PMD Or PMDon't?

And I would hope that my rather strong passion and opinion for keeping my mouth shut unless I KNOW the answer doesn't come across as me being anything but passionate for what I do. I have nothing personal against anyone here - I just never read the book on sugar coating responses. I simply "tell it like it is". Once people get to know me and how I respond, they are fine with it - especially those with whom I have had private email exchanges. They "get it" that I am not a harsh a**hole...I just BELIEVE in short, concise, and ACCURATE responses to questions. When I have to post a number of times to clear up complete train wreck threads where people are flat-out guessing, it annoys me. I guess when I am annoyed I should take a breath before planning my response.

I am long winded because I type quickly and I prefer to be complete in my responses rather than leaving people guessing what I meant.

Hi All,

Boy, am I glad I missed all this:-) We've cycled through these things a few times in the few years that some of us have been around these forums:-)

I am adding a few things after having read all the posts in this thread. I won't address individuals but perhaps some of the thoughts presented.

These won't be in any particular order.

Learning about the details of the minting process, including the making of hubs and dies is critical to understanding die varieties. Learning about the mechanical aspects of minting a coin becomes critical when trying to understand how error coins come about. Knowing the distinctions between die varieties, errors and varieties is also critical and the distinctions should be carefully studied.

The minting process does have finite parameters and there are only so many possibilities as to what happens and how things happen during that minting process.

There can be an infinite number of variations in some respects. Take a "struck through" error, for example. It is conceivable for a coin to show evidence that it was struck through any of a wide range of foreign objects. Yet, the process by which the struck through error occurred will be the same.

No matter what came between the die and a planchet to create a struck through error, there are identifiable characteristics that allow us to determine that a coin is indeed a struck through error. There is no guesswork. A determination is based upon fact and the experience of the person viewing the coin (or the images of a coin).

The more you work with coins and the more you study how they are manufactured, the more you will be able to determine if a coin is a clunker or a keeper.

When looking at books, keep in mind that there are some woefully outdated volumes out there. There are books that have been written and reprinted since the 1960s. People can still read books purchased today that "talk" about galvanos, for example. Yet today, coins are designed and executed using computers almost from the beginning of the process to the end. No Galvanoes, no reducing machines, etc.

I'll let you in on something....since 1999 or so, the obverse die, for example is not always the hammer die:-) when striking U.S. coins. You won't find that published too often as many people just repeat the old stuff over and over again.

Anyway...there are people here who aren't guessing about what they see in an image. Try to learn as much as you can from those folks:-)

have Fun,
Bill