Do my eyes decieve me? I swear I have a presidential dollar where the edge lettering is a little bit more narrow. I'll post photos as soon as possible.
More pics Here are some better pics. The thin one is the botton one. Also, if this turn out to be a real variety, will I recieve credit in the numistic community?
I hope fer ya all the best! But probably just a weak strike. See what other people say. I may be wrong? I have a felling these edge letterings are gonna be a long ride? this is a new deal and we are are just learning it right now. If ya think ya got some thing send emm in and have emm graded. they will tell ya but only for a price.
Can't really tell because none of the characters are aligned on the two coins. You need to have the coins so that the 2's ares DIRECTLY above each other. Then we can see if one is a little longer than the other. As it is now with the offset there is no good way to judge the spacing. (It may be possible that a slight slippage of the coin as it runs through the edging machine could cause a difference in spacing.)
Condor101 beat me to it. Since the size difference, if any, is very small, there is absolutely no way to tell without seeing both "versions" with the mint mark or beginning of the date or another legend exactly aligned in the same picture. Otherwise -
I think you thought I ment the spacing, I was refering to the thinkness of the letters. Also, now that I have had more time to examine it I'm led to believe a lot of the coin have different thicknesses of letters.
Maybe my tired old eyes are fooling me, but after enlarging your pictures, I think I do see a difference in the spacing between the bottom/top edges of the lettering and the edges of the coin. What that says to me is that the randomness of placement extends to the up/down positioning as will as the orientation and horizontal positioning. The one that seems to be closer to one edge also seems to be further from the other, so you may just be looking at the same size lettering, but in different vertical positions on the edge. Perhaps.
Think about it - the letters and numbers are being pressed into the side of the coin. When the edge dies are new, those letters and numbers are a given size. But as they strike more and more coins the letters and numbers begin to wear down on their edges - getting smaller and smaller with every strike. So it stands to reason that there will be coins which were struck with new edge dies which have larger legends than those that were struck with well worn edge dies.
How deeply the letters are impressed into the edge will also cause a variation in the thickness of the letters. the depth of the impression can vary because of wear on the dies, the spacing setting on the edging machine, or the hardness of the coin which can vary depending on how well it was annealed or how hard it was struck by the dies. (To a small extent depth of the impression can also result in a small variation in the overall length of the words in the inscriptionas well.
