Double Headed Coins Revisited

What you're missing is that the "genuine" coins were in the estate of a mint employee, which makes it obvious that the coins were made on purpose that way...otherwise the mint employee wouldn't have them.

If out of 10,000,000 'double headed' coins out there, there are two or three genuinely minted examples (which are manufactured errors), there's very little reason to go through the extra 8 keystrokes to type 'probably'.

ALL double headed or double tailed coins found in change are alterations created in machine shops. Done. Giving any more information than that creates completely false hope that some novice's coin "could" be the next genuine piece. No reason to do that for the one in a trillion chance their coin could be real.

How about this?

Spend 15 years of your life volunteering to answer questions about coins to the public, go through answering the same thing about double headed coins a few thousand times so you can perfect your answer, and then tell someone who knows nothing about coins that there exist genuine examples but theirs is almost certainly fake, and see the response you get.

I have had people swear theirs was real and they couldn't see a seam and it's been in the family for 30 years, that they got it from the bank so it HAD to be real, and blah blah blah. ALL of them are fake...good enough. The hundreds I have seen are all fake, the hundreds people I know have seen are all fake. JUST because there might be a couple of mint struck clandestine pieces out there doesn't change the answer to the thousands of people who find them in change.

And no, it's not a religion, but for some people out there, like myself, it is their chosen profession and it's how they feed their families. It's what they do every day - so it's not just a hobby to a lot of us. It's our way of life. And for those of us who make their living writing books, answering questions, and making up for the astute lack of knowledge most dealers in the hobby have, it gets frustrating trying to educate people who want to hear a different answer than the truth. People are desparate and want something they can sell for more than what they got it for. They want the golden ticket, and don't want to hear what they have isn't worth that golden ticket. And believe me, they get outright nasty when they hear they don't have that ticket in their two headed coin.

My comment was not about the link, nor was it about anyone being misled by the link. And for most people who find these coins, numismatics is not their pastime. They are soccer moms, college students, truck drivers, bank tellers, and the like. Telling them, "well, there are real ones, but yours isn't," is misleading in itself because the "real" ones were 99% certainly made on purpose and saved by the person who made them, and the statement BEGS the person to accuse you of being a liar, cheater, thief and all sorts of other wonderful things because you didn't tell them their coin is worth millions. It's best left unmentioned to the non-coin people, and the true coin people can spot the machined coins in a quick hurry...the public would be better served with good images of coins that have been machined so they can see what theirs would look like under magnification.

So revisiting the point is more or less moot. I didn't mean to come across as anything but completely informative. Changing the answer you gave that all circulated pieces are fakes to being "probably" fakes is not the way to go on this topic. Believe me...it gets as old as copper 1943 pennies that stick to magnets. The more times you have to answer the same question, the more definitive your answer becomes.

Talk about a waste of keystrokes. Ok, you are correct. I'm an evil genius leading novices down the primrose path to financial ruin. Yeah, of course, we wouldn't want a newbie to start checking out their pocket change or stopping by a local coin shop. Encouraging someone to develop a curiosity about coins & currency...what was I thinking?

See ya in the funny pages.

Morgan's Dad - Numismatic Literary Guild - a club of numismatic professionals in publishing coin related information.

Phoneguy - Evidently you don't understand what it's like to go through years and years of fighting against misinformation to educate people so they WILL have an interest in coins. So they WON'T be taken by buying something to find out later that it's not what they thought they bought...and the worst part is that half of it was bought from so-called dealers who cared more about turning a quick buck on coins than getting an education in what they are selling.

And just to add, I type quickly and need the exercise anyway. Responding to posts here is never a waste of time for me as long as the subject is numismatics. Everyone stands to gain from every post that provides truth.

So what should we do? Just quit writing books and quit answering people's questions? That's an idea. Let's go back to the dark ages of coins like back in the 1960s when the average collector knew little to nothing about the mechanics of making coins and would believe just about anything some sappy dealer told them. Let's go back to the days when there was no instant help (like the internet) and people didn't communicate except through local coin clubs where knowledge based on fact was scarce at best. Yeah...with billions spent at coin shows every year on coins, that's all we need to further the hobby and get more people interested. Thousands and thousands of people spending billions without knowledge or available information and without the kind generosity of people who do have the information being there to correct them and assist them. Yeah...THAT would make a lot of people jump right in and spend their wad! It would be just as bad as the millions of yahoos wasting their money on beanie babies or tech stocks. NICE!!

You know...I answered here in all serious generosity and was trying to help. With each post you make it obvious that you have a narrow tunnel vision of this industry, and take the whole thing as a joke. Just remember that there are potentially thousands of people reading what you type here, and there are thousands more you could affect with every keystroke...one way or the other. Whether it be information or misinformation, your time and energy will affect others. I prefer to be on the positive side of that curve. I've seen enough people rooked by bad deals, cleaned coins, errors that aren't, altered and countefeit crap. I've seen them leave and never come back because they thought everyone in the business was a crook and there was nobody left to trust. This is a difficult hobby to learn for those who want to engage in it fully. And I can guarantee it's a more difficult hobby for every one of them when people they assume know something are all over the place about what should be simple facts. Errors versus varieties versus die varieties...grading coins...detecting counterfeits. It's all simple and straight forward, but it sure doesn't seem so when people are muddying the waters with semantics, guessing, laziness, and misinformation.

""muddying the waters with semantics, guessing, laziness, and misinformation.""

You are right of course, I admitted that. It must be tough to be a long suffering martyr for the sake of the hobby.

Please accept my heartfelt apologies. I won't muddy this thread with guesss, laziness or misinformation. I'm truly, deeply and totally sorry for posting anywhere on this site or the entire internet.

You win , you win. You are a scholar and I'm a plebian. I don't know a coin from a token, an apple from an orange, day from night.

I surrender completely and totally. You win, you are the victor.