Oh, I get it now.
If it helps you, go ahead. Side-by-sides have helped me see differences on coins/fonts/letters I'm not familiar with.
When starting out, browsing doubleddie.com, coppercoins.com, and varietyvista.com really helped me understand what to look for. Just go through the listings for the types of coins you look at and look for patterns. You'll notice that for some dates and coins a majority of doubled dies will look the same or have doubling in the same locations.
It took me a while to find my first "worth-while" coin and those major ones are still few and far between. So don't worry about not finding anything just yet, you said it yourself, you've only been 'inspecting' for a year now. My first great doubled die find was the 1983
DDR which I found in June 2017. I started searching in March 2016. It takes time.
Also, there are very few doubled dies known on Denver-minted coins in recent years, so you being in CA gives you a slight disadvantage. But if the Denver mint screws up big time in the near future, you might be the first to find it. I don't know many variety-hunters on the west coast, and I rarely get new Denver coins here.