Cool 1968-S...check This One Out!

Pretty cool! A definate keeper.

Yeah, the machine must have had a bad case of indigestion when it burped these out. Here's mine:

Nah, it only proves that ebay is loaded with Bidiots

In the late 60s and early 70s this was common caused from wore out dies. I have several of these.

One thing we (numismatists) have to remember is that there are various types of buyers for coins and other collectables. We can research and classify all we want, but if someone wants to collect MD, it's not our place to say such coins are worthless. Heck, some people like red cars, some black, etc. My aunt loves her Green model A, which may have started life black.

Sellers shouldn't deliberately deceive in their descriptions, but some (many) may not know the difference themselves.

Five bucks used to buy a nice used common Confederate note. Then one day, someone decided to promote them, and wanted thousands of them. Overnight, anything that wasn't a rag wholesaled for $18, and the promoter prolly got $30-50 or more. Note collectors shook their heads, but tens of thousands of civil war buffs and history hounds who may not have realized there was such a thing snapped them up.

Purists would say these people aren't "true" collectors (whatever that means), but they are part of the market, or become part of it once they realize it exists.

We laugh at people who buy hyped stuff on TV or from big newspaper ads. What do you think would happen to slobbed coin prices if you didn't have these places selling hundreds tens of thousands of coins? Where else would a friend of mine get rid of 500 Babe Ruth autographs? There are very few autograph collectors, but millions of baseball fans.

It is our place to say that Machine Doubling has no value. That's called "education". The people spending their money on Machine Doubling don't know what they are doing, or they wouldn't be spending money on them.

This thread proves a few things:

1. That Machine Doubling from 1968-1969 is extremely common on Lincoln cents. I could come up with ROLLS of it inside of a week...really.
2. That not everyone is honest - surprise, surprise.
3. That too many people count on ebay as the only barometer of the value of coins - which is TOTALLY wrong.
4. That still yet my job is not done. There are still people out there without the patience or know-how to invest the time it takes to find the real doubled dies, so they are settling with junk that's easy to find because it's "neat". They will mark the coins and stick them in their collections, then some day a coin dealer will have to deal with the heirs who think they have a million dollar coin. The never ending cycle of undereducated collecting.