I have a few Questions!

[aballein]

the funniest thing i have ever heard Gee Dub say was Tornaada, talking about the recent tornado that hit a highschool down south.

As far as what i like to look for...EVERYTHING..i have a hard time seeing RPM's though, mainly because i use a little loupe and dont have a microscope YET.

[eagames]

Aaron,

I find that loupe is fastest for searching because I can look through cents faster, line up the coins on a surface and focus by moving the loop and my eye or change angles so it's faster than putting them under a scope. One key is you need to find a real good loupe that works for you.

How about everyone else, what do you all search with, scopes or loupes?

[aballein]

i agree that the loupe is the fastest but some of those RPM's are just plain hard to see. Im trying to look for a small vertical line inside of a brown D!! My eyesight sucks anyway so i just wish i had a scope. Something funny about my "loupe"...it actually a biology microscope that i tore apart for the little 5x-10x magnifier. Its about 5 inches tall and the glass is at the end of it. It works pretty good though, one plus to it is that it cancels out all the light between my eyeball and the glass due to the height of the shaft i have to look down through. Plus it really magnifies the coin..just not enough for me to see and small RPM's.

[eagames]

I made my favorite loupe from some old 10x eypieces from an old scope. Taking it out of the tube helped.

Some of them are held in the tube by a threaded piece with 2 slots, using a flat piece of metal in the slots it unscrews. Each one had 2 lens in it and a spacer. I taped the edge of the 2 lens with the same spacer part in between them so it works without the long tubes. It made a great loupe, better than ones you can buy. I made a similar thing by taking 2 lens and a spacer in a cardboard tube that fits snug on my cheap cameras lens. That way I can take it off for normal pics and it stays on well enough for coin pics.

[aballein]

i guess the real kicker about my loupe is its not exactly mine...i borrowed the microscope from my boss whom is pretty much my best friend so i cant tear it up any more than it already is. I can put the microscope back together, but not if i try to remove the lens. I guess i'll have to make due with what i have.

[Dick]

Aaron, I appreciate what you say, when you say your eyesight "sucks". Think of the fun I have with MD, (Macular Deterioration), and looking at straight lines, I see curves and broken spots., etc. I gave up looking for wavy steps, because every coin I look at is full of major wavy lines! RPM's, Bars, And doubled dies are about my limit.
Dick

[Rhubarb]

Thank's for the reply's Guy's and Girl's.

I will tell ya I first started this Hobby when I was Metal Detecting. I would find coin's that intriged me. I would then examine them to see what they were exactly since they were covered in Dirt. I then started to collect Cent's since they were the cheapest to get at a fair price. Then one day I ran across Copper Coin's . com. I then realized that everything I had might be worth more than a penny. It's amazing what one will learn if they put there best effort at achiving a goal. Mine is to find as many error Lincoln Cent's as I can. This is why I started this thread.

I just wondered why your interest in looking for error coins started.

David

[carlb]

Been collecting for well over 60 years. Never looked at any coins for errors until I bought a few books by some guy named Charles D. Daughtrey. Now have two upstairs by the computer and two downstairs with the coins. Started going through thousands of coins since those books made me into a error nut. Now up to numerous boxes of coins full of errors and just wish I could stop.

[Bob P]

No you don't Carl. I know you don't wish you could stop. You probably wish there were more hours in the day to keep searching! You can't fool me

[wavysteps2003]

The art of searching.

1. The loop versus the scope. Hands down winner is the scope. It is more versitile and is just as fast as a loop. The added attraction is that you see more of the coin than with a loop for you are using TWO eyes instead of one. Some people develope headaches while using a loop and aslo tend to switch back and forth from one eye to another so as not to have eye strain. That is not a problem with a scope.

2. Cost. Loop is the winner, however, in the long run you will find more with a scope than a loop and that is a fact.

3. Wheaties or Memorials. We are not looking for semi-key and key dates here and believe me, there is an awful lot of undiscovered varities out there in the Wheat cents, much more than you would expect. Memorials, 3 more years and they will be history and like the wheat cent, people will start looking up to them. By far, the Memorial's have more varieities than the Wheat's do (no way you say? - consider the rpms of the 1960's, the extra columns and my favorite, the wavy steps. That is 1000 + right there). Take your choice for either one can give you a big surprise.

4. Methodes of search. There are lots; some seperate by date, some by mint mark, some look at the obverse only, some the reverse and others, both sides. Some have a pattern of search, looking at one area first and then going clock-wise or counter clock-wise. The easiest for me is to look at the whole coin, one side then the other and I look for inconsistances in the patterns. If something looks out of shape or doesn't look right, then I jack my power up and look a bit more carefully.

There are all different ways to search and the most common mistake I see is people trying to focus in one just one die or in some cases several. Your best bet is to know what the differences in the designs were for each year and know what each design element looks like normally. Then you can go on from there.

As far as what to collect, I put everything up that catches my fancy at the time and then later on, see how and if it fits into my collection. Example; I save each and every extra column that I find, however, I do not save them, but I do ship them off to Bill Slaughter who I know is doing a comprehensive study on that particular anomaly.

Well that is it in a nutshell. Hope that it helps.

BJ Neff

[Rhubarb]

[wavysteps2003]

Hello David - Just sent you a PM that may help you.

It is not remembering the different dies that is important, but remembering what the design elements look like and the changes that were made as the years past. If you look at a date and know that it has extra thickness compared to a normal date, then you may have a doubled die. That holds true for LIBERTY as well and E PLURIBUS UNUM on the reverse. It is all knowing what the design elemets look like.

BJ Neff

[eagames]

A good example is 1968 vs 1969:

Look at some 1968 cents, they have a mushy look and the portrait looks higher in relief. The letters like liberty and the motto are wide. The motto is almost touching the rim.

Then look at a 1969 cent, they look sharp and the portrait is flatter (it's a different portrait). The letters will be clearer, thinner. The motto will be far from the rim.

So if you look at a roll of 68 cents they all are fat and not DDOs but if you see a liberty as wide as that 68 but it's on a 69 it probably would be something odd.

This is why looking at one year at a time helps, your eye might catch the coin that just does not look like it should.

[Rhubarb]

[Rhubarb]

Ed,

You speak of the 1968 cent's being close to the rim. I have noticed the difference in distance to the rim only in Wheat Cent's. The 68 is a different design as you say. the 69 is new. I have these date's but haven't looked at them. I will.

The best way for me to describe what you have said is: A new Die was made with a different "Master Die" different from the year before. Die's are made from the Master De then the Die's start producing coin's. The coin's are produced with a die. Is this the correct statement?

David