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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Publius2, post: 17494896, member: 105571&quot;][USER=9270]@kanga[/USER] I feel your pain.&nbsp; It can be very difficult to attribute the Matron large cents.&nbsp; I collect capped bust half dimes by die marriage and die state.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Two thoughts for your consideration:</p><p><br /></p><p>1)&nbsp; I won a local coin club auction for a 10X-30X stereo microscope, an inexpensive older Chinese model but decent quality.&nbsp; This has been a godsend!&nbsp; Not only is the magnification better but the stereo oculars deliver a depth of field view that is simply not attainable with a loupe.&nbsp; It&#039;s also tough with a high-magnification loupe to avoid blocking the light.&nbsp; No problem with the lighting built into the stereo microscope.&nbsp; Hugely helpful in attributing coins and detecting vary small die cracks, chips &amp; etc.&nbsp; So, that&#039;s a suggestion for coins you&#039;ve already purchased.&nbsp; Picture of my $50 microscope below.&nbsp; Note that single-lens USB microscopes are not the same thing at all and won&#039;t work as well.&nbsp; There&#039;s a wide variety of stereo microscopes at Amazon at about $170 that will do the job for your purposes.</p><p><br /></p><p>2)&nbsp; Since it is often impossible to attribute coins from the poor photographs provided by internet sellers, you often just can&#039;t do the job until the coin is in-hand.&nbsp; Instead of making a blanket decision to just buy higher-grade coins in the hope you&#039;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.&nbsp; Then only buy higher-grade coins where the pickups cannot be determined in lower grade or from photos.&nbsp; Not a perfect</p><p>solution by any means but may provide some benefit.&nbsp; It does require a considerable amount of work beforehand to catalog all those PUPS.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1535823[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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