Creating A New Canadian Variety Reference?

One man's variety, is another's melt bucket cast-away.... I agree with bosox, let the collectors and market decide...

I'll be honest with you, Jim, even with the very significant jump start it gave Vicky cent varieties after the decades long dry spell, I had and still have mixed emotions about doing the 2011 Charlton appendix. I guess I feel that each Victorian die is its own variety, whether it be plain vanilla or quintuple punched whatever. The collectors themselves should decide what they like and what has a premium. What is popular will rise to the top. Just because Rob Turner or Jim Haxby says this variety is neat and therefore worthy of special effort to collect, doesn't necessarily make it so.

A quick example: perhaps the best known W9/8 reverse die has a visibly re-punched O in ONE. It has become a popular variety based on the 2011 Charlton and maybe Zoell before it. Common as dirt. I haven't bought one since I finished my random sample for the book. Now an RD11, RD12, or RD13 are more vanilla but many times scarcer. Hence my mixed emotions about trying to tell collectors which they should own. If they like the highly visible variety, they should go for it. If they like the rare dies, they should go for them.

I feel much better about your 1859 website and my books, because, as you have said, they are die studies and tried to be all inclusive. The collectors can decide for themselves based on the known universe of dies and die states.

Just my opinion. There is no right or wrong way to collect varieties.

So, Rob, do I understand you are in favor of including all Victorian dies in the variety catalog and leaving collectors to choose what they like? If that's true, it must mean you'll be giving up writing any more large cent die catalogs (at least on paper). There wouldn't be much point. A variety catalog containing all (or most of) the cent dies would doom any new paper catalog from you.

Nice of you to try to twist things around, Jim. All I said was I prefer the full blown die studies to any of us trying to convince collectors what specific varieties they should collect. I have said similar things in my books. It was a differing opinion and not meant as any sort of criticism.

I don't think that new personnel that enter this collecting niche would know enough about what is actually out there to "collect what they want to". I DO think that there are enough specialists in certain denominations to make at least a beginning of a working die or variety list for each date. Many are familiar somewhat with the Zoell and Griffin books, so a start would be the Reverses where many more dies were used and that most people concentrate on. But photos or very descriptive markers would be needed. Each small denomination group could then "vote" (for lack of a better word) on whether that that person thinks that a certain variety is worth collecting or looking for. A 5-person group would have totals from 0 to 5 for each of the working dies. If a person wanted to collect every single die and be a die tracker, then fine. If a person wanted to collect only those that were rated 3-5, then fine .. but at least new folks would have an idea of which ones were scarcer and be more apt to collect.

I've collected Canadian Large Cent varieties for nearly 50 years and I still don't understand anything on the Haxby site or when they give numbers. I collect "varieties" (major), as I define them and would really have no use for a die tracking website for every denomination. Any set of new "numbers" for me in naming everything found would drive me further way from what I am used to. I use Rob's books to answer questions, since I'm retired and am on the computer with coinsites most every day, but I don't use Rob's numbers. I keep my own little list of vareities that I want to look for in very tiny print on a 3 X 5 file card. We need young people in on the ground floor for whatever is attempted.

This has certainly been a very enlightening discussion and I would like to thank all for sharing your opinions on the matter

I've been mostly biting my tongue