Some Additions To My Mercury Dimes And Other Parts Of My Collection After A 2 Year Dry Spell

Thank you for the additional photos.

Looking forward to seeing the 1917-P.

Hi just carl .... I bought an eagle 3 ring binder from an online vendor, and the plastic pocket pages. I'm using the 1.5 x 1.5 inch staple type holders, and the pages have 30 pockets. The 2 x 2 pages only hold 20 coins per page. If the overdates fall out of the sky, and they're a steal ... I'll buy them. Same with the mint mark varieties....and those I'll probably just keep on a separate page.

Went happily to the Post Office this morning ... and the frosty yellow 1917-P is here, and is a FB coin. Its a nice uncirculated coin. Here are the "as found" pics.

Chance

Naturally, I want them all to be MS-70, and she's got a few contact marks on the reverse that I could live without, but at least she's got full original luster.

I ended up befriending the seller. He's retired Military, and I'm helping to educate him to where he can move his Mom's collection. He offered me 20 to 25 percent of the proceeds. I told him no, that's just too much. ebay and Paypal are going to eat enough of his lunch. A little good will doesn't cost much.

He's got lots more Mercs, but no more high grade ones.

The old gal's takin' a bubble bath right now. That stuff will melt right off. Its nowhere near as heavily toned as his incandescent lit pictures would lead you to believe. The center of the obverse has very little toning.

Chance

She's ready for Prime Time now...but I still wish the fasces wasn't so beat up. There's a little rim damage on the obverse to boot that kinda sucks. BUT ... she's a good bit better than the one she just gave the boot. I'll stumble across that 66 eventually. Its not as though 17-P is a low mintage at over 58 million. Until then, she's "the one".

Chance

Much improved.

I'm up way early ... with some GI discomfort, and I'm studying this 17-P. I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary until I stapled it into the holder. There's a "dip" on the obverse, vertically through the wing on her cap. There are "lines" vertically that should not be there, but which were present before the striking of the wing ... if that makes sense.

If there's a "dip" on the obverse, then it follows that there must be a "hump" on the reverse....and there is ... and the high spot is right through E Pluribus Unum.

I don't know what's going on here. The flow lines are NOT disturbed anywhere on the coin, The letters in the motto are not damaged. There's no major rim damage ... the kind that would HAVE to be present to do this to the coin post minting.

There are also some curious lines in Liberty's neck, that are curved. They were also present prior to the obverse device being struck. Again, the flow lines are not disturbed.

I don't understand all there is to know about dies, but it's my assumption that they are so heavily made that there's no way that they could become buckled, but it seems that would almost have to be the case for this coin to be equally mis-formed on both sides without damage to the legends and devices that would have to be present were it PMD.

Its really got me scratching my head. I just want a straight up 1917-P ... not something goofy. I have had more trouble with this common date than enough, probably because I'm a cheapskate....or this year is jinxed for me.

I don't know if I can capture any of this stuff with my little easy share camera, but I'm going to try to do just that. Maybe somebody more knowledgeable than me (there are lots of 'em here) will have some idea as to how this could happen.

Probably the easiest thing to show is the simple fact that the coin is bent by laying it on a flat surface. The knee jerk reation will be "That's PMD", and I'm going to ask you to hold that thought for just a little while. I don't know how you bend a coin without damaging it significantly. It may be PMD, but let's explore this a bit before reaching a conclusion.

I'll wrestle with trying to capture the features in Liberty's wing and neck that should not be there. That will take more time, so look for those in another post to follow. I have to hand hold my loupe to the lense and get the lighting right ... oh, what fun this will be.

Actually ... I'll back up just wee bit. There does seem to be something going on with the word "DIME" and the field behind it, adjacent to the rim, and mow that I've taken these photos, I can see the bend down by the date that wasn't evident until that shot was taken. I'll look into that more closely too.

Chance

OCH! That photo does really show a bend in that dime. To bad since it really looks fantastic. Maybe your getting a bit to critical of something that was made a long, long time ago. I suspect some coin collectors get fanatical about perfection in their coins. I know I always want them better and better but then I stop and think these are things made a long time ago.