Pennys

[Machiavelli]

It seems my family has been hording pennys for quite some time... while looking through an old tube of wheaties I stumbled across a 1909... SCORE... heheh its not an s vdb but it will do untill I find one

Also today I ran through an old antique mall and found a lincoln penny set for 6 dollars it has all pennys from 1959 to 1982 including the large date variations in what i believe to be in almost au-50 condition... I just purchased some goo gone and some acitone from wal mart as I found a 1919 but it has some issues with either pvc or zinc oxyde hopefully the goo gone or acitone will fix it if not I will have to try some mineral oil...

some of the coins in the book have small black lines what I believe to be figerprint marks.. I will try to clean them also eventually I will take them all out of the book and put them in a new one that will go from 1909 - 2007 along with that I will pick up a nickel book.. but I doubt you guys really want to hear that.. all in all it was a great day for me... I also found my seattle world fair tokens... YYAAAYY!!! ... along with some other stuff like some buffalo nickels and some liberty head nickels...

also it seems that we have quite the pennys laying around.. after collecting them all there are around atleast 3000 I will be spending time looking through them for key dates...

I Hope to get your book soon coppercoins!!! cant wait to read

Mach

[coppercoins]

Hi Mach,

I doubt you would have any problem with zinc oxide on a 1919 cent - those had less than 3% zinc in their composition. The ones you'll likely encounter a problem with zinc oxide are the 1982-present coins that are 97.5% zinc.

As for the rest of the coins, start sorting them by date and mintmark. Always helps to look at a group of the same date together rather than a hodge podge of all sorts of dates.

[Machiavelli]

Thanks C.D that is what im currently doing... I am seperating all the coins from 1990 - present and 1989 - 1909 then once those are seperated I will look back through the 1909 - 1989 and seperate those into key dates after I get your book... right now im not quite sure which dates to look at specificly.. please tell me if there are any post 1990 coins that contain errors I have heard of 1998 and 1999 possibly ?? can you confirm this?

I do know that any date could have a error on it but I do not wish to dig through 2004 pennys hopeing to find an error... I will let somebody else do that.. and if they find one then I will start looking If you could please (or anybody who knows) tell me key dates after and including 1990 that I should also seperate from the rest of the pennys... my goal is to seperate all pre 1989 pennys from the rest then from there seperate those into the same dates then from there look through the key dates that have the most common errors and try to find some...

The whole reason for me finding errors is just for my own sake.. I do not plan on selling anything.. they will all go into my personal collection.. including machine doubleing.. I will have my own small binder full of 2x2's just for "fake" errors.. just for reference.. and another binder for (if i ever find any) real errors that will also go into my personal collection...

any ways if anybody can help me with some key dates until the book arrives I would be greatfull...

Mach

[coppercoins]

First things first...your use of the term "error" is incorrect if you are looking for doubled dies and mintmark varieties. These are considered "die varieties" and not "errors". If you are looking for errors as well, that's fine, but they are different things.

As for machine doubling, once you know how to spot the difference between that and doubled dies, no reason to keep any of them. They have no collectible value as such.

There is a rather strong doubled die known on the reverse of 2004P cents...don't discard what you don't know about, you could be tossing the pick of the litter. Best thing is to sort the coins by date and look at all of them - not just choice dates where there is "known" stuff to look for...someone had to have discovered all of that at one time.

[Machiavelli]

Thank you for your valuable guidence I will continue sorting the pennys into pre and post 1990 but istead of returning the post 1990's I will further sort those aswell.. may I ask what you use to sort your pennys by date... I was thinking of mason jars used for jams and jellys and the such... would this be good or is there a more affordable alternative.. maybe plastic dixie cups will suffice... right now I am using taster choice nescafe plastic pop lid containers they seem to work good at the moment but I would rather have clear see through containers...

Also It seems I am not using the terms correctly.. I apologize for this and will try to learn these differences with time... I am new to collecting coins by date and mint.. before I was just collecting anything I got for christmas. I am now starting to join the penny and nickel craze I enjoy both.. nickels are harder to come by but I have allready found several pre 1965's which contain small traces of silver in them... as for pennys I cant seem to find any references as to what exactly to look for so I will be doing as you say good sir... I hope to get your book so I may learn the varables in the lincoln/copper craze...

Mach

[Bob P]

Mach...
It's good o see someone so excited about collecting, and I am also glad to see that you are willing to learn about prpoer terminology and the like.
As far as separating coins, I personally think the mason jars would be a bit much when it comes down to individual dates. For some reason, I can't picture anyone with 100 or so mason jars next to their magnifying glass On the other hand, you made mention of dixie cups, and they are what I use. Small, inexpensive, and light weight. I think it's a great choice.
You mentioned in a previous post if there were any good varieties after 1990..well thought I would add that there are quite a few including 1994 reverses, the big 1995 doubled dies, and 1996 had a few, as well as the 1997 doubled ear. Then there are the wide AMs for 1998, 99, and 2000. There are many to look for, but I agree with Chuck in that you look at everything. I made a discovery last year of a tripled eyelid on a 1928 cent. To this date, I have not found anywhere where it had been identified before. It'll be great if you made a discovery because you were knowledgeable and persistent. Keep it up, and enjoy!

[Machiavelli]

It seems I will start from scratch I use cheap styrofoam cups with specific dates on them... I was unaware of the 1996's, 1994's and 1997's but after checking the red book I did find out about the 1995 ddo and the 98 99 and 00 wide AM along with the 92 Close AM along with the 69 - 70 ddo's and on and on... those were what I was looking for and I did not find any from what I have looked through.. It seems there are many varieties like both of you mentioned earlier... I apologize for my Ignorance.. before I only wanted to look for specific varieties that have allready been discovered.. It seems the undiscovered are the best of all..

what I am currently doing at the momment is seperating all pennys by decade such as 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, then from there seperating a handful at a time into respected years that I wanted to find.. such as the 98, 99, 00 wide am and the 92d close am along with the 60's varieties 70's, and 80's, and the newly discovered 2004 ddr this seems most efficient for me as I can pace myself by working with a couple handfuls of pennys and throwing them into there decades for later seperation based on what I want to look for..

Im aware that I am taking an extra step and instead I could just be putting the pennys right into the corresponding years... I guess I like making things more difficult... to me the decades allow for a more organized approach to looking for the earlier dates... such as the 60's and 70's it allows for me to grab a handful of strickly certain decade and look through them for a specific date.. otherwise I would be forced to put all the coins in specific date holders constantly having to redig through different decades for a specific date... basically it narrows down the search... 1 day I can spend seperating the pennys into decades.. and spend the next weak grabbing a handfull of them from the jar and picking out key dates to go through...

my question is how do you guys sort, collect, handle, deal, and otherwise go about looking for varieties and specific error coins??

I am greatly intriged as to how the pro's do it (to me you guys are the pro's) I hope to get a better grasp on how to go about seperating coins...

Also what are some of the key things you look for when dealing with double die varieties.. I do not own a double die coin so I dont know exactly what to look for.. I have seen pictures from CONECA that show a ddo and it shows arrows pointing to were the problem is.. I for one dont see anything but a faint line here and there... and if that is all it is.. Ive probably ran through several different varieties I have a magnifying glass.. one of the huge ones Sherlock Holmes style least to say I need to buy a loupe but when I look I dont see what there talking about (least to say I dont have a double die to look at)

all in all coin collecting is complicated and I for one enjoy complicated projects... I just need to get Chucks book asap so I can learn

on a side note I checked out some numismatic reading material from my local library its a bunch of stories of people finding great coins.. its called The Numismatist's Bedside Companion I also have the Fireplace Companion... least to say there old books.. but I enjoy reading of peoples success... ( I GUESS IVE GOT THE BUG ) I also checked out Collector's Compass United States Coins... In hope that they will better inform me of some of the tips and tricks for good coin collecting... atleast untill I recieve Chuck's book

Have a great day guys I hope to hear from you on your thoughts and opinions... and please feel free to correct me on any miss represented terminology Im still learning as fast as I can

Jason

aka

Mach

[coppercoins]

You're doing well so far, but it's "doubled die," not "double die." I know it's splitting hairs, but when you write about them it shows the difference between the knowledged and the novice.

When sorting a larger group of coins by year, it's actually more efficient to start with ten containers (with lids preferrably - I use small peanut butter jars) and sort them by the LAST digit FIRST. Your zero cup will contain 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000 after you sort them. Then each jar only contains five or six dates instead of ten.

What do I look for? Well, that's sort of fishing out of a barrel for me, because I've known what to look for going on 20 years now. What should you look for? Anything that looks doubled and isn't flat or shelf like...the machine doubling. None of it commands any premium at all unless it's severe, and even then it's not worth much as an error. Errors are typically only worth a premium if they won't fit into a roll.

Once you pull out anything that has doubling on it, check the references for what you have to attribute them. The doubling and markers MUST match EXACTLY or you don't have what you think you have. If you can't find anything referenced on the die you have, that's the time to bunch them up into dozens and send them in for attribution. That's the best way I can tell you to learn it. All the books and photos in the world won't do you much good until you find some of them and know what you're looking for.

Hope this helps.