Code Direction     DN due north NE northeast DE due east SE southeast DS due south SW southwest DW due west NW northwest

Strength Description     Minor Annulets touching, or nearly so Major Significant non-contact spread between annulets

The direction is reasonably self-explanatory. It corresponds to compass points. The reason to preface the directions N, E, S, and W with a D is to facilitate searching. Without the D, a search for E would also match SE.

The strength field attempts to quantify how wide the doubling spread is. If the overlapping annulets touch, or nearly touch, then it is classified as minor doubling. When there is an obvious and significant split between the doubled annulets, it is classified as major doubling. On some varieties it can get a little arbitrary. It will help you to know that borderline coins are always classified as minor. The author considered additional strength gradations, but concluded that they would confuse searching rather than help. What's "medium doubling" to him might be "major doubling" to you. After viewing a few of the coins in SNV, the meaning of the doubling strength encoding should be reasonably clear.

As an example, variety 1866 S1-1000 (F-22, FS-001.7 2-O-III) has as the first line of the comments field:

SW Major

This means that the doubling is southwest and it is widespread doubling.

Doubling direction is always expressed from the primary hubbing. So SW doubling means, for example, that when you look at the annulet the less visible shadow hubbing is to the southwest.

If you wanted to see all of the doubled dies that exhibit major doubling to the southeast, you would search for "SE Major" in comments field of the filter dialog. Do remember to put only a single space between SE and Major - the search looks for an exact match to what you enter.

If you wanted to see all major doubled dies, just enter "Major" in the comments field of the filter dialog.

Repunched Dates

For repunched dates, the first line of the comments indicates the digits that are repunched and the direction of the repunching. For example, variety 1867WR S1-3000 (F-04) has as the first line of the comments field:

18 northwest

This means that the 18 in the date (first two digits of 1867) are repunched northwest. Just like doubled dies, repunching direction is always expressed from the primary punch. So, northwest repunching means that when you look at the date the less visible shadow repunch is to the northwest.

Note that the direction indication for repunched dates is always spelled out like "northwest", in contrast to the doubled die direction which would always be abbreviated "NW". This distinction can be used to advantage in searching the comments field. If for example you want to see all repunched dates that are repunched to the northwest, search for "northwest" in the comments field of the filter dialog.

Combination Varieties

In the wonderful world of shield nickels, sometimes a coin is both a doubled die and a repunched date. When this happens, the first line of the comments field is always the doubled die indication and the second line is always the repunched date indication. Furthermore, the doubled die indication is prefaced by DDO and the repunched date is prefaced by RPD.

Atypical Varieties

The above descriptions cover 95% of shield nickel varieties, but there are always some weird ones that defy categorization. In these cases, the description field may contain useful information about the variety but probably will not contain anything that is consistent for which you may search.

The sole exception to this rule is that doubled die obverses that are doubled at the motto rather than the annulet (quite rare!) should have the word "motto" in the comments somewhere, and can be found by searching for that word.

Year-Specific Comments

Some years have additional die markers that may be useful in distinguishing between similar varieties. These die markers are noted in the comments field. Markers for specific years are:

1868r68	Broken letters from reverse hub C/S/S/D (Cents, centS, stateS, uniteD)
1872	Ken Hill's 1872 attribution notes - see below

Ken Hill's 1872 Attribution Notes

Ken recently completed a study of 1872 doubled dies, and collected a list of attribution hints. The hints are encoded in the comments field in the following format: