Kinda Reminds Me of..............

[LateDateMorganGuy]

A few posts recently reminds of something that came up a while ago. The question seems to be posed something like, "my coin has this feature and why isn't it listed"?

This question reminds me of the "Dots on berries" inquiry. What caused it and why isn't it listed? I won't attempt to answer what caused it. There are several theories, but the fact that it shows up on virtually all reverse dies in the 1904-O series usually means it is a hub or master die issue. But here is why is is not listed and not used for attribution. The reason is simple, it is common and not unique to a certain die or VAM.

I did a take-off of dots on berries using the 1904-O series. Here is the result.

[SilverToken]

Berry Informative

[shortnock]

Dots... a nice study!

[keilg1]

In the pattern of Xs I see... well... Nope. I got dizzy. I fell off my chair. I had a drink of gin (difficult to do on the floor). Got up eventually and decided to add juniper berries to my next drink and wow do I feel good!



All of this, and the other posts (me being mindful of my own micro-vamming tendency) reminded me of the following - talk about cool stuff for a specific purpose (and that ain't vamming): https://www.coincommunity.com/forum/top ... _ID=396008.

I agree on one of the other posts: all we really need is a good 10x loop - or like my Bausch & Lomb triple lens 5x to 20x - to spot all the variants I could imagine (and not ones that I'd only be imagining)... Taking photos, however, I prefer my USB plug in DinoLite with a polarizer for the light. Makes dem berries look like melons. Or wait? Is that the gin?

[Mike7E]

I like it! I have been looking at bursting olives on some but not all 1878 and 1879 VAMs and think it is also a hubbing variation.

[BrainVAMage]

Yeah I know right! Like when people can't see the In of IGWT in a 1904 O and find the listing for it, and yet here it is, in the same position "plain as day with practically no magnification" in a 1888 P that's listed in the VAM pages. Wow right! Like you can see it glimmering "at the right angle" with the naked eye it's so obvious. And even the bar between the lip and the chin too! But I'm sure you could see the other markers that make it a specific VAM with a nice quality 10x loupe right? To identify it? Or do you use high magnification for that? Or does it remind you of something...... else.

Or would you use, say for example, an extremely expensive state of the art computerized vision system, programmed with algorithms to detect surface patters and anomolies that should or shouldn't be there, you know, so high end grading companies don't pay people to sit in offices and grade coins using a loupe or microscope and fail to tell the difference between die polishing scratches, or say, circulation or cleaning scratches that turn a $100 coin into a $100K coin. I'd be pretty upset about that if the experts couldn't identify those differences.

BTW, I deal with this type of equipment in my field of work, but I enjoyed seeing the old electron microscope. I love antiques. Reminds me of when my Dad and I would Magnaflux metal objects in the early 1980's and use CMM machines so precise you could measure the whiskers on Miss Liberty's chin.

Happy Halloween!