I can take a half hour (or more) trying to ID a Matron Head Large Cent variety -- and still not get it. To save money I've been looking at coins graded Fine and Very Fine. But enough detail has been lost at those grades that I can't confidently determine the variety of many of them. And after spending a lot of time trying, my patience gets VERY thin and can cause me to mis-identify the variety -- and waste money. I'm going to have to bite the bullet and just look at XF (or better) coins. That means I'll be getting a lot fewer coins but will be happier and more confident with my identifications.
Believe me I understand.. one of the big reasons I started the $20 LC set was to get into a very "large" coin type with plenty of varieties... Yeah just a few... 100+ varieties for about 60 total dates... and those are the more "common" varieties, add in the overdates, rotated dies and die pairings crossing years/decades and even "hair styles". This more then doubles the amount of varieties availble. On a positive note the more of them you examine and ID the easier it gets... then again I've been at this set on and off for over 20 years (Including the original attempt at the set) and I can still spend days to ID a single coin.
I know what you're saying. I was recently working on varieties on some coins. I had pictures and key things to look for, it took me forever. I will never do that again until I obtain better magnifigation. I may also need a bilaterial eye ball change. I thought it would be fun, but it wasn't.
@kanga I feel your pain. It can be very difficult to attribute the Matron large cents. I collect capped bust half dimes by die marriage and die state. Even with high-quality loupes of 3X, 6X, 9X and 10X it can be very difficult to detect such small markers especially on worn coins, under toning, or from awful seller photographs. Two thoughts for your consideration: 1) I won a local coin club auction for a 10X-30X stereo microscope, an inexpensive older Chinese model but decent quality. This has been a godsend! Not only is the magnification better but the stereo oculars deliver a depth of field view that is simply not attainable with a loupe. It's also tough with a high-magnification loupe to avoid blocking the light. No problem with the lighting built into the stereo microscope. Hugely helpful in attributing coins and detecting vary small die cracks, chips & etc. So, that's a suggestion for coins you've already purchased. Picture of my $50 microscope below. Note that single-lens USB microscopes are not the same thing at all and won't work as well. There's a wide variety of stereo microscopes at Amazon at about $170 that will do the job for your purposes. 2) Since it is often impossible to attribute coins from the poor photographs provided by internet sellers, you often just can't do the job until the coin is in-hand. Instead of making a blanket decision to just buy higher-grade coins in the hope you'll have a better chance of successful attribution either before or after purchase, why not decide for every attribution whether the pickups can be ascertained at lower grades or from less-quality photos and then target those purchases in the lower grades. Then only buy higher-grade coins where the pickups cannot be determined in lower grade or from photos. Not a perfect solution by any means but may provide some benefit. It does require a considerable amount of work beforehand to catalog all those PUPS.
