Hello all, I felt I had to write this as there seems to be a conflict between collectors as to values with these coins. Also I have to get some of my thoughts out about the hobby as I am relatively new and don't know if I am correct in my thinking here or just naive, so please don't take offense. I have been collecting coins for some twenty years or so but not perhaps following the usual or so and have always collected what I liked and though was cool or undervalued at the time. I did this rather than follow the channel of reading books and educating my self on coins or buying what was in fashion so to speak. During this time I collected many gold and silver coins when the prices were as I believed at the time cheap. When gold and silver hit their highs last year I sold most of them as I could not refuse the profit. Having a surplus from their sale I looked into other areas to expand my collection and found several proof errors which I was surprised to see were worth a considerable amount of money. I also acquired a deep appreciation of naturally toned coins and noticed that too is a hot topic as such. Because this required a lot more education to be able to differentiate between altered coins, damaged coins and genuine errors or double dies so I started to read books and joined Coneca. I also started to submit coins for grading and encapsulation. I found a good microscope and some high quality loupes and started to search coin rolls and bags more for fun than anything as I enjoy searching them in my spare time. During this time I found various errors, double dies and many that turned out to be nothing but strike doubling or such. I encapsulated the good ones and kept some for my own collection and sold some for a profit, nothing major just to keep things ticking over. I also obtained some 2009 cent boxes and found a significant amount of variety's including some doubled obverses and reverses so I became interested in them. Ok, so now you know the background now let me say that much as with gold and silver I feel these variety's are undervalued at the moment. I know that many are saying they are not worth anything because they are not like the 1955 or 1972 double dies, but then reading about them they were not worth much to start with either. I know that their are large numbers of them out there but still they are interesting variety's and some are strongly doubled. I have noticed that PCGS and NGC do not recognize many of the variety's and wondered why. As a beginner let me say that my understanding of the hobby is that the more new people that come into the hobby the better it is for the hobby and the more prices go up. Yet there seems to me to be a certain amount of snobbery or elitism (sorry if it offends but that's the best description I can find) towards anything that doesn't fit in with what SOME of the older collectors don't think is worthy. Sure I would love to have a 1955 ddo one day but I can not justify the cost other than as an investment and as an investment it would have considerable downside risk with some upside potential. A roll of a strong (not one of the very minor variety's) 2009 ddr / ddo would be a small fraction of the price with much more upside potential and less downside potential, that is certainly the way it looks to me. Also from what I understand all coins tend to peak in price within a year or so of release and then at around three years tend to trough before they start to gain long term value. To buy these now at around $3-$5 each would therefore seem to be a good investment as I would expect on the downside the worst that could happen is you get close to your money back and at best they may sell for $10-$60 each in years to come. Also the beginning collector would surely start with the least expensive coins to educate them and graduate to the more expensive as they gain more experience. I am certainly keeping the ones I have found and looking to buy more. The thing that confuses me is so many posts about these is from people who seem for some irrational reason to dislike them and think they are worthless. To be honest I do not understand why that is? Please feel free to add your two cents!!
2009 Formative Years DDR's Hello friend. I am obsessed with the formative years DDR's. I have searched box after box. I've found several DDR's, including the big ones. I have found WDDR 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 16 and 17 just to name a few. The one that has elluded me is the WDDR 6. I have 2x2ed every one of them to put back. From what i hear, the Cherrypickers Guide has assigned them FS numbers. As soon as the new books hit the market, the prices should skyrocket. Just look at the 1997 doubled ear. They were very inexpensive before they were assigned an FS number. Besides, since the die process changed, so has the nature of the doubled dies. Modern doubled dies are changing, so the market will change too. The major grading companies only reconize varieties that are in the major variety catalogues. So, if it is true about the FS numbers, the major grading companies will reconize the new doubled dies. If you would like to talk more about this subject, send me an instant message and/or friend request. Thanks. :hail:
The value of a coin is directly related to how many there are vs how many people want them. There are hundreds of relatively scarce coins which folks simply do not care about. As such, their values are relatively modest compared to more popular coins. For this modern coin, which the 2009 DDR Lincolns are, the shear number of "different" varieties within this one coin tells people that there are millions of these and as such, there's no real big hurry to explore the coin much less attempt to collect them as there does not appear to be an upside. If people do not care then there simply is no viable market other than those that do care. Those that DO care, probably already have what they need and as such, they are NOT in the market to buy. Again, there's just not a viable market to pursue with this particular coin. It's not that the coin and its 101+ different varieties isn't important as much as it's that folks have simply lost interest. I believe that the interest went bye bye at around DDR-030 when the attributors began attributing extremely minor doubling which is nearly undetectable by the loupe. The same degree of doubling on more larger coins is always returned as "too minor to list". Just like anything else in this world, alot can be too much. In a hundred years, maybe things will change with regard to the coin but IMO heavily investing in these today is a fool's errand simply because the market is extremely limited due to the fact that most folks simply don't care. If YOU can figure out a way of getting peoples attention so that they do care, then and only then will things turn around. Perhaps if someone that has collected and had graded and attributed the entire run of these coins would make a display at a major coin show coupled with articles in a national numismatic publication would do the trick? I don;t know. As for prices "skyrocketing" due to inclusion in some future Cherry Pickers Guide, I seriously doubt that this will occur since those that really want these coins, already have them and the CPG would present nothing that is really new. Type B Washington's certainly did not "skyrocket" once they were included in the CPG. If anything at all, prices on low grade Type B's have dropped below the point of diminishing returns in that you cannot sell an MS64 for anywhere near close to what it costs to get graded and attributed.
I agree with Lyds, there are just too many of them to ever carry much of a premium going forward. I've found four different varieties of them so far just searching regular circulatied rolls. That tells me that there are lots of examples of each of the many varieties.
I pulled at least 3 different types of DDRs from ONE mint roll the other day . It was stamped 4/28/2009 at 9:48AM IIRC. I have one sealed box still with the same time/date. Now I need to identify these guys. I did find 8 of the WDDR-002's it looks like- Strong second thumb with a tiny appendage between the thumb and forefinger.
Ok, let me try to clarify here, first they are all LP2 2009 P mint coins. I always read that anything too small to see with a 5x loupe is not going to be much use to anyone so I use a 10x Bauch&lomb for initial searching purely because I find it easier that the 5x. I have some WDDR-075's which I looked at with a 10x and missed the ddr but pulled them out because they had die crack that ran across the mallet to the rim. Only when I came to look at it under the scope did I notice the hand error so it is so minor I can not see it with the loupe. I agree they may never be worth much although from what I understand sometimes the very coins that are considered worthless often end up being the ones that no one saved. I noticed this when my nickel collection 1938-2012 was supposed to have a key date of 1950. However it was actually one of the cheaper nickels presumably because people recognized the low mintage and saved them all? I think I paid $15 for an ms 65 and cracked it out of the slab, I paid the most for a 1942 D type 1 nickel I think at $60 bu ungraded. Anyhow to my mind that would not be worth slabbing as it is so minor only if it increased in value due to rarity or if needed for a set would it interest anyone. The ddr's I have found that I thought were worth saving are wddr 014, 076 (borderline but with a massive late stage C die crack from rim almost to Lincolns shoulder), 046 stage A + B. I also found six other variety's that were less prominent and a very few oddballs one of which has the thumb detached from the hand. All are interesting but the one that I actually like the most is the double die obverse wddo-009. It does not do it justice when you look at the pics on Wexlers or Coppercoins website. They are very easy to spot even with a 2x because of the thickness in the word liberty. So I am not so much asking why the minor doubled dies are....well considered minor, more I am asking about why the prominent ddo's and ddr's are so cheap. Maybe because there are so many types that confuses things? Now on mintage there were 376.000,000 lp2 Pennsylvania cents minted, I find maybe two or three ddrs per roll in boxes that I have targeted as being likely to have double dies in them. So say 6% are ddo/ddr which is generous as I pay a premium for the boxes I know are likely to have them in. then that would be 22,560,000. There are at least 121 known variety's maybe more so divide 22,560,000 by 121 and you come up with 186,446 per variety. Now I know this will not be accurate and I know die life should be a lot more than that but again no one knows. So there may be some variety's with very small mintage's and some with huge mintage's. Also I notice that many good investment coins were the unpopular ones, either deemed over priced when they went on sale so not many were purchased or people did not like the design so they were unpopular. I know all that is conjecture but still it adds to my thought that they may still be cheap. On the value my point is more one of what I see as being value, I always buy what I think is good value with few exceptions (some coins you just cant resist) and maybe I pay $50 for a 1995 ddo cent and feel I barely got any value. Whereas for $5-10 you can buy a wddo-009 which to me is in the same league. I love the 1955 ddr but I don't think I would ever buy one for $1500+. Now to the point that price is dictated by demand. Surely if you buy when something is in demand you are riding the train, if you buy something that is undervalued you nearly always have a good investment. But if you can see value and anticipate demand then that would be the best investment. There is a really good book out there called the black swan by Nicholas Taleb which I recommend for reading. To some extent I trust my own judgment or instinct on this but then I also doubt myself constantly. When I was buying gold eagles PF/MS 69 at $400-600 and ounce my wife thought I was nuts, then when I sold them at $1700 each she thought I was a nuts for selling them! Maybe she is nuts lol! I am a great believer that when people get greedy I get scared and sell, but right now people are scared and I see opportunity everywhere. I would imagine that inclusion in the cherrypickers would help though maybe not skyrocket, but it still seems to me that many do not look at these as genuine double dies because they are not what they expect to see like the 1995/1955? Perhaps Steve is right that the nature of double dies has changed and peoples expectations are slower to change than the technology. I never really thought of it like that being so new to them I never really formed opinions as to what they should be. I have a number of coins I pull out on occasion to marvel at, sometimes a 1995 ddo, double struck or broad struck, or a cool struck through grease. As an engineer I marvel at the train of events that caused them to be created. Each uniquely different almost like a fingerprint. I also marvel at toned coins, these are a whole subject on their own as people try to fake them. Again I am amazed at the iridescent tones and colors. When I look at many of these 2009 double dies I find they have the same affect on me.
I think about the 1972 doubled dies, there are several. the big #1 is the most valuble. that says to me the bigger ddr' will be more valuble while the smaller ons of course will be less. Many people dont evem know about them,so if the CPG lists them the demand will go up,therefor so should the value. Just my opinion.
I agree they are overlooked at the moment, the more prominent ones are already starting to trade at a little bit of a premium and I have seen them listed with cherrypickers numbers so they must be in there. Time will tell I guess but I still think they are a good opportunity.
