Heartbreakers

I know what you mean about your heart stopping. The '72 wasn't that bad, but at first glance at that '69S I thought I was going to have a heart attack. When I took a closer look I was just left heartbroken. That's what is fun about this hobby though. If you found something great everytime you busted open a roll, then these coins wouldn't be as valuable(if valuable at all), and it would become boring. The best part about it is not knowing what you might find.

I remember showing mine to my wife - I thought she was going to cry when I told her.

[I remember showing mine to my wife - I thought she was going to cry /]

What did you show her ?

I thought the coin in the first image was a catch till I realized it is not the doubled die.

It reminded me of the real DDO for this year:

On machine doubled coins, they are created from normal dies that move slightly during the striking process. The result is that the devices (Letters/Numbers) bay be distorted/push from regular alignment. On a doubled die/RPM the hubbing process or the mint mark punching may have created a separate or Wider set of devices.
Here is a side by side comparison of a normal coin and a doubled die: (Images speak volumes)

Note the normal sized devices compared to ones from a doubled die.
On Machine Doubling, the devices are not larger than normal, just damaged:

Note the image in the center of these images. This one image is a doubled die, the rest are just machine double damaged coins.

Learning doesn't happen over night. The right tools help as well. A good magnifying glass/Loupe/mircroscope/camera/lighting/editing software and many years experience help with this task. The reading here is free and other sites on the internet. Some save information by highlighting a certain thread and saving it to word, or printing it out on information that helps. You can high light just a portion of a page and print that selection, or state a video book on information on a word program that will show the images and list them by subject. Sometimes it is hard to find just the right page to go back to on the internet.