New Cherrypickers' Guide: 38 More Pgs,150 New Vars, 43 Lincs

Cant wait!

Once again the CPG has totally ignored the die variety called trail dies. It seems that some people want to avoid this recognized die variety even though some of the trail dies can be seen without magnification (the biggy when ranking doubled dies) and the fact that these anomalies are still being produced by the U. S. Mint (and I presume other world mints as well).

I ask the experts in the field of variety dies "why this disdain for an obvious anomaly?". Is it because we do not fully understand what causes the lines (trails) to be produced? Or is it for some other reason?

Robert (BJ)_Neff

BJ, one of the criteria for listing a coin in CPG is that it have significant value over the price of a normal coin. For example, you will see that the 1979-S Proof SBA with Ty-II Mintmark is included while the cents through half dollars are not. To the best of my knowledge, while the Trail Dies have proven to be collectible, none have seen truly significant price advances. For cents, you are looking at a coin that may garner a dollar or two over normal value just like a 1979-S Ty-II cent may fetch. I was at the ANA and found that the money changing machine at the US Mint was dispensing two different Trail Dies for the 2015-D VA quarter. I purchased about $40 worth of them of which about 20% are from one of these two dies. Cool find but not of great enough value for me to run over and buy $1000 worth to get more. Bottom line is I like finding them just like I like finding a BIE cent but I don't see them ever bringing in big money. The interest is just not there on the retail end. If the "value" is not there it's hard to justify using a page for one or two in CPG.

BJ,

It's all relative. A current one-cent piece that is worth one-cent without the Trails and sells on ebay for $1 with Trails is worth 100 times face value with the Trails. The percentage is high but the total is low. But a coin that is normally worth $100 without a variety but $300 with a given variety has a low percentage over the normal value (comparatively speaking) that still adds up to a lot of bucks profit.

Also, the editors of CPG are now removing low interest, i.e., what are often low value coins from the main listings and placing them in an Appendix to make room for "better" varieties. As such, low value or low interest varieties now have even less of a chance of getting in due to space constraints of which nothing can be done.

On statements in books such as: "Although these types of varieties do NOT bring large premiums", authors must be honest and state the facts so that readers are not misled. For now Trails don't bring bring big money (as I would have stated it if I wrote such a statement).

Keep in mind that it took many of our highly sought after RPMs and DDs decades to catch on. When I got started I remember buying rolls of BU 1956-D/D RPM#1 and others similar for $2 a coin from the Kramer estate sold by Rich Schemmer. I have a letter from Jim Johnson from 1971 telling a collector that his 1971-S Kennedy half dollar DDO (what was later listed as CONECA DDO-006/FS-106) was too minor to be of interest to collectors (as it was back then). The bottom line is "new" variety types do not catch on overnight!

Many of the modern varieties types that are popular today weren't until I spend tens of thousands of dollars promoting them in quarter to full page ads week after week for years in Coin World, Numismatic News and COINage Magazine in the mid to late 1980s.

For all practical purposes those ads did more to kick start the collecting of modern varieties then any book or club ever did.

good point BJ Neff.

I pre-ordered mine and received it in mid-October. Really good book!

Try this link https://www.whitman.com/store/Inven...ion-Volume-I

Amazon has some connections for cheaper prices. Check them out if you deal with them.