Posted 12/31/2010 02:41 am
Just depends on whether you are looking for errors or for die varieties. They are two completely different things.
If you are searching for errors, just look for what you can see without magnification. Have the magnifier handy to look for things that don't look right...but as for errors, only those that are obvious are really worth much of anything.
If you want to search for doubled dies, repunched mintmarks, and other die varieties, magnification and some education in the minting process would help a lot. Purchasing a few better examples would help drive the point home. There are a number of forms of doubling that are not collectible and are often mistaken by novices to be the valuable kind. It doesn't take much to learn the difference. Most doubling of the collectible sort takes some modest magnification to identify correctly.
Alas, errors and die varieties are two completely different animals and must be approached as being very different. Many people who collect one don't collect the other. I am a die variety specailist and don't really care much for errors.
If you are searching for errors, just look for what you can see without magnification. Have the magnifier handy to look for things that don't look right...but as for errors, only those that are obvious are really worth much of anything.
If you want to search for doubled dies, repunched mintmarks, and other die varieties, magnification and some education in the minting process would help a lot. Purchasing a few better examples would help drive the point home. There are a number of forms of doubling that are not collectible and are often mistaken by novices to be the valuable kind. It doesn't take much to learn the difference. Most doubling of the collectible sort takes some modest magnification to identify correctly.
Alas, errors and die varieties are two completely different animals and must be approached as being very different. Many people who collect one don't collect the other. I am a die variety specailist and don't really care much for errors.
