What Is This?

What confuses things is that in the top picture it does show the die doubling, but it also appears to show some MDD as well. The lower picture shows just the DDO.

It looks like MD on the "3" in second pic but could be an illusion due to lighting.

Thanks Coop for this thread. It shows the need for attributers, for without them more than a few doubled dies would be tossed as Machine Doubling. Second, it shows how tricky a doubled die looks on a proof coin. The lack of notching on the serifs and with only the division lines to identify this as a doubled die can throw the novice variety collector into a tail spin.

This is a common problem that I see at coin shows where I do verbal attributions on variety and error coins. The average collector does not know the difference between Machine Doubling and a doubled die. Sites such as this and LCR, with people like Chuck Daughtery, Bob Piazza, Richard Cooper, Billy Crawford, Mike Diamond, Jason Cuvelier, who are willing to spend that extra time answer questions like this are most valuable and a great learning tool.

BJ Neff

I'll take a poke. To me the 6 looks like it was in perfect shape until grease or dirt was scraped out of the working die with some sort of something. As far as the 3, I see a normal 3. I haven't really looked at the letters yet.