Finding a 1969-S Doubled Die 1C

The following was sent in by Megan Green and is published here as a Guest Blog article.  Mrs Green recently discovered a 1969-S Doubled Die Obverse, FS-101.  This is her story...   

Hello,

    My name is Megan Green.  I am 27 years old, married and have two beautiful children. My son is 4 years old and my daughter is 3. I started coin searching almost two years ago. When my son was born, he was diagnosed with a very rare heart defect called Diverticulum of the Left Ventricle which required me to stay at home with him to attend his medical needs and care. I’ve always been a hard worker as I’ve worked since I 

was 11 years old so it was quite difficult to make the transition but little did I know I was going to be doing more work than I ever have in my entire life. With all the work it takes to raise a medically inclined child, I still needed something to keep my mind stimulated to feel I was doing something productive. I needed a hobby to keep myself entertained during my mommy time.

   When it was time to have some mommy alone time, I’d get on YouTube and watch different videos such as photography, music, education and news. I one day came across a news reporting video about the 1970 Washington Quarter that had been stamped with a Canadian Quarter and was sold for $35,000. I was dumbfounded as to how someone would pay that much for a quarter. A thought came to my mind about trying out this new hobby and I felt if I could help out financially for my family and enjoy doing it at the same time, it’s a win-win situation. I sat there almost two hours scrolling through different coin videos which soon had me hooked!

    When my son was first born we lived in Texas. There is a golf course there called Northcliffe Golf Club. My husband and I had worked there for a few years just before I had my son. The owner, being the full hearted thoughtful person that he is, put together a golf tournament/ banquet to help raise money for my son's medical expenses. He also had a donation jug for my son which was filled with coins and it was also given to us after the tournament. I had no idea about the coin world yet, so like anyone who wouldn’t, I kept those coins in a big tin bucket and put them up. My husband and I continued to throw our change in anytime we had change with the intentions to fill it to the top before we cashed it in. After I had watched those YouTube videos I remembered we had that tin full of coins and super excited to go through them to invest what little I had learned in that short time span. That is how it all started.

I first separated them into piles of denominations. As I went through the piles, I’d listen to YouTube videos on different coin varieties. That’s when I really started to follow Coin Opp. Dustin Morgan is a very genuine person and his enthusiasm kept me excited. He has so much knowledge about coins and explains everything so well. Every time I’d hear of a new error I’d go through the same piles I had separated over and over and put them to the side. There was no stopping me at that point. I was so pleased to finish that tin of coins! I then learned about picking up coin rolls from the bank and I obsessed about finding any MS coins or error coins. Soon I became overwhelmed trying to search all denominations at once so I decided to stick with pennies for the time being.

    While coin searching, I would collect all wheat cents even though some may not have errors I still find them to be unique, all 1959’s thru 1973’s for different die varieties and doubling, any 1982 D small Dates for 3.1 grams in weight, 1983’s 1989’s and 1990’s also transitional pennies accidentally produced during those years, 1984’s for doubling on Lincoln’s ear, 1988’s produced with the wrong FG, all 1992’s to search for close AM, 1994’s and 1995’s for doubling, 1998 1999 and 2000’s for the wide AM and doubling, and last but not least the 2009’s for doubling. I have only incorporated about 4 Indian head pennies in my time of searching and of course, a lot of Canadian cents.

    In July, I slowed down my coin searching because I wasn’t having much luck finding good coins and felt defeated. I gradually started back mid October picking up a box twice a week. It was good to get back into the coin zone as I had missed everything about it! The break, I think, was needed and gave me the excitement back. After three weeks I was up to 3-5 boxes per week. I bank with Chase bank and try not to exhaust one bank at a time so I bounce from one branch to another. There is a bank teller whose name is Brett and he is always so helpful getting me coins. I picked up 3 boxes from him on Nov 28th. When I collect more than one box I tend to open all of them at once. While searching I’ll keep in mind which box came from which bank in hopes that if I find good coins they’ll have more when I go to pick up more. Especially when they give me the customer rolled pennies. In this case, having them all from the same bank, I still skipped around because I wanted to know if there was really any difference in the boxes. I always question how they are rerolled when the bank sends them into the reserve.

   That night I had gone through my first box with only finding a small amount of errors. I was about 3/4’s through the second box when I found the1969s DDO! I honestly never thought I’d every really find one but I am always very excited to find a 1969s while searching and will immediately grab my microscope to check for any doubling. I have found about 45 1969’s without doubling and had a few I felt were in question but when I saw this one I knew it was the famous one that everyone talks about. There’s no mistaking it and the ones I had in question weren’t anything to compare! I actually thought I had some lent or something on my contacts at first. It was late at night and I kept rubbing my eyes to make sure this was really what I was seeing! I used my USB LCD digital microscope (Celestron) with a screen at the top to see the image view and there it sat, more beautiful than anything I had ever seen before! I kept laughing in disbelief while saying out, “Are you kidding me?!?!” I jumped up and ran my coin and microscope into the bedroom where my husband and the kids were sleeping. The light from the microscope lit up the room which woke everyone up but I was too excited to care. I shoved the microscope with the coin in husband’s face and said, “BABE, I FINALLY FOUND IT!!!” As he’s reviewing the screen he looks up at me and says, “What is it?” I didn’t realized I had it zoomed in on the letter D in the word GOD. I zoomed it out and he just smiled real big and replied, “What are you going to do next?” I started to say, “Probably cry..” as I was actually starting to cry with excitement. My enthusiasm was through the roof!

    I tried to call my mom first because she gets excited about my coins and is always giving me change to go threw. She was asleep of course so I left her a message that she probably couldn’t understand from my crying and hype about this coin. I then texted my Papa who has been a very proud supporter of my coin searching and sent him photos of my find. He was elated for me! The next day I did some research to verify that this was the real deal and everything I could find appeared to be. I reached out to Dustin with Coin Opp to get a confirmation and he responded with as much enthusiasm as I have had. His words were, “Well a huge congratulations. You have hit the jackpot of Lincoln cents!” I of course cried again because I knew that if he was telling me this, then it was confirmed to be the true rare 1969’s Doubled Die.

Thank you,
Megan Green 

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Further Reading

• Closeup photo of the coin is available on the PCGS website.
• Coin World article regarding this piece.