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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Bill in Burl, post: 2430135, member: 23692&quot;]What do you want to know?&nbsp; I co-wrote the 2011 Vicky variety section with a few of my collector friends and many of the 40 we put in there were my coins.&nbsp; The purpose of the variety section in the back was to show the possibilities and TYPES of varieties that you could find in the Vicky series and we had to include every date.&nbsp; We could have included hundreds in there for the serious collector, but space limited what was finalized (the 1859&#039;s alone have nearly 200 varieties if you count marriage pairings). All the entries in the book were priced and based upon &quot;the exact coin&quot; that we photo&#039;d .. close didn&#039;t count.&nbsp; The variety section was not meant to be all-inclusive</p><p><br /></p><p>For the 1881&#039;s you had any number of &quot;doublings&quot; to use the term loosely. Although there were some hub doublings (from the hub pressing/striking the initial blank working dies), most of what you see that involves more than one character is &quot;machine doubling&quot;.&nbsp; MD or MDD is &quot;doubling&quot; that is actually caused by bounce or chatter as the die is just moving away from the planchet rather than the instant that the die touches the planchet.&nbsp; Just think of it as a &quot;loose&quot; die that rotates or slightly moves during the striking of the coin.&nbsp; The floor worker at the mint just has to tighten down the keeper or lock on the die and coins are struck normally again.&nbsp; There were 3-4 different Obverse dies that show differing degrees of offset and which characters are the most affected (it makes a difference which way the bounce or rotation or twist actually moves).&nbsp; The 1881&#039;s are a facinating study all in themselves and the MD that shows on some coins can be from &quot;around-the-clock&quot;, where every letter is doubled, to mostly just affecting the Victoria, Gratia, and Regina.&nbsp; &nbsp; Depending on how loose the locks/keys were, some of the offsets are very pronounced.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>You have to remember that every Obverse die struck for 1881 was an 1876 die that had the single-serif N&#039;s repunched to make them full serifs, except for a single one that slipped through...the single-serif 1881 is one of the scarcest of all the Vicky varieties.&nbsp; Because every handpunched element on ANY Vicky cent took 2-4 whacks, with each whack coming days or weeks apart, due to the rehardening of the punch and annealing of the die.&nbsp; The guy with the hammer very very often couldn&#039;t exactly get them exactly on top of each other .. instant variety!&nbsp; Since 1881 was the 2nd year that the Royal mint was striking full-thickness cents (the 58&#039;s &amp; 59&#039;s were 1/3 thinner), the steel used in the hubs had a hard time taking the pressure/punishment of striking bronze coins rather than copper.&nbsp; This resulted in portions of the letters in the designs chipping off the hub and creating more need for cleaning up the dies by handpunching repairs .. again, instant varieties.&nbsp; Enjoy your coins ... they look nice.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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