Puzzling 1960 Jefferson Proof Nickel DDR.

Nice DDR.

You have gotten way deeper into coins in general than I have and in a very short period of time. If you are going to continue on this path you need to talk to Ray and get a good setup, this will alleviate many of the issues and questions you have. Just my take, and no, I have not taken the Ray leap yet but you should, you are much more serious.

Very nice!

I appreciate the kind words. =) The details work appeals to the engineer in me. I would say that I've gone deep into a very narrow area, specifically around nickel double dies and a few adjacent areas. Your recommendation to get equipment advice from Ray is probably the right one. In the beginning, a $10 magnifier and a $10 macro lens were more than sufficient because I didn't know what I was looking for. Now I'm at the point where I know what I'm looking for, but I can't push my hyper-cheap equipment to get the images. Christmas is coming—maybe that's a good gift to arrange.

As usual, everything that Tropicalbats says is correct. Grappling with these minor proof nickel doubled dies can fluctuate between inexpensive fun and hair-pulling frustration. I went through WDDR-005, -032, -034, -038 and came up with no matches on any markers. But there are so many potential sources of error here.

Am I under or over estimating the size of the doubling due to lighting factors? Has subsequent die polishing narrowed or widened devices? What sort of lighting was used in the Wexler catalog images to establish the baseline? Are the markers missing because I am looking at the wrong entries, or is this an earlier die state that is missing the markers? Or could this be a later die state where the markers have been polished away to clean the proof die fields? Is it actually just a new DDR that is mostly similar to the others—because there are 65 already for this year—or does it indeed match an existing listing that I missed?

I think I've extracted my $4 of fun from this nickel, and I'm reaching the knee in the curve where positive identification becomes a Sisyphus-and-the-boulder task. I will probably put it on the pile for my Brian's Variety Coins submissions, and see if the pro himself can get that boulder up and over the hill for five bucks.

Fine line with some proof's. Remember they're struck more than once. Find one is good. Find two is better. Thanks, Doug.