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Message:: [QUOTE="physics-fan3.14, post: 3347139, member: 19165"]Die State is a bit of a continuous spectrum with ethereal meaning.... It's hard to define or categorize. I can relate "early" to "late", but its really hard to clearly define which is which. Die Stage is distinct - this happened, and I can see it. There is a crack, or clash, or whatever, and that is a new stage. Die Abrasion is a very rarely used term, but it describes certain things which may have happened to a die. A 3-legged buffalo is is die stage, in the most technical sense. It isn't really a die abrasion in that you don't actually see the abrasions (die abrasion refers to something like a gouge that you can see, rather than a polished die). I would not consider a 3-leg a mint error, although it probably depends on how you define "mint error." A clash is an error, a polished die is not an error (a 3-leg is simply due to a polished die). However, the 3-leg effect was not intended, and so could be considered an error. The confusion in 20th century coinage comes from the fact that none of them are collected by die pairing. There is not much variance between dies, and the mint created a far more uniform product. Theoretically, you could find the die pairings that created 3-legs, and early die stages would have all 4 legs. If you could identify that die, you would be able to trace the progress of strikes over it's life. But, that is highly impractical.[/QUOTE]