I enjoy going through all coins I come across whether loose change or sets looking for errors and the like. I have found more than my fair share of varieties and errors and have posted many of them on here. From time to time however, once I've found a candidate to attribute, narrowing down the specific variety is more of a challenge than finding the coin itself. For instance I recently found a 1963 proof Jefferson that I wanted to look up on Brian's and VV. When I clicked on that year, I found over 60 varieties alone for the DDR I was looking for. Not being a quitter, I trudged through each one trying to narrow down which ones were the likeliest matches from the pics and descriptions. After I had about 6 pegged as possibilities, I went back through all the descriptions and die markers looking for a winner. What made this more of a challenge is the mint for this year used a cellophane that is somewhat opaque with lines in it that made finding the markers even harder (I didn't want to crack it out of the set just yet). I finally found the winner WDDR-014/WWDO-010 and after all the time spent searching and eye strain asked myself if it was worth all the trouble? We all (well most of us) know the answer... YES it was. What's the longest or hardest attribution you've done on your own?
In the earlier days before the 90s almost all attributions were done that ways as little or no internet nor 3rd party grading. Only the major errors/varieties were considered worth collecting and saving. Then came mass media,internet,fly-by-night grading companies, get rich on coin type of books and then Youtube ( they will believe anything, so say it worth thousands and they will subscribe) and now we are here. I tend to collect the pre 1996 varieties as they are much more likely to be what they look like, but they tend to be costlier and not often found in pocket change or bank rolls. Jim
What is the longest and hardest, you ask? It is one that I'm still trying to prove, and I've been working on it since 2004. Do I want to discuss it? No! Chris
I spent close to a half hour on an 1878 7TF Morgan in FR2 before coming up with it being VAM 115. There may be others that I've spent a little longer on, but they're unmemorable.
