Legal Counterfeit?

My aunt was vice president of a small local bank back in the 70s and 80's. Anytime that received new change in they would get it as loose change in bags. She would always go through the bags and pull out such change. I remember her showing them to me back then. It would be quit possible for someone at a large bank to pull many. My cousin still has them from back then. He just won't turn loose of them.

Through their bulk purchase program it is also possible for dealers or other persons to buy these Ballistic Bags as well. (You actually have to go to the mint and pick them up yourself and provide your own shipping. You also have to make arrangements to load them yourself. I know Silvertowne does this. I got to tour their processing rooms recently and they had Ballistic Bags up on a hoist feeding into rolling machines. They said they go out to the mint and get them several times a year, and of course when each new coin is released.

There's a machine called a riddler designed to catch these. A tray with holes just large enuf to let a normal coin thru.

If the coin tries to fall through flat, it won't fit, but if it lines up on the narrow edge, it can fall thru.

Riddlers have been around since the 60s, at least. I had a simple version back then.

Dated ones sell for more because they are more collectable. You've got one dateless, you have a complete set.

They had riddlers for years before 2000, but they started passing them through additional riddlers. If you have a riddler that catches 90% of the errors and you pass the coins through it three times you will catch 99.9% of them. Another reason why the off centers disappeared is because around 2002 they switch from the vertical striking presses to the horizontal striking. If you are striking vertically and the planchet isn't in the collar it sits there and can still be struck by the dies. But on horizontal striking if the planchet isn't in the collar it falls out of the way. (Gravity works) To get an off center it has to catch the planchet as it is falling.

Thanks for the info, Michael.

Yes, vertical is up and down, horizontal is side to side.

That is just it, the only way to strike an off-center on a horizontal striking press is for the dies to come together and happen to catch the planchet before it get a chance to completely fall out of the way. A split second later and the planchet wouldn't be there. It can still happen because the dies are striking 13 times a second and it does take a bit of time for the planchet to get out of the way.

The planchet are normally enclosed in the collar. I would suspect the planchet are put in the collar and there is something over the holes until just before it moves in between the dies.

I don't know if the mint uses the same system but I have seen presses where the collar is a large steel disk with 24 holes around the circumference. This disk is mounted vertically. Now you would put the planchets in at say 9 o'clock. About every 1/12 second the disk rotates one position. From 9:30 to 2:00 there is a cover on each side to keep the planchet from falling out. At 3:00 are the dies. Every 1/12 second a planchet is rotated into place and the dies come together striking the coin and withdrawing. At 6:00 a rubber tipped ram pushes the coin out of the collar and when it gets back to 9:00 it get loaded with another planchet. To get an off-center when the collar rotates to the 3:00 position the planchet slips out at the bottom and falls out but before it gets completely out of the way the dies come together catching the falling planchet and striking the off-center.