I got an email the other day from my friend Bill. He is also collaborating on the project I’m working on. He has a take on what makes a major variety that is similar to that of Hans Zoell from back in the 1960’s. Generally speaking, if a planchet is struck with good dies, from a press that is in good working order, yet there are differences from one set of dies to another, then that is a major variety. He goes on to talk about progressive damage to dies as being minor. Think here about die cracks and die chips as an example. These are the little unintended markers that show up on the coins that researches used to figure out die pairs, early die states and the like. Progressive is out, intended is in. I’m OK with that.
You can also classify punch damage in a progressive nature. I’m thinking here of broken vines, stems, letters, etc. Unintended damage that leaves a permanent output on the working dies. This progressive failure is “punch across the working dies” rather than the “working die across the planchet”. It’s the same thing but applied to a different part of the process. I’m OK with that too.
So we know what’s out, but what exactly is in? This continues to remain hard to say. A reengraving of letter or number that leaves small tell tale signs is not really a major issue. A reengraving of a letter or number that leaves us all wondering if the die was a “Monday” effort is something else. I think this goes back to something easily seen and not having to use more than a 10x glass to find. That puts reengraving and repuching, provided you can easily see it, into our field of play.
I realize that what passes as a variety is quite an individual thing. If you are a “Type” collector, you certainly are not considered a variety collector by the coin community at large but you may well see yourself as nothing but a variety collector. You collectables are defined by design change. Is a date collector a variety collector? Probably not, but you could argue that each date is a different variety. How about collecting by obverse? Here I would need two of the following years 1882, 1884, 1886 & 1891, then three for 1892. This is starting to look like a variety collection to me. Also if you pay attention to your 1859’s and have a narrow 9, a 9/8, a DP#1, DP#2 etc. you collect varieties. How about 1891 LLLD, LLSD, SLSD? Yep again you pass the test. Where do you draw the line. What is a major variety and what is a minor one? What do you intend to focus on? Do you have a favorite date? Hmm… Lots of questions for sure.
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I hadn't really given much thought to varieties, as I am only a novice collector just starting to get into the market of purchasing coins to fill in missing dates from my circulation collection. But as my collection develops, I have started to think about what my goals should be. Initially it was to collect dates; now I am using the Charlton price guides to determine what the "major" varieties are, if that is what you would call them.
ReplyDeleteI am only recently coming to understand how many varieties of Victoria cents there are, and I am both fascinated and overwhelmed at the vastness of it. I have to admit to being stunned to read that many collectors have hundreds or even thousands of Vickies in their collections! Of all the cent sets I am working on, the Vickies are by far the least complete, so I am now trying to do the best I can to add to it, but they are hard to come by on eBay where I am currently doing most of my purchasing. I think for now I will continue to look for just the dates that I am missing, but maybe in the future when I have most or all of the years I will consider expanding to the different varieties. Thank you for the blog, I will add it to my list of sites that I read to learn what I can on the subject.