I never knew that they were so nice

I recieved my first presidential proof dollar today. Thanks to Chris Chambers. Now, I've collected Canadian proofs for a long time, but this is my first U.S. proof. My compliments to the U.S. mint. It's a beautifully made dollar. I never realized that proofs can be that different. I thought that they were the same, just differnt countries, coins, and mints. Not so, something that I noticed right away was the "sparkle" within the ultra cameo finnish on George Washington's bust. Trully an excellent finnish. Canadian proof coins have a nice finnish, but this was eye catching to me. I'm sold. I think that I am going to start collecting these. Something else that I saw, when registering this coin. WOW!! I've never seen that with Canadian coins. I Know that we have a small population in Canada( aprox. 30 mil.) so our collector base is also small. Again. WOW!! I haven't investigated how many people have this set going, but Talk about a tie for first place. What is there, about 100 tied? I have quite the challenge ahead of me, it should be fun, and I think that it's going to take while. Can anyone inform me about what a "first strike" is, and does it differ from a normal proof?