Wanted to say hello as well as provide an opinion to all of you fine numismatists

[DragonSlayerz]

My name is Lenny and I just wanted to say hello to all you folks. I appreciate your passion for this and can only hope to some day be able to focus the time that is seemingly needed to have a thorough education in all of this.
I can plainly see that this is very serious business for many and there is little time for incompetence or laziness. However, we all have to start somewhere, right? Outside of being truly fascinated with the study and/or collector's aspect; I believe that there is legitimate earning potential for serious individuals. That being said, and I know that it might sound crazy and many of you will chalk my next comment up simply to inexperience but I have found so many discrepancies between average coins that it is startling. The discrepancies that I have found are not one's that are seemingly discussed in these platforms though. But, I am certain of quite a few of these differences between multiple era coins which might be understandable in some ways but when the overall knowledge or consensus for any one of the given discrepancies is just that; because of the different era. However, when you bring a coin such as a U.S. dime which supposedly has not had any changes to the overall design of the wording or left facing bust of FDR since 1946; outside of removing silver in 64 if I'm correct.
I'm sure that some of these can be attributed to my lack of knowledge but if I cannot ask for guidance here then where else does one turn? I have discovered quite a few differences in just this "dime" coin alone that span different era's which are probably too many to list here. The same goes for the Penny and Nickel in which I have discovered so many "little" discrepancies that when I have asked has been sort of blown off and probably attributed to inexperience.
I would sincerely appreciate any guidance or thoughts from the good folks here on where a good place might be to start my education or venture in numismatics? Thank you folks, I eagerly look forward to receiving anything that may be of help. Happy Hunting!

[Daniel]

Welcome to the forum. I can give you this advice, and I am very experienced in this, you don't look for minor discrepancies on coins. Not in the way you're describing it. You want to focus on doubled dies, RPMs, and known differences where all the work has been done to verify they're a variety. And I am talking more modern and common coins here, we all know there's different varieties for older type coins like misplaced dates, or even the Franklin Half bugs bunny.

Also most of the discrepancies people are seeing on coins is die clashes, polish marks, minor strike throughs, die ships, die cracks, plating blisters, circulation damage (minor nor not) and mostly it is do to die wear and die fatigue and that can create cold metal flow and change the shape of things. So I would move toward known errors and die varieties and not minor anomalies.

[Paul]

Welcome

[Earle42]

Welcome Lenny!

I agree with Daniels. Especially in this day when microscope technology is inexpensive and available to everyone, people have been posting to forums many worthless imperfections that have been on coins for all time - but overlooked.

Here is some help:
Save Yourself time, effort, and disappointment...don’t learn the coin hobby backwards.

Looking for random anomalies on coins and hoping they match up to something collectable will take you a lot more time, wasted effort, and disappointment repeatedly finding out you have nothing but post mint damage.

Spend some initial time at places like error-ref.com, doubleddie.com, varietyvista.com, conecaonline.org, coppercoins.com etc. to find what actual and collectable coin errors look like.

A good way to start is, for instance, separate a bunch of pennies by date. Go to varietyvista.com and, date by date, use the reference there to see what errors are known for that specific coin/mint mark. Look for those specific errors/varieties using the pictures provided. After doing this for awhile you will KNOW what an actual error looks like and not have to waste time on face value and damaged coins.

And one more thing:

Click to enlarge. Ignore to make us very unhappy

Please watch the video!

[DragonSlayerz]

Wow! Thank you for the excellent advice gentleman. Because the two responses offering advice were extremely polite, generous and very informative I am that much less discouraged and will continue my education of numismatics. Thanks again GENTLEMAN.

[Coin Mule]

Hey Dragon, just to emphasize what Earl said, those sites will teach you what to look for, it will save you time and humiliation. Now if you really want somethings special, go here, http://www.vamworld.com/wiki/Home, it will consume you, it will be like the search for my lost "precious".

[ArcherFawsitt]

as a beginner this is helpful for me