The Winnipeg Canadian 30 Cent Coin

Can you explain this a bit more please.

I believe a 196x nickel became lodged somewhere in the mints equipment and was knocked free in 1973 and found its way into the bin with 25 cent blanks. This coin weighs the proper weight of a 5 cent piece. Looking with a loop I can see the 196 and ADA below the front legs of the horse. The five cent legend is proper direction. Thanks for the question.

The weight is correct for a pure nickel 5 cents, and not for a pure nickel quarter. I would read the undertype date as either 1963 or 1965. I would agree it is a genuine overstruck coin; the question only remains as to exactly how it might have come about this way.

A finished coin can't simply "become lodged somewhere" in the coin presses such a way as to just "fall out" a decade later and happen to get struck again. What happened must have been somewhat more mundane: a finished 5 cent coin somehow got tossed into the blank hopper for quarters. Having that coin just sitting around on the mint factory floor for a decade before someone picked it up and tossed it into a hopper also seems improbable. Having someone surreptitiously slip a normal 5 cent coin into the hopper of blank quarters just for funsies also seems improbable. "Mint sport" also seems equally improbable to me, given the difficulty of retrieving such a coin from the coin stream after it was struck.

I am at a loss to find any other "most probable explanation" - apart from "It's a fake". And a counterfeiter making a realistic-looking pair of dies for a 1973 quarter and then using those dies to strike over the top of 5 cent pieces to make a net 20 cent profit per fake coin, seems even less probable. A counterfeiter making coins for circulation wouldn't have used the 1973 design for their fakes, since the whole point of counterfeits is to avoid too-close scrutiny, and 1973 quarters usually receive a lot of scrutiny due to their commemorative nature.

So it seems that the "best explanation" we have is that, somehow, someone brought a normal 5 cent piece into the blank preparation area, then that coin somehow fell into the batch of 25 cent blanks being prepared, and thus this coin was struck. An unsatisfactory explanation, due to all those magical-looking "somehows" in there.

Very cool!

Well processed, Sap.

On this same topic, you have to be really, really careful with 25c struck over 5c with coins bearing a 1974 and 1977 dates. Most I have seen were soft die fake errors. The strike will appear mushy, the preservation is only on the fields and not in the devices (where they should be), and the reeding on the edge is irregular. This one is in my collection as a conversation piece, as someone was careless enough to create a 1974 25c soft die fake, using a 1976 5c host.

Thank you to SPP and TerryT for your comments. Makes me think this must be certified for acceptance.