Yahoo..found my 1st trail die

[hasfam]

Well, I'm excited. Been looking for them since I got back to searching. When I saw it, I went to traildies.com and was able to quickly ID it thanks to great photos, markers and descriptions. So now I am the proud owner of my 1st trail die variety, a 1999P-1DER-032T.
Yahoo.
Rock

[coppercoins]

I found my first this week too. Going through some original rolls of 1996D cents, I found a number of coins that show trails on the reverse from EPU. BJ said it's a new die. Cool!

[KurtS]

Ok, if we can find trails on LMCs from Denver, I should be looking too. But what I'm really interested in finding is the 96-D with lathe lines.

[hasfam]

Just curious, but is someone working on some sort of value guide for trail dies? Or are they too new to the hobby to get a good enough sense of supply and demand yet? How has this variety been accepted in large by the collecting community?

Rock

[wavysteps2003]

Yes, I have been working on a value guide for trail dies. Slowly but surely I have been entering prices onto the site which can be found below each die entry.

As for general acceptance; people are starting to take notice of this die anomaly. I started the site on the 17th of August, 2008 (that was the date that the site was bought) and so far we have had 9,300 visitors or about an average of 36 people a day. We will soon have the 1000th die in place (we are at 903 dies on the site) and should have that number in about two months.

The neat thing about this is that trail dies can be readily found in the change in your pocket. So with that in mind, this is the ground floor for collecting this type of anomaly.

As to what exactly the cause of trails is may not be so mysterious and I have ample proof that it is die related. We have both master dies and working hubs that show trail anomalies, so that leaves out any action caused by the strike or by cleaning of the die, during use.

It is the definition of what a doubled die is that has caused me some heartburn in classifying these anomalies as a doubled die. There is no doubling involved; it is design extension. However, the definition of a doubled die does include "anything extra" that is placed on the die during hubbing, so in that sense, these are doubled dies since that is what occurs. As to what Class of doubled die they belong to-------well, that is a different story.


Anyway, if you fell like collecting these guys, have fun. There are a lot out there to be found and some that can be seen with the naked eye (for those who think that these are a minor thing; they are not!) Also, they can be found on all present, denominational, business strike coin with a few proof coins have trails as well.

BJ Neff

[hasfam]

Thanks BJ for the info.

I do find these anomalies quite intriguing. And I especially like the fact that it is someting new. I would really like to get to understand exactly what they are and their causes. I have read your lengthy explanation on your site, but will have to go back and break it down into smaller bites for me to understand it better.

It's a shame there is not a way to test each hypothesis in order to determine more precise results.

In the meantime, I plan on finding and collecting as many as I can while it's fairly unknown and the pickings are good. I have a feeling when this variety finds it own place and demand rises, I'll be glad I made the effort to collect them early on.

BTW, I didn't notice a forum for discussion on your site. Is this something you are considering for down the line? Oh, wait a minute, I forgot that you are merging with Chuck on CC, right?

That would take care of a forum for open discussion. Any idea when this is going to happen?

Take care and thanks again for your hard work and dedication to this.

Rock