I was in New York last week so I missed the thread until Bryan asked me to comment.
I think we have a misunderstanding of terms here and a small bit of misunderstanding of availability versus occurrence. Since I am the likely original author I will try to correct some of what is being misunderstood.
First let me state clearly that the number of Double Strikes that are "available" for collectors is low. But not low enough to make them truly rare. Whats more even though numbers are low - they are not worth proportionately more based on their scarcity. There is currently no market and I really don't believe there should be.
I will start this discussion with a STRONG WARNING that the majority of Double Struck 8R's I have reviewed are COUNTERFEIT. That is a given.
There are two primary reasons for low availability of real double struck 8R coins. First is that collectors like myself tend to keep them longer than they would an average strike. They tend to become prized possessions because of their oddity. Many collectors retain them NOT FOR THE ADDED value but just because of preference. The second reason, missed by most is because most of the really wide double strikes ever made (like the severely off center strikes) never got out of the mint. They were made but are no longer in existence.
A badly struck coin - and most widely double struck coins fall into that category were normally MELTED not released into circulation. They were classified as DEFECTIVE like off center strikes etc. Remember we are dealing with a KING (read ego) and the workers in a mint were paid for essentially perfect coins for their Lord and Master. Defective coins resulted in NO Payment of wages for any of the work involved. Defective coins were simply recycled.
Another reason which is tied to manufacturing practice is that many coins struck in an open collar screw press were intentionally double struck to bring up a complete impression. If a planchet remains on the hammer die motionless and there is no give in the apparatus - a coin can be struck twice with no trace of that having happened. Too many blows and there is obvious stretching.
That is why the vast majority of real double struck coins, which went into circulation are closely doubled so that the letters and devices remain clear. These close double strikes mostly pass undetected. They could be termed strike doubles but I since I believe two blows were used they are CLOSE Double strikes. These closely doubled coins (call them what you will) are fairly common - as many as 1 in every 100 coins that I review has a trace of doubling. How many are double struck with no evidence - who knows? Or ever will know.
The wide double strikes happen when the initially struck coin lifts off the anvil die and then falls or is placed back on the anvil die displaced (rotationally, laterally or both). These wide double strikes are far scarcer and are usually identified with an extra added price (which is in my opinion not really warranted). But I would bet I see 1 for every couple thousand 8Rs that I review. So in my mind they are NOT rare.
Widely doubled coins like the one in this thread are SCARCE as originals (say one in 2000) but common as forgeries - especially the bullion forgeries of the 1890s (say 1 in 100 tops) and the Modern Chinese even more common.
But the best double struck pieces like the 50% off center strikes were manufactured but never released. They were melted and with them the physical evidence of die protection by the press operators.
How many 50% off center 8Rs do you see?
Regarding striking speed - the only operators that had any control over speed were the two guys spinning the 5000 pound counterweights with ropes. The fellow in the pit who took coins off the dies and inserted planchets was NOT in control of speed. He could yell "Hey, Slow down" (or whatever that is in Spanish) but this was a crude manual screw press. An 8R press is a three man press. We are not talking the small reproduction presses or the 1R presses which were a 1 man show - but the BIG presses that needed a 15 foot diameter operating circle. These small modern presses use a narrow pitch on the threads to multiply the force applied on the screw handle to make the coins. The older big presses USED IMPACT MOMENTUM AND APPARATUS WEIGHT to SMASH an impression into the planchet. Look to the building foundations and added bracing used in mints under the screw presses.
Perhaps "split second" was misleading on my part but I was trying to convey that there is a very limited opportunity to remove a fully struck coin and replace it with a blank planchet. During that interval the pit man has to look at the coin and decide is it adequately struck up. Then he removes the coin and replaces it with a blank. There might be a half second or even a second but every drop of the hammer threatens your fingers.
Another issue here is momentum. At the top and bottom of the screw there will be some natural recoil. This can only be prevented by the oprators pulling backward JUST at the point of maximum stress.
That does not happen in practice especially on the down stroke. If it did the coin would be blank. So NO they do not pull back they smash the hammer die into the planchet sitting on the anvil die. Remember the shock of this impact was adequate to break even well designed presses of the 1770s. The counterweights stop rotating one direction when they hit the limit of the turn and
reverse under that recoil effect. Now the same thing happens at the top of the cycle. The screw hits a stop and the counterweights reverse a second time. A good operating pair of employees uses that recoil effect to keep the screw turning smoothly and to reduce fatigue - a STOPPING point is extremely unlikely - perhaps IMPOSSIBLE. A second impact is not only possible but even normal to get the strike set deep enough.
But the decision to pull a finished coin out and insert a new planchet takes place during the rotation of the counterweights between the stops. Regarding this use of recoil and hitting the stops - there is a complaint about this practice in correspondence from the 1760s in a reference that I read recently but which I can not now put my hand on. The gist was that the new mint manager (from the continent) blamed premature press failure (a cracked frame) on the operators methods used in the striking process which strained the frame.
Clashes did happen - but NOT very often at all.
A clash comes at a great potential cost to production. Dies were NOT cheap and a clash can break a brand new die so to prevent a clash a coin would remain in the press and then be thrown into the melt bin if it was considered defective. How many double struck coins were remelted as defective will never be known but many were.
Quote:
Now we all know how common clashes were so I would opt for the theory that double struck coins occurred more often than clashes
I believe the statement is true exactly as put. But the conclusion being drawn by inference is that we should see more double struck coins than we do coins with evidence of clashes. The conclusion is simply wrong statistically.
I wrote the original statement but was NOT making the conclusion as proposed.
The problem with the thought process here is that a single clash produces evidence of it's occurrence on every coin struck by those same dies for the balance of their working life. The clash occurred to the DIES not the coin. The numbers of coins struck from previously clashed dies has ZERO bearing on the survival rates for double struck coins.
By way of example - Say a die pair clashes at a point 100 coins into its production life and then the die pair survives to produce 20,000 coins. There are therefore 19,900 coins showing evidence of a clash and 100 showing no clash. But in reality there was only
one event that actually happened. ONE CLASH - BUT thousands of coins with evidence of that one clash.
A double struck coin on the other hand is also a single event in time but it does not produce 19,900 pieces of evidence. In fact, in the example above all 100 coins produced before the clash could have been struck twice and there would be NO evidence at all if there was NO displacement of the coin on the dies between strikes.
I would propose the correct conclusion is that the number of coins with evidence of die clashing has NOTHING whatsoever to do with numbers of actual clashes versus actual double strikes.
How many 8R coins do we encounter with NO CLASH? How many dies were made each year? What percentage of these dies clashed One or MORE Times? How many coins were actually remelted? All of these questions lack adequate answers - the best we can do is to observe where possible, look at the original apparatus that has survived and read all of the old documents that exist and then propose theories that take all known facts into account.
Your coin clearly has a double strike combined with a slight lateral displacement - it should not have been released from the mint in my opinion, but it was. I have seen about 100 coins with a similar displaced second strike that I consider to be real in my time as a collector of 8Rs. That is over a 50 year period of time. Is yours real? NGC says so - so if that is good enough for you it is fine for me.
If I saw your coin raw, I would be all over it trying to be sure it was real, because I would presume forgery and try to prove reality - not vice versa.
Counterfeiters - especially the Chinese know that many collectors see double and their brains go out the window so to speak.
By 1844, the date of the coin in the original discussion things had changed a bit. The striking pressures were greater due to better steel being used (the old cast bronze screw presses were long gone). In many cases, the second strike makes the first strike invisible. I have cherry picked 50 degree rotations out of dealer stock based on traces of an understrike. The dealers didn't notice a partial second image under the first. In one case, the dealer listed the coin as scratched when the "scratch" was in fact the trace of a first strike tail. IT is like trying to spot the date of the host coin on a Brazilian 960 Reis a lot of luck is involved in spotting double strikes. They also had steel presses.
I was really trying to stop people from assuming that a double struck 8R coin is WORTH a fortune. It is an error in a field where errors are not normally collected.
Rare - That depends on your definition of RARE - BECAUSE every double struck coin is actually UNIQUE. Not just RARE but a unique product of a production error that can not be precisely duplicated.
But that alone is NOT a measure of value and novice collectors should not presume that a "double struck" will be treated as special when the time comes to sell it.
They may find themselves trying to overcome reluctance to buy a damaged coin.
Posted 07/21/2011 1:46 pm
picture ? picture? 
