lincoln cent varieties (and associated die stages) offers fertile collecting grounds with the ability to research large uncharted areas, and to do so at very minimal cost.&nbsp; So please don&#039;t take the above as discouraging your interest or trying to lower the status of your coin.&nbsp; It&#039;s lack of dollar value is simply due to lack of interest and the massive mintage of Lincoln cents, but from the right perspective that&#039;s a blessing.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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