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 Replies: 14 / Views: 404 |
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Pillar of the Community
Canada
1481 Posts |
Edited by Zonad
07/20/2026 8:31 pm
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Moderator
 United States
190950 Posts |
Very interesting find!  |
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Pillar of the Community
Canada
9238 Posts |
Can you explain this a bit more please.
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Pillar of the Community
Canada
9238 Posts |
If that is struck on a nickel, but it shows the whole quarter and how do you know it's a 196?
Sorry I just can't rap my head around this.
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Pillar of the Community
 Canada
1481 Posts |
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.
Edited by Zonad
07/20/2026 7:51 pm
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Pillar of the Community
Canada
5271 Posts |
What is the diameter? It appears to be the same diameter as the normal quarter. I agree that there is something strange here, but how could a nickel as a planchet show the full design and the reeded edge of a quarter?
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Moderator
Australia
16894 Posts |
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.
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
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Pillar of the Community
Canada
1481 Posts |
Thank you Sap! You have come up with an excellent explanation and the 5 or three is bang on!
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
75806 Posts |
Very cool! Errers and Varietys.
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Pillar of the Community
 Canada
5606 Posts |
From the looks of it, to me it looks like a 50 cent blank planchet got into the quarter bucket.
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Moderator
United States
190950 Posts |
Well processed, Sap.  |
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Moderator
Canada
10467 Posts |
The strike looks genuine, but the product of mint shenanigans. 1973 was notorious for all kinds of interesting creations, the biggest creation is the 1973 nickel dollar struck over a 50c coin. https://www.pcgs.com/cert/51655024Another example: https://www.pcgs.com/cert/51655023Almost all of them were part of a large collection purchased by Steven Bromberg more than a dozen years ago, and he let stuff trickle out over time, usually to auction houses. This example, however, looks like it got out into circulation. "Discovery follows discovery, each both raising and answering questions, each ending a long search, and each providing the new instruments for a new search." -- J. Robert OppenheimerContent of this post is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses...0/deed.en_USMy eBay store
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Moderator
Canada
10467 Posts |
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.    "Discovery follows discovery, each both raising and answering questions, each ending a long search, and each providing the new instruments for a new search." -- J. Robert OppenheimerContent of this post is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses...0/deed.en_USMy eBay store
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Pillar of the Community
Canada
824 Posts |
1973, SPP has a 1974, I have a 1975. There's a 1977 also mentioned in the 2017 post below. (I thought it was on a 1966 nickel but now I think it's 1969) Shenanigans. https://goccf.com/t/298475Edited by TerryT
Today 4H 45M ago
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Pillar of the Community
Canada
1481 Posts |
Thank you to SPP and TerryT for your comments. Makes me think this must be certified for acceptance.
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Replies: 14 / Views: 404 |
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Posted 07/20/2026 4:46 pm
