jmackenzie3

I heard there was a new site up and coming for Canadian collectors I'll let you know when I hear more

Try here (my club's web site). As I have been researching things for myself, if I had trouble finding anything I would keep going until I found it, then I wrote an article and put it on my coin club's web site. Included in the Articles page is a photographic guide to grading Canadian coins, a list of Canadian coin varieties and a LOT more:

http://www.saskatooncoinclub.ca

I would like to submit a newly updated site. After a couple of years of dormancy I have taken over the job of Webmaster of the Saskatoon Coin Club. I completely re-designed the site and have been adding new content on a very regular basis, including an "article" detailing the evolution of obverse and reverse designs of every Canadian circulation coin denomination since 1858. This article also includes enormous high resolution photos of every version of obverse and reverse in at least MS-60 quality. If you want to view every tiny little detail of a coin's design, this is the place to go.

We also host photos of BOTH sides of the 1911 Pattern silver dollar that belongs to the Royal Mint (which is on loan to the National Currency Collection Museum in Ottawa). While the photo of the reverse side of this coin can be found in a few places on the net, I wrote to the Royal Mint Museum and asked for the photo of the obverse side. They sent it to me and gave our club permission to publish it. Our web site is the ONLY place on the internet where you can view the obverse side!

The Royal Mint has a professional photographer on staff who is extremely skilled at macro photography.

The only photos of the coin that is in a private collector's hands are small, horrible, low quality images.

http://www.saskatooncoinclub.ca

Yes. It's called a Specimen Set, and as of July 2016 it's worth around $8 CDN from Canadian dealers. Not sure what the value would be in other countries.